“MÁRTON ÁRON” HIGH SCHOOLMIERCUREA CIUC – CSÍKSZEREDA

A Song of Ice and FireGeorge R. R. Martins book and the TV show

Student Coordinating teacher

Zalán-Tamás Jakab Julianna Bodor

12th B

2014

Contents

Introduction...................................................................................................................................2

Career........................................................................................................................................ 2

Private life..................................................................................................................................4

The books...................................................................................................................................... 4

Plot synopsis.................................................................................................................................. 5

Inspiration and writing techniques............................................................................................7

Planned novels...........................................................................................................................8

The TV series................................................................................................................................10

Summary......................................................................................................................................12

Bibliography.................................................................................................................................14

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Introduction

The topic of this essay will revolve around George R. R. Martin’s famous series of epic fantasy

novels, namely “A Song of Ice and Fire”. I chose this topic for numerous reasons. Firstly, I have

always loved fiction novels but I have never come across something as interesting as this one.

Secondly, in contrary to the general beliefs, fantasy books are qualitative writings and many

things can be learnt from it and in my opinion this series of books really supports this idea.

Thirdly, in these days the books and the film series, whereof I will be talking about further on,

deservedly got the attention of a big, world-wide audience and hence I think it is really relevant

and up-to-date topic to write about. The series explores the issues of social hierarchy, religion,

loyalty, corruption, civil war, crime, and punishment.

Throughout the essay I will be mainly focusing on the books itself but first of all I will present

the author shortly. After detailing the books I will also briefly write about the TV show and then

summarize the paper.

Career

George Raymond Richard Martin, born in 20th of September, 1948, often referred to

as GRRM, is an american novelist and short story writer in the fantasy, horror, and science

fiction genres, as well as a screenwriter and television producer. He is best known for A Song of

Ice and Fire, his international bestselling series of epic fantasy novels that HBO adapted for its

dramatic series Game of Thrones.

He started writing really early, when he was a teenager he began selling monster stories for

pennies to other neighborhood children, dramatic readings included. He also wrote stories

about a mythical kingdom populated by his pet turtles. But the turtles died frequently in their

toy castle, so he finally decided they were killing each other off in "sinister plots". This will be a

recurrent pattern in his writings as you will notice further on.

Martin began selling science fiction short stories professionally in 1970, at age 21. His first sale

was "The Hero", sold to Galaxy magazine and published in its February 1971 issue; other sales

soon followed. His first story to be nominated for the Hugo Award and Nebula Awards was With

Morning Comes Mistfall, published in 1973 in Analog magazine. A member of the Science

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Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), Martin became the organization's Southwest

Regional Director from 1977 to 1979; from 1996 to 1998, he served as its vice-president.

The unexpected commercial failure of Martin's fourth book, The Armageddon Rag (1983),

"essentially destroyed my career as a novelist at the time", he recalled. However, that failure

led him to seek a career in television after a Hollywood option on that novel led to him being

hired, first as a staff writer and then as an Executive Story Consultant, for the revival of

the Twilight Zone. After this Martin was hired as a writer-producer on the new dramatic fantasy

series Beauty and the Beast; in 1989 he became the show's co-supervising producer, while also

writing 14 of its episodes. His carrier slowly begin to rise but while he was earning good money

in Hollywood, he was not satisfied since so few of the projects he worked on ever went into

production. And this might have given him the incentive to take the matters in his own hand

and begin writing his famous work.

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Private life

In the early 1970s Martin was in a relationship with fellow science-fiction/fantasy author Lisa

Tuttle with whom he co-wrote Windhaven.

While attending an east coast science fiction convention he met his first wife, Gale Burnick; they

were married in 1975, but the marriage ended in divorce, without children, in 1979.

On February 15, 2011, Martin married his longtime paramour Parris McBride during a small

ceremony at their Santa Fe home. On August 19, 2011, they held a larger wedding ceremony

and reception at Renovation, the 69th World Science Fiction Convention, in Reno, Nevada.

He and his wife Parris are supporters of the Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary in New Mexico. In early

2013 he purchased Santa Fe's Jean Cocteau Cinema and Coffee House, which had been closed

since 2006. He had the property completely restored, including both its original 35 mm

capability to which was added digital projection and sound; the Cocteau officially re-opened for

business with great fanfare on Friday, August 9, 2013.

In response to a question on his religious views, Martin replied, "I suppose I'm a lapsed

Catholic. You would consider me an atheis oragnostic. I find religion and spirituality fascinating.

I would like to believe this isn't the end and there's something more, but I can't convince the

rational part of me that makes any sense whatsoever. That's what Tolkien left out; there's no

priesthood, there's no temples, nobody is worshipping anything in the Lord of the Rings.

The books

Martin began the first volume of the series, A Game of Thrones, in 1991. He published it in

1996. After the first novel came the sequel A Clash of Kings in 1998 and the third, A storm of

swords, in 2000. A fest of crows, probably the shortest with its 800 pages, was first published

on 17 October 2005 in the United Kingdom. Martin gradually extended his originally intended

trilogy to seven volumes, the fifth of which, A Dance with Dragons, took him five years to write

before its publication in 2011. Martin's work on his sixth, The Winds of Winter, is still underway.

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The five published

books.

Plot synopsis

The story of A Song of Ice and Fire takes place in a fictional world where seasons last for years

contributing to the circumstances. Centuries before the events of the first novel, the Seven

Kingdoms on the continent Westeros were united under several generations of

the Targaryen dynasty, who wielded the power of fire-breathing dragons until their apparent

extinction. The last Targaryen king was killed in a rebellion of feudal lords led by a young Robert

Baratheon some fourteen years before the events of the first novel. Following the conclusion of

the rebellion, Robert became king.

The main story chronicles a power struggle for the Iron Throne of Westeros after King Robert's

death in the first book, A Game of Thrones. King Robert's son Joffrey immediately claims the

throne with the support of his mother's powerful, immensely wealthy Lannister family. When

Lord Eddard Stark, King Robert's "Hand" (chief advisor) finds out that Joffrey and his siblings

were not fathered by Robert but are the offspring of incest between siblings Jaime and Cersei

Lannister, Eddard is executed for treason and Robert's brothersStannis and Renly individually

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lay claim to the throne. Meanwhile, several regions of Westeros seek to return to self-rule:

Eddard Stark's eldest son Robb is proclaimed King in the North, while Balon Greyjoy re-

establishes an independent Kingdom in his region, the Iron Islands. This so-called War of the

Five Kings is in full progress by the middle of the second book, A Clash of Kings, with more

people gradually joining the struggle for power. In the fifth book, A Dance with Dragons,

Joffrey's younger brother Tommen holds the Iron Throne, with his mother and later his uncle

serving as his regents as the winter snow arrives.

The second story takes place on the northern border of Westeros, where an enormous, eight-

thousand-year-old wall of ice defends Westeros from the Others, creatures believed to be

mythical. The Wall's sentinels, the Sworn Brotherhood of the Night's Watch, are spending most

of their time dealing with the human "Free Folk" or "wildlings" living beyond the Wall when the

first Others appear in A Game of Thrones. The Night's Watch story is told primarily through the

eyes of Jon Snow, supposed bastard son of Eddard Stark, as he rises through the ranks of the

Watch and learns the true nature of the threat from the north. With the third volume, A Storm

of Swords, this story becomes entangled with the civil war to the south when Stannis moves to

the Wall to protect the realm from the threat of invasion and simultaneously win the favor of

the northern strongholds.

The third story is set on a huge eastern continent named Essos and follows the adventures

of Daenerys Targaryen, the last known scion of House Targaryen. Her story is isolated from the

others until more POV (POV refers to point of view) characters join her in A Dance with

Dragons. Living in exile on Essos, Daenerys' adventures show her growing ability as she rises

from a pauper sold into an arranged marriage to a powerful and canny ruler. Her rise is aided by

the birth of three dragons from fossilized dragon eggs given to her as wedding gifts. With a

three-headed dragon as her family's coat of arms, these creatures are of symbolic value to her

before they grow big enough to be of tactical use for her goal of reclaiming the Iron Throne.

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Aside from thees storylines, along the evolution of characters and progress of the story we also

discover the history of Westeros, which in my opinion is the key for its unbroken popularity.

Each book is like flight ticket to that world which captures your hole imagination and it doesn’t

let you go until you are finished with it.

Inspiration and writing techniques

Martin is an avid student of medieval Europe, and has said that the Wars of the Roses, along

with many other events in Europe during that time, have influenced the series. However, he

insists that "there's really no one-for-one character-for-character correspondence. I like to use

history to flavor my fantasy, to add texture and verisimilitude, but simply rewriting history with

the names changed has no appeal for me. I prefer to re-imagine it all, and take it in new and

unexpected directions."

The principal inspirational source was the history of England, for instance the Wars of the

Roses, which in the novels is represented by the battle between the Stark and Lannister house,

Edward IV of England inspired the character of Robert Baratheon and so on. He also decided to

avoid the conventional good versus evil setting typical for the genre, using the fight between

Achilles and Hector in Homer's Iliad, where no one stands out as either a hero or a villain, as an

example of what he wants to achieve with his books.

The books are divided into chapters, each one narrated in the through the eyes of a point of

view character, an approach Martin learned himself as a young journalism student. Each POV

character may act from different locations. Beginning with nine viewpoint characters in A Game

of Thrones, the number of POV characters grows to a total of 31 in A Dance with Dragons (see

table); the short-lived one-time POV characters are mostly restricted to

the prologue and epilogue.Regarding the characters as the heart of the story, Martin planned

the epic Ice and Fire fantasy to have a large cast of characters and many different settings from

the beginning. A Feast for Crows has a 63-page list of characters,[ with many of the thousands

of characters mentioned only in passing or disappearing from view for long stretches When

Martin adds a new family to the ever-growing number of genealogies in the appendices, he

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devises a secret about the personality or fate of the family members. Martin aims to "make my

characters real and to make them human, characters who have good and bad, noble and selfish

[attributes and are] well-mixed in their natures. Thus moral ambiguities are always present and

the readers can choose with whom to stick in the long-run. As a journalist said "experience the

struggle for Westeros from all sides at once" so that "every fight is both triumph and tragedy

[...] and everybody is both hero and villain at the same time".Given the great number of

characters and their complex characterisation the reader can never be sure if his favourite will

survive. This feature of Martins novels has become one of his trademarks and the internet is

now full of shocked fans complaining in a somewhat friendly and lovely manner about their

favourite characters death.

The death of characters visualized in each book with some bookmarks

Planned novels

Martin believes the two last volumes of the series will be big books of 1500 manuscript pages

each. The sixth book will be called The Winds of Winter, taking the title of the last book of the

originally planned trilogy. By the middle of 2010, Martin had already finished five chapters

of The Winds of Winter from the viewpoints of Sansa Stark, Arya Stark, Arianne Martell,

and Aeron Damphair, accumulating to around 100 completed pages. The Winds of Winter will

resolve the Dance with Dragons cliffhangers early on and "will open with the two big battles

that [the fifth book] was building up to, the battle in the ice and the battle [...] of Slaver's Bay.

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And then take it from there." After the publication of A Dance with Dragons, Martin announced

he would return to writing in January 2012. He spent the meantime on book tours,

conventions, and continued working on his as-yet-unpublished The World of Ice and

Fire companion guide and a new Tales of Dunk and Egg novella.

In December 2011, Martin posted a chapter from The Winds of Winter from the viewpoint

of Theon Greyjoy at his website and promised to include another sample chapter in the

paperback version of A Dance with Dragons. International paperbacks had no new sample

chapter,whereas the North-American paperback version, originally expected to be released in

summer 2012, was pushed back to October 29, 2013. Four hundred pages of the sixth novel

have been written as of October 2012, although Martin considers only 200 as "really finished";

the rest needs revising. Martin published another sample chapter from Arianne Martell's POV

on his website in January 2013. Martin hopes to finish The Winds of Winter much faster than

the fifth book. He gave three years as a realistic estimate for finishing the sixth book at a good

pace, but said ultimately the book "will be done when it's done", acknowledging that his

publication estimates had been too optimistic in the past. Martin does not intend to separate

the characters geographically again but said that "Three years from [2011] when I'm sitting on

1,800 pages of manuscript with no end in sight, who the hell knows".

Displeased with the provisional title A Time for Wolves for the final volume, Martin ultimately

announced A Dream of Spring as the title for the seventh book in 2006. Martin is firm about

ending the series with the seventh novel "until I decide not to be firm". With his stated goal to

tell the story from beginning to end, he will not truncate the story to fit into an arbitrary

number of volumes. He knows the ending in broad strokes as well as the future of the main

characters, and will finish the series with bittersweet elements where not everyone will live

happily ever after. Martin hopes to write an ending similar to The Lord of the Rings that he felt

gave the story a satisfying depth and resonance.

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The TV series

The TV series is completely based on Martins books Filmed in a Belfast studio and on location

elsewhere in Northern Ireland, Malta, Scotland, Croatia, Iceland and Morocco. It premiered on

17th of April, 2011. Game of Thrones has attracted record numbers of viewers on HBO and

obtained an exceptionally broad and active international fan base. It received widespread

acclaim by critics, although its frequent use of nudity, violence and sexual violence has

attracted criticism. The series has won numerous awards and nominations, including

a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Drama Series in all three seasons,

a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Television Series – Drama, a Hugo Award for Best

Dramatic Presentation in both Long Form and Short Form, and a Peabody Award. Among the

ensemble cast, Peter Dinklage won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting

Actor in a Drama Series and the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Series,

Miniseries or Television Film for his role as Tyrion Lannister.

Like the novels it adapts, Game of Thrones has a sprawling ensemble cast, estimated to be the

largest on television. During the production of the third season, 257 cast names were recorded.

The main roles are chiefly played by actors from the U.K. such as: Sean Bean, Maise Williams,

Sophie Turner, Kit Harington, Jack Gleeson, Natalie Dormer, Emilia Clarke, Charles Dance etc.

Showrunners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss intend to adapt the entirety of the still incomplete A

Song of Ice and Fire novel series, if HBO permits it. They envision the series to have a scope of

some 80 hours, about eight seasons' worth of material. However they are facing the problem of

catching up with the books and thus running out of material. Early during the development of

the TV series, Martin told major plot points to producers David Benioff and D. B. Weiss in case

he should die. (The New York Times reported in 2011 that at age 62, Martin was by all accounts

in robust health.) Martin is confident he will have published at least The Winds of

Winter before the TV series overtakes him. s a result, head writers Benioff and Weiss learned

more future plot points from Martin in 2013 to help them set up the show's new possible

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seasons. This included the end stories for all the core characters. Deviations from the books'

storylines are also being considered, but a two-year show hiatus to wait for new books is not an

option for them as the child actors continue to grow and the show's popularity would

wane Martin indicated he would not permit another writer to finish the book series.

Fortunately the TV show is becoming more successful from year to year and this gives every

reason to be optimistic about the future. Even Barack Obama reportedly asked the chief

executive of HBO to get hold of advance copies and he, of course, got it in contrary to the

people.

The novel series A Song of Ice and Fire and its TV adaptation Game of Thrones have an

exceptionally broad and active international fan base. In 2012, Vulture ranked the series'

fandom as the most devoted in popular culture, ahead of that of Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, Harry

Potter or Star Wars. It has also set a new torrent record. During the first day, the second

episode of the shows fourth season was downloaded illegally over 1,5 million times.

Viewers per season (in millions). First season: red. Second season: green. Third season: blue. Fourth season: purple

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Summary

In the summary we can draw the conclusion that A song of Ice and Fire truly is one of the great

masterpieces in the XXI century and it certainly can live up to the expectations of classical

literature. What distinguishes him from the other fantasy writers is the accentuation of realism

and credibility over a simplistic ideal world with the good versus bad dichotomy. Thus his novel

becomes in every possible level more complex and interesting than the average works. He goes

beyond usual archetypes and teaches us that the world is not just pure black-and-white (which

we really tend to forget). As he said: We look at real history and it's not that simple... In real life,

real-life kings had real-life problems to deal with. ... You had to make hard, hard decisions.

Sometimes what seemed to be a good decision turned around and bit you in the ass; it was

thelaw of unintended consequences... Just having good intentions doesn't make you a wise

king." Another thing in which he counts as an innovator is the deployment of strong female

characters (such as Daenerys and Arya). These are to cover the same wide spectrum of human

traits just as the males. The open sexuality is another atypic trait of fantasy novels before

Martin, which in his works depicts the sexual violence against women. This aspect of the novels

is often criticized but the writer responded that  sexual violence are in fact prevalent in war,

and that omitting them from the narrative would undermine one of his novels' themes: "that

the true horrors of human history derive not from orcs and Dark Lords, but from ourselves."

Reading the books was a real excitement and must be to others as well. Knowing that every risk

your favourite one takes might put an end to his life can be really frustrating and in the same

time enthralling. Maybe that is the magic in it, one can never know what will happen because

there are no main characters in the traditional sense of the world which will live whatever

happens. And in the same time all this seems logical because of the clearly constructed cause

and effect line. Unfortunately the Tv series isn’t as elaborate as the original storyline and it has

many distortions as well, which had to be made in order the success of the series. However I

managed to accept this, even that I consider myself as a hardcore fan of the books.

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As a person, who loves philosophy, it was an extra pleasure reading about the conflicts and

fights of different ideologies. Martin doesn’t ram down the conclusion on our throats, he just

collides the extremly honest idealistic character with the down-to-earth man and lets to build

up our own lessons from it. Ultimately the main moral of the books for me is the importance of

tolerance towards each other but of course I will wait out the publication of the last two books

before I firmly declare anything. And of course I will hope that Martin will not kill my favourite

character.

The map of Martins world.

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Bibliography

Martin, George Raymond Richard: A Game of Thrones, Bantam Books(1996)

A Clash of Kings, Bantam Books (1998)

A Storm of Swords, Bantam Books (2000)

A Feast for Crows, Bantam Dell (2005)

A Dance with Dragons, Bantam Books (2011)

www.awoiaf.westeros.org, accessed on 8th of May 2014

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Song_of_Ice_and_Fire accessed on 11th of May 2014

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/obama-seeks-game-thrones-dvd-holiday-article-

1.1617755 accessed on 11th of May 2014

http://www.georgerrmartin.com/ accessed on 11th of May 2014

http://news.yahoo.com/latest-game-thrones-episode-sets-torrent-record-012542980.html

accessed on 11th of May 2014

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