Day 17: Most Exciting POV
If you're not familiar with GRRM's style for these books, every chapter is written from the third person perspective of a POV character. The chapter title will be only that person's name, and people tend to distinguish between them by labeling them according to book and the number of that chapters that character has in the book. For instance, if we're looking at A Game of Thrones and reading Bran's fourth chapter, people would call that Bran 1:4. It may be like the 15th actual chapter of the book, but it's only Bran's fourth.
So far, there are 14 major POV characters, 10 minor POV characters (who might become major ones in later books, aside from the people who are dead), and some prologue and epilogue characters. Almost always, the prologue and epilogue characters die.
To me, the most exciting POV character is Tyrion Lannister. For one thing, Tyrion has the bulk of the chapters, as of his sample chapter in Winds of Winter, he's up to 48, which is six more than anyone else (Arya is next at 42, but actually Tyrion's is very impressive considering he is skipped completely in one book, where Arya isn't).
I love Tyrion's chapter because his story plays like a Coyote story. He is always getting put in prisons or captured and always manages to talk his way out of it. He has to maneuver around his family's rules and manages to use wildfire to get himself out of a war. He's funny, lustful, and as bad as he is good. People accuse Tyrion of having 'plot armor,' but from my perspective, he is just doing his job as a trickster.
In fact, in the last book, he basically goes through shamanic death. He spends many chapters lost and broken. He even has to subvert his personality for a while. By the end of the book, he's beginning to be his usual self again, but it takes him going to possibly the lowest point he possibly could. He probably needed that shamanic death, because things are about to get scary and serious. Well, you know, MORE scary and serious . . . if that's possible.
No comments:
Post a Comment