That title is too sweeping for what I have in mind for this entry and too limited as well. Anyway . . . to carry on the comparison between George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire and J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings . . .
A Note on Funeral Customs
One of the earliest pieces of criticism on The Lord of the Rings (LOTR) was a booklet on funeral customs in Middle Earth. My copy is packed somewhere, or I would cite it. It surely isn’t available now anyway. Readers of LOTR surely notice how the different cultures handle funerals and mourning. Here are brief comments comparing that with an example from A Feast for Crows (FFC).
In comparing LOTR and A Song of Ice and Fire (SOIF), I am not judging one work as better than the other. Instead, I hope to illuminate each work through the comparison.
In LOTR, after Gandalf’s fall in Moria, he is mourned in Lothlorien, most notably by Sam Gamgee, loyal servant of Frodo Baggins. Sam composes and bashfully recites a poem eulogizing Gandalf. The poem is written in fairly simple verse, appropriate to Sam and his social status. In FFC, Maester Aemon Targaryen dies aboard a ship at sea. Samwell Tarly — Sam the Slayer — eulogizes Maester Aemon in eloquent prose because there’s no one else to do so. Like Sam Gamgee, Sam Tarly is self-effacing, although Sam Tarly is the son of a landed knight and Sam Gamgee is a gardener’s son.
I spare you a detailed comparison of Sam’s poem with Sam’s prose; instead, consider that each impressive figure (Gandalf and Aemon) is eulogized by a humble person. That Sam G. uses verse is quite appropriate, as poems occur throughout LOTR. My students usually confessed to skipping the poems there; I encouraged them to read them because they often add to the theme, background, or mood of the scene in which they occur.
Sam T. uses prose, fairly plain in style but still eloquent enough to stand as words for a man who could have ruled the seven kingdoms.
Places of Safety and Comfort
In LOTR, the Fellowship comes across places where they are safe, even if they can not stay there. Tom Bombadil’s house is especially appealing; Imladris and Lothlorien, as Elvish refuges, are somewhat overwhelming, but still sage. In The Hobbit, of course, the house of Beorn, “the last homely house,” has a similar function.
There are no places of safety and comfort in A Song of Ice and Fire, only places where the war hasn’t arrived yet. Arya Stark’s experiences are a good example. In Bravos, she takes a kind of refuge in the temple of the God of Many Faces, but she must work there and is subject to intense testing and initiation. She’s only one example. Prince Doran of Dorne is relatively safe but tormented by gout and tensions within his ruling family.
The closest Martin comes (and it isn’t very close) to a kind of Tolkienesque comfort and safety is a passage in FFC. His chapters don’t have numbers, so I’ll reference the page number in my copy, a hardback from the Science Fiction Book Club.
On page 548, Brienne of Tarth, along with her squire Podrick, Septon Meribald, and Ser Hyle Hunt, are hoping to find some rest and relaxation at the inn at a major crossroads, Ser Meribald goes over the history of the inn. In a paragraph, he gives a history of the inn that lacks bloodshed. In the next paragraph, he describes how war and rebellion affected the inn and its keepers. And, of course, this small party of travelers finds neither rest nor safety there.
