Valjean and the Hound
The classic literary hero is a noble, someone of distinguished birth which sets them apart from society writ large. Think Oedipus, Oddyseus, and Hamlet. For all its enormous scope, War and Peace by Leo Tolsoty exclusively follows this convention. Non counts and countesses and non princes and princesses barely make an appearance. Similarly, J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings fixes its eyes on wizards and kings, and even the humble Frodo is rich beyond the dreams of his fellow hobbits. In the realms of nobility, knights, and aristocrats, little attention, little at all, is paid the poor. Victor Hugo sees these averted eyes, and rebukes them in Les Miserables. So does Sandor Clegane, the Hound, from G.R.R Martin’s series A Song of Ice and Fire.
Don’t get me wrong, I love War and Peace and The Lord of the Rings. It is incredibly satisfying to see our heros win the day and set the world to rights. After his personal transformation and harrowing experiences, Count Pierre Bezukhov, at the end of War and Peace, liberates his surfs and orders his estates, and all is well. Similarly, in The Lord of the Rings, Sauron and Sauruman are defeated and Aragorn returns from exile to be crowned king, and all is as it ought to be. These narratives affirm a classical premise: if the larger than life hero’s are actualized, then the world will be set right.
Les Miserables and A Song of Ice and Fire question this conditional statement. In the beginning of Les Miserables, the French Revolution came and went, but there is still a king, and the poor are still with us. Liberty, equality, and fraternity have a meager reach at best. In A Song of Ice and Fire, when exiled ruler Daenerys liberates Mareen, the righteous returning hero prevails, but it does not set the city completely in order. Freed slaves clamor for the fighting pits. Former masters long for a return to the status quo. Where Aragorn’s coronation necessarily brings about the prosperity of Gondor, Daenerys’s noble deeds do not automatically rectify the world she inhabits. Hugo and Martin give us characters in Jean Valjean and Sandor Clegane that demonstrate the long, slow road to sanctification, in all it’s pain and all it’s redemptive power. For these men, an inward change of heart is not enough to bring about a new society. Their change in heart is followed by striving for mercy, but also in the toil and failures they face. Redemption is hard work. It comes with a cost. Valjean does and Clegane can show an example of struggling to manifest interior transformation in the world.
In A Song of Ice and Fire, we first see the Hound through the eyes of Arya Stark: ravenous, cruel, and monstrous. Hating gods and men, the Hound kills her stableboy friend for sport. In the musical adaptation of Les Miserables, there is a more sympathetic introduction to Valjean, as he is the protagonist of the story. But imagine Valjean as seen from the perspective of a young acolyte to Bishop Myriel. He would look like the Hound: lonely, desperate, and bitter, hating God and men alike. Valjean knows his sentencing as a thief is unjust, yet he becomes a thief. The Hound knows that the civility and chivalry of the Knights of the Seven harbor monsters and institutionalized violence, yet he becomes a monster and enforcer for a petty king. Clegane and Valjean see and experience great injustice, yet they perpetuate injustice in their own self interest.
Yet, Cleagan and Valjean, scared and jaded, find something they do not expect: mercy. Valjean attempts to steal silver from Bishop Myriel, who took Valjean in, clothed him, and fed him. When the thief is apprehended, the Bishop shows mercy and gives Valjean the silver instead of sending him back to imprisonment and slavery. And this is a turning point for Valjean. His soul, bought back from perdidition by the mercy of the Bishop, is given to God. Valjean’s journey through the rest of Les Miserables is living into the salvation bought for him. Living alone in salvation is not enough for Valjean. He sacrifices his own freedom to show the same mercy to those around him. Sometimes he fails. Valjean’s fear of Javert, the police inspector who relentlessly hunts him for breaking parole, leads to the downfall and death of Fantine. Yet he seeks to atone for failing Fantine by raising her illegitimate, abandoned child, Cosette, as his own. Valjean rescues a man falsely identified as the thief Valjean by giving up his own safety. He rescues Marias, the failed revolutionary, even though he knows it will lead to him losing his precious Cosette. When Valjean receives mercy unlooked for, he is transformed, and the inward transformation is expressed outwardly as sacrificial love.
Toward the end of the musical, Valjean is given the power to kill Javert. Inspector Javert, who has hounded Valjean, finally has the tables turned. Powerless and a slave to the law, Javert accepts his fate. The thief Valjean will do as thieves do. Yet, Valjean spares his enemy. He frees him Javert and sends him away from the revolutionaries. Javert receives unlooked for mercy from Valjean, and it destroys him. Unable to reconcile the justice of the mercy shown to him and the mercy he then shows to Valjean, Javert takes his own life.
This is somewhat speculative, but it is basically confirmed by the HBO TV series based on A Song of Ice and Fire, Game of Thrones, but the Hound also receives this unlooked for mercy. Bleeding out and left for dead by his captive, former enemy, and protegee, Arya Stark, Clegane is taken in by the monks of the Quite Isle. The Elder Brother takes in the broken body of the Hound, where ‘the Hound’ dies and is reborn Sandor Clegane, a gravedigger, burying the “small folk” caught in the crossfire of the Five Kings.
What I don’t like about the conclusion of Game of Thrones is that it turns Sandor Clegane from Valjean to Javert. Clegane reunites with Arya in the end and the two ride to Kings Landing, Arya to kill Queen Cersei, Clegane to kill his reanimated brother, the Mountain. When they get to the Red Keep, Sandor tells Arya to turn back, to give up her quest for vengeance before it completely consumes her as it has him. It is too late for Sandor, he’s too far gone to be redeemed. He marches alone on the Red Keep, finds the Mountain, and throws his life away for pointless revenge Cleganebowl, get hype. In Game of Thrones, Clegane receives mercy, but cannot accept it. And like Javert cannot sacrifice his commitment to the law, the Hound cannot sacrifice his commitment to revenge, and the two would be heroes give up their lives for nothing.
I hope Sandor becomes the Valjean of A Song of Ice and Fire. I hope that the mercy he receives from the Elder Brother shapes him as the mercy Valjean received from Bishop Myriel. I want to see the vile and cruel Hound, made cynical by the injustice he has faced and seen, be reborn as Sandor Clegane. I want Clegane to give up himself, his revenge, and his perpetuation of injustice and show the same unlooked for mercy in a world that expects only violence and hate. It would give me hope. Even in a world as broken as A Song of Ice and Fire, mercy can change us, and even Sandor Clegane can show mercy in return. It would give me hope that when we, in our broken world, receive mercy, even we can show mercy in return.
Valar Morghulis. All men must die. This phrase tolls as funeral bells through A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones. And all men must die, and all men do die. All of us give up our lives. Javert and the Hound of Game of Thrones waste their lives, faced with mercy they cannot accept or return. Valar Dohaeris. All men must serve. This is the appropriate response to Valar Morghulis.Jean Valjean gives up his life to service, sacrificially loving the people around him, even his enemies. Sandor Clegane of A Song of Ice and Fire will also give up his life, he will inevitably die. Only time will tell how. I hope he doesn’t die ineffectually clinging to revenge. I hope he gives up his life as the most feared fighter of the Seven Kingdoms, the Hound, to serve. I hope Sandor Clegane loses his life to save it.
