This is quite a good one as well, worth discussing, because Bran gets overlooked so often.
Spoiler
OK, apparently ghostofharrenhal said Bran wasn’t a good person for warging into Hodor, and got a lot of weird anons calling her out. And, y’know, I get that people are defensive of Bran. I love him too. He’s an innocent kid. He doesn’t know what he’s doing is wrong… but that doesn’t make it not wrong.
What’s the exact difference between a bad person, and a good person who does bad things, after all? (This is one of the major themes of ASOIAF, if you haven’t picked up on that so far, as well as the definition of “bad” and “good”, but anyway.) Philosophers and ethicists may debate the point, but to me it comes down to intent, the repetition of the bad thing, and the results. And Bran is treading way over the line, unfortunately.
I’ve hinted around this in the last couple posts I made about Bran, but I’m going to lay it all out right now. Warning, spoilers for ADWD and parts of ASOS follow. (Also, idk if I should warn for triggers? But there may be triggering things ahead.)
Now, when Bran first takes over Hodor’s mind in ASOS, it’s a surprise to him. (To them both.) Bran was just trying to calm Hodor’s fear of the thunderstorm and quiet him, he didn’t even realize he could possess a human being the way he could his wolf. And the results:
Hodor staggered, and closed his mouth. He shook his head slowly from side to side, sank back to the floor, and sat crosslegged. When the thunder boomed, he scarcely seemed to hear it. The four of them sat in the dark tower, scarce daring to breathe.
“Bran, what did you do?” Meera whispered.
“Nothing.” Bran shook his head. “I don’t know.” But he did. I reached for him, the way I reach for Summer. He had been Hodor for half a heartbeat. It scared him.
It should scare the reader too. The reader should not just be going “ooh, awesome, Bran’s a super-powerful warg!” The text is there for a reason. But then Bran does it again, not much later:
…he slipped his skin, and reached for Hodor.
It was not like sliding into Summer. That was so easy now that Bran hardly thought about it. This was harder, like trying to pull a left boot on your right foot. It fit all wrong, and the boot was scared too, the boot didn’t know what was happening, the boot was pushing the foot away. He tasted vomit in the back of Hodor’s throat, and that was almost enough to make him flee.
Hodor is having the control of his body taken away from him, and it terrifies him. He doesn’t understand, but he becomes nauseated, he tries to fight back. And he can’t, perhaps because Bran is so powerful, perhaps because of his diminished mental capacity. And Bran can tell it’s wrong, but he does it anyway. It’s just like putting on a boot, after all.
But Hodor is not a boot. Hodor is a human being, an adult, with his own mind. He is not an animal, not a pokemon just because the only word he says is his name. (And it’s not even his real name, just as a reminder.) Hodor — Walder — has his own thoughts, his own feelings, his own needs and desires just like any other human being. And just because he’s mentally disabled is no excuse to treat him like an animal, a mere beast of burden. It’s not an excuse for Bran, and it’s certainly no excuse for the reader, who ought to know better.
Though just in case the reader didn’t realize possessing a human being was a bad thing, Martin makes it obvious in ADWD. In the prologue, Varamyr Sixskins recalls being told by his skinchanging teacher that “to seize the body of another man was the worst abomination of all”. And when Varamyr does attempt to possess the wilding Thistle, the wording used is that he “forced himself inside her”. The text is explicitly saying that warging a human being is mental rape.
And her reaction? She goes mad. She shrieks, twists violently, screams at him to get out, bites off her own tongue and claws out her own eyes. Gosh, it sure was a good thing that Bran’s such a powerful warg and that Hodor doesn’t have the mental strength to fight back! In fact, we learn that when Bran continues to possess Hodor during ADWD:
Other times, when he was tired of being a wolf, Bran slipped into Hodor’s skin instead. The gentle giant would whimper when he felt him, and thrash his shaggy head from side to side, but not as violently as he had the first time, back at Queenscrown. He knows it’s me, the boy liked to tell himself. He’s used to me by now. Even so, he never felt comfortable inside Hodor’s skin. The big stableboy never understood what was happening, and Bran could taste the fear at the back of his mouth.
"Liked to tell himself". Bran is rationalizing his behavior, which he’s doing just because he’s tired of being a wolf. There’s no good purpose to this, he’s not controlling Hodor to help defend the group; Bran just doesn’t want to be in his own cold, weak body and being a wolf is tiresome. And yet Hodor still tries to fight, is still afraid, still doesn’t understand what’s happening to his body and mind. But he’s traumatized, and all he can do is whimper. And hide, deep within his own head:
The big stableboy no longer fought him as he had the first time, back in the lake tower during the storm. Like a dog who has had all the fight whipped out of him, Hodor would curl up and hide whenever Bran reached out for him. His hiding place was somewhere deep within him, a pit where not even Bran could touch him. No one wants to hurt you, Hodor, he said silently, to the child-man whose flesh he’d taken. I just want to be strong again for a while. I’ll give it back, the way I always do.
Of course you will, Bran. Of course you’re not wanting to hurt him. But you never tell anyone what you’re doing, and nobody knows you’re possessing Hodor but you and him. And it gets worse. (Naturally.) In case the reader missed the point also given in the prologue that skinchangers become like the being they possess, it’s also noted in the text that the line between Bran and Hodor is slowly shrinking:
“Hodor,” Hodor said with every step. “Hodor, hodor.” He wondered what Meera would think if he should suddenly tell her that he loved her.
(Who thought that, Bran or Hodor?)
Under the hill, Jojen brooded, Meera fretted, and Hodor wandered through dark tunnels with a sword in his right hand and a torch in his left. Or was it Bran wandering?
No one must ever know.
So, Bran’s last chapter in ADWD. Meera is frightened for her brother’s life, and Bran wants to comfort her. And the way he wants to do that is to use Hodor’s body, to hug her. And this thought makes Bran feel strange. Really? You think? In case you have forgotten, Hodor is a young man, seven feet tall, hugely muscled, with “hands strong enough to twist a man’s head off his shoulders, if he takes a mind to”. And though he’s a gentle soul (at least, when in control of himself), what, exactly, do you think would be the reaction of a 17-year-old girl, a warrior maiden, to being embraced by him, out of nowhere? What do you think Hodor’s reaction would be? Is there anything good that can come of this? Remember what these books are like, for goodness sake.
And that’s why the concept of Bran/Meera is no longer cute to me, not anymore. It’s why I’m deeply, deeply frightened for Bran, for Meera, for Hodor. It’s why Bran is on the edge of moving from a good person who does bad things to being not a good person at all. And why I cannot see it ending well, not for anyone.
