25th April 2012
Tyrion Lannister
The epicurean Imp: Tyrion Lannister
“Most
men would rather deny a hard truth than face it.”
Tyrion
Lannister (Game of Thrones)
In Game of Thrones the character who
attracts attention from the first moment he appears on the screen is the
Halfman Tyrion Lannister. The fact of belonging to the golden lion house gives
him a big power he wouldn’t even dream about it if he were from the plebs, but
he is badly thought of by his family, except his own father. His mother died
when she gave birth to him. All the
possible Freudian conflicts come to the surface in him. In TV series, it is inevitably
the jokes about the size of his phallus and about his love capacity; definitely,
the essential pillars about his supposed manliness. His way of life distances
him from the typical image of somebody who is short in fantasy stories such as
Hobbits, naughty gnomes or frowning dwarfs.
Tyrion
is a crippled man, like Dr. House, a Halfman and he acts living life, not with
resignation, but saying “yes” to life, being full of conscious of it, as the
philosopher Nietzsche advised us. Although his evil tongue approach him more to
priests that the German philosopher deplored in The Antichrist than to the blond beast he praised with his
deafening rhetoric. (Is Jamie Lannister an example of the blond beast, superman
with aristocratic and incestuous moral?) Tyrion lives a significantly epicurean
life. He clings himself to bodily pleasures, seduces and enjoys the delicacies
that his condition can provide him with. But he doesn’t scorn intellectual
pleasures; reading and oratory, arts in which he is a master. One chapter which
is very eloquent is one in which a man reproaches him for his pleasure for
books. The dwarf confesses that someone
who is weak, like him, has his own weapons. He is not the only character in the
books who confesses the same weakness. Did George R. R. Martin become wizard of
words because he couldn’t be a warrior? We’ll never know it.
The little
Lannister cultivates friendships, good food and knowledge, all with moderation,
although I don’t believe the Greek approves his relationship with prostitutes
and courtesans; but he lives an ethic life according to his lineage and family
education. In a doubtful
moral world we can’t reproach him, because his first experience of love was
very traumatic which is narrated in a Freudian moment par excellance in Tyrion’s tent by Bronn, the warrior, and Tyrion’s
courtesan when they were in a torrid scene before Lannister and Stark’s
entrapment. There is in Tyrion a strong will of power. Without any doubt Alfred
Adler would have found a great patient on who to prove his well known psychoanalytic
theory based on Nietzsche’s work. According to Adler adult life consists of
converting the fragility and vulnerability we felt in our childhood, to a hard
and sore ego that Tyrion is supposed to have and who will have a great
intriguing future as a Hand of a King in King’s Landing.
If
the reader find this analysis very forced, he or she can close the blog o
remember Tyrion’s father died and think about Oedipus the king and his tragic
end. The shadow of Freud is greatly extended, in spite of all the subtle
nuances of his work...
Hand of the King
