Analysis: The Game Of Thrones

In all honesty, it had always been difficult for me to follow a television series. I could never understand how my friends could invest a decent amount of their time into watching multiple series. That was until I started watching Game of Thrones late summer of last year. Although the pilot of the series aired on April of 2011, I finally got around to binge-watching it last summer to understand what the fuss was all about. Granted, I held off watching the show due to its’ excessive nudity and violence. Also, I lacked the interest for fantasy dramas depicting sword fighting and mystical creatures. Then, I watched the penultimate episode of season-three, “The Rains of Castamere,” and I was completely floored. That episode shook my understanding …show more content…
Catelyn glimpsed at the man beside her while the camera focused on the man’s sleeve to unveil a chainmail underneath his wedding attire and suddenly, her suspicions became more clear. What was not apparent at this moment was the sheer nature of the brutality. Instantly, a man came from behind Talisa and stabbed her in the stomach multiple times, killing her and the unborn child immediately. The next sequence revealing the massacre was both horrifying in its’ raw intensity and sheer violence. Robb was shot down by multiple arrows before he could even react. His men were mercilessly murdered with their throats cut open and arrows flying and aimed towards them. Even Catelyn who worryingly suspected the trap could not escape the onslaught as she got shot by an arrow. The camera then switched to Walder Frey smirking and drinking his wine as it was unveiled that he planned the mass slaughter all along. Catelyn wounded by the arrow stuck on her back, grabbed Walder’s wife and took a knife to her throat in a desperate attempt to stop the violent murders. She pleaded Lord Frey to allow her remaining son to leave or threatened to kill his wife. Lord Frey seamlessly dismissed the threat, telling Catelyn that he’ll just find another wife. Just as Robb stood up, uttering the word, “mother,” to Catelyn, he was stabbed in the heart, killing him instantly. A completely distraught …show more content…
The ‘Red Wedding,’ was so impactful due to how well placed and perfectly shot the episode was in the context of the season. We felt Catelyn’s vague sense of dread when the doors were closed. We shared her despair as she realized the incoming slaughter that was going to happen. Ultimately, we clearly felt her anguish when she couldn’t save her last remaining son. The credit scene right after Catelyn’s death was pure silence that encapsulated the sense of hopelessness that the viewers felt after watching that episode. The main reason for the loud vocal reaction to this episode was due to the sudden and abrupt end to a major plot line. The deaths of Robb and Catelyn were hard to process as they were supposed to be the ideological ‘good guys’ in the story, who were going to avenge the death of their king in the first season. After the equally shocking death of Eddard Stark, a main protagonist in the first season, there was a moral calling in the story for justice to be served. However, Game of Thrones does not follow the conventional method of story-telling. The show used its’ large casts to confuse its’ audience into thinking that some characters played a larger part in the grand scheme of things than they actually did. In hindsight, Robb and Catelyn, although major characters in the third season, were not the central proponents of the series’ major plot. Yet, the viewers were fooled