Game of Thrones Symbolism: Houses & the Starks

If you lose, your father dies. Your sisters die. We die As if the plot of Game of Thrones wasn't already hard enough to follow Author George R.

R. Martin loaded the story with layers of symbolism And it's often connected to the characters families or houses Each house has a sigil, a sign or symbol that indicates the family Colors, words by which to live by And certain qualities that define them Within the story, the importance of sigils underlines that in this world with its highly structured society and medieval echoes A person's birth largely decides his or her fate Meanwhile on the metaphorical level the houses embody certain basic characteristics within human nature which might exist in us all, but here they're separated out and exaggerated in the individual houses. We could say for example that the Lannisters embody selfishness The Starks, strength and adversity.

The Targaryen, inner vitality and The Baratheon, anger. One of the deeper intrigues we feel watching the houses battle for dominance is identifying with the families that embody our own values and wondering which aspects of human nature may finally prevail Beware: spoilers are coming after this point. The first family the audience meets is the Starks The Lords of Winterfell and arguably the family that tugs most of your heartstrings The sigil of the gray wolf against a white background captures the family's readiness for the hardship of winter The struggle is against both the harsh elements of the north and their enemies in Westeros HBO's representation of the sigil makes the dire wolf look like armor representing the Stark family's willingness to fight and their old-fashioned, medieval-feeling code of honor Persecuted and beaten down over the course of the story The northern Starks represent tough stoicism strength of will and the determination to persevere against all adversities Their motto "Winter is Coming" is one of the most memorable on the show mostly because it's said an absurd amount of time And yes it's a literal warning that a year's long summer is ending and winter will once again fall upon Westeros When winter comes the White Walkers may return A terrifying reality the Starks feel they must always be ready for And the Starks motto also has metaphorical meanings Martin has explained that we must expect dark periods of our lives even if things may seem good now We should always be prepared for fortunes to turn against us On the family level, "Winter is Coming" foreshadows all the hardships the Starks will face And the words show the stark families closeness to the elements Their name "Stark" comes from the word that means hard and barren like the northern climate Given the danger and hostility of their environment Northerners have to stick together to brave the winter While Southerners can play their political games because of their temperate climate The North is not only geographically but also politically and emotionally isolated from the games of the South They speak plainly and truthfully, which can get them into trouble A passage from the book emphasizes that all of the houses family mottos "boasted of honor and glory, promised loyalty and truth, swore faith and courage.

All but the Starks. It's significant that the Starks don't use their motto to brag about their best qualities but to remind themselves and others to look up from our smaller infighting and remember that there is an even bigger threat and a bigger fight but now winter is truly coming in the winter we must protect ourselves look after one another we've come to a dangerous place we cannot fight a war amongst ourselves The Starks' determination to face the brutal reality of life shows that they're made of different stuff, with a totally different philosophy than the other houses They've been shaped by a more difficult environment, and this hardship defines them. The stark colors are gray and white.

Gray is a neutral color, a transition between black and white It's stable, calm, quiet, reserved, never the center of attention And it represents compromise and control. The stark family embodies this color through level-headedness While the gloominess of gray illustrates the family's depressing fate White is the color of new beginnings, of purity and innocence. Most obviously it's the color of snow.

The symbol of the impending winter - and of course white makes us think of Jon Snow The Starks embody the duality of the color white. It seems pure and innocent and naive Yet it can also be cold and isolated. On the sigil, the colors are reflected as a gray direwolf on a white field The Starks themselves are symbolized by the direwolf Like wolves they're ferocious, persevering with loyalty and integrity and they do best in a pack Over the seasons they struggle to survive when separated and like the direwolves become almost extinct In the first episode Ned Stark and his children find a litter of dire wolf pups and the children each take one Each pups characteristics and name reflects its owner And the pups' fate symbolizes what will come of each human Stark Almost as if the direwolf is the soul of a Stark child externalized Meanwhile the stag antler in the dead body of the parent wolf foreshadows Ned Stark's death which will be brought on by his accepting the Hand of the King position for Robert Baratheon A house represented by the stag Sansa named her direwolf Lady As Sansa wished to be a lady and marry Joffrey In the books Lady is described as the prettiest, the most gentle and trusting of the pups Arya names her direwolf Nymeria after the warrior princess who led her people across the Narrow Sea and settled in Dorne The name captures Arya's strong, wild, warrior spirit After Nymeria attacks Joffrey to protect Arya The girl sends her direwolf into the wild to escape being put down In the books Nymeria forms a wolf pack that runs free Just as Arya flees to live on the run and grow stronger in exile The wolf being lost also symbolizes that Arya is uncertain of her path Meanwhile Joffrey demands that Lady be put down for Nymeria's crime Lady's death represents Sansa's loss of innocence After the brutality she experiences living with the nobility in King's Landing her gentle and trusting nature is gone Robb and Grey Wind are inseparable Grey Wind fights alongside Rob on the battlefield At the red wedding, the Freys separate Robb and Grey Wind out of fear that they'll fight back together They're both decapitated and the wolf's head is sewn on Rob's body Bran has yet to named his direwolf when he goes into a coma after Jaime Lannister pushes him from a tower The lack of the name suggests his wolf is an even more connected extension of himself Since he is a warg he can also enter his wolf and control it like his own body After waking from his coma Bran names his direwolf Summer Bran himself is referred to as "the sweet summer child" by Nan On a deeper prophetic level, summer child Bran may turn out to be the force that will defeat winter and bring the return of summer once again In Season Six, Summer sacrifices himself to save Bran, Meera and Hodor from the Whites who are the markers of winter Summer's death signals that winter has now arrived Rickon's direwolf shaggydog is aptly named because unlike his siblings Rickon never receives a proper education or lessons or grooming He was supposed to become a bannerman for his brother But it was instead brought up by a wildling, Osha The youngest Stark, Rickon comes of age knowing only this brutal time of fighting with the Baratheons and Lannisters And his alter-ego of the wild fighting wolf reflects an unhinged, untamed spirit Osha and Rickon seek refuge with the Umbers who betray them and kill shaggy-dog Likewise the Umbers are allied with Ramsay Bolton who later kills Rickon at the Battle of the Bastards At first the family sees only five direwolves one for each legitimate child of Ned Stark But soon after, Jon Snow adopts an albino direwolf Just as Snow starts life at a disadvantage apart from his legitimate siblings Jon decides to call him Ghost Of course, the name makes us think of that piece of a person that carries on after someone dies And in Season 6, after Jon dies and is resurrected Ghost is the first one to see him come back to life Some speculate that Ghost's presence is a key part of John's resurrection Like he's named Snow, the wolf is pure white and Jon is called the White Wolf Now that Jon is the King in the North The Stark banner will be reversed, as is customary when a bastard takes off his house banner The direwolf will become white, and the field gray Since Jon's wolf was the only white one and the rest were grey The switch signals that though Jon may become the leader, "King in the North" He's still not fully a Stark Especially now with his proven Targaryen blood He remains apart from his Stark siblings The white wolf to the others' grey.