April 9, 2007
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“A thing without a name has no substance. If it existed, it would have a name. And, likewise, if you give a thing a name, somewhere, on some level, the thing named will exist, will come to be.”
“Give a thing a name and it will somehow come to be. All truth is in naming, and all lies as well, for noting distorts like a false name can, a false name that changes the reality as well as the seeming.”
Here, amongst the core principles of one of George RR Martin’s great masterpieces (does he write anything else?), I find this a fascinating message. Dying of the Light it is called. Above the sad fate of pitiful wandering planet of Worlorn, circling past the ring of fire, after the festival was over back towards the frigid cold of outer space, filled with the lives of ghosts who don’t yet know that their time has passed.
There is so much to Dying of the Light I could not begin to discuss it all, and yet this one thing I feel I must write of, this idea of the power of naming and the impact of it has on people’s lives.
I had a friend once long before college, before high school truly who used to speak on occasion of the power of names. It surprised me that I remember that now. He, like I was an avid reader of fantasy and science fiction back then and to be sure the idea of naming power is not unique to Martin.
It is likely that he believed it, this idea of names and power and perhaps he believes it to this day I know not but for me? I never believed it. Not really. It is sort of one of those great ironies in the world, you can learn and understand so much when you cast it in the light of names and naming but in the end, and of this I am certain, they really and truly are… only words…
There’s no magic or mysticism beyond that of any other words, for truth, but that does not mean they don’t matter or the concepts we try to express when we speak of the power of naming are not real or lack substance. Martin shares with us powerful messages here in the guise of the mythos of naming. He speaks to us of the roles we play in our societies, the choices we make to fit into ideals, how we can fall into being something or someone we are not, and how we can rise and change to become something we would like to be. Throughout it all he calls it names and bonds and substance. Reality brought into being through the words we choose and how deep and profound the impact the labels we place upon one another can possibly be.
The heroine of the story Gwen cast aside the names her ex-lover gave her, Jenny, Guinevere, because they defined a role that was not herself, but then was later haunted by the name she took when she married another: bethyn. A word that defines a kind of a relationship like a spouse only not, having the force of cultural bias behind it that made it into a kind of repulsive slavery. It was a role that she took because she told herself it was “only a word”, only later to find that it had deeper meaning and created a reality that was a trap for her that she needed to escape.
Her “husband” Jaan Vikory strives to take on the name of the hero, which is represented by his last name, struggles to change his people to make them give up their past ways and become better for it. Yet he is bound by the traditions of his culture too and forced to take on names that bind him to be and accept roles that he would not necessarily choose if free to his own devices. Does he live up to his name? In many ways yes, he is the heroic savior of many and yes effects great change amongst his people, only in the end the struggles he faces and the choices he make force him to break a bond so dear to him that it breaks him. In the end, I think, he is not the hero Vikory but just a man named Jaan.
There are other characters too wrapped up in this naming motif. The traitor who even in the last wants only that his name remain on his work as scientist, as an ecologist. The loyal servant who strives in the end to live up to his bond to Jaan that names him teyn which he calls the greatest of bonds.
But then there is the main character, Dirk T’Larien, who came chasing the name of a woman who did not exist, who never existed. Ever a shadow, a ghost seeming to move inexorably toward his own death step by step but at each moment taking on more and growing stronger and more substantial, more real in the process. He never has much in the way of names or bonds throughout the book. It seems he’d lost the only bond that ever mattered to him years past. And during all the years between hes never had any name to either live up to or struggle against. He was just an ordinary man living out a shell of an existance. As another character tells him “You are not a terribly bad man, t’Larien. You are weak, I know, but no one has ever called you strong.”
And Dirk grows stronger, throughout the book, the city of despair is burned down, he casts away the whisperjewel that spoke of forgotten realities that were never real to begin with and in the end he faces his obligations and does not run away.
There is only one name that is often said of Dirk and I think in the end it defines him more than anything, influences his decisions when otherwise he might have fled or committed suicide long ago or simply stopped caring. It is a simple name but in the world of Worlorn, like all names, it seems to have great power. A name he strives to be, risks his life in becoming and in the end lives up to better than anyone would have ever expected of him. What is that name? Simply Friend.
I don’t believe in the power of “names” but they are guide posts and signs that point to the deeper realities of roles and perspectives and expectations, the realities of what we do to one another with the way in which we regard one another. It is certainly very real to feel yourself forced into playing a role that is not yourself. It is certainly very real to strive to fulfill a role that is bigger than anything you could ever be. It is just as real to look at someone and urge them to be more than they ever thought they were capable of being. I believe that all of that is all too real.
But what are roles, perspectives, expectations really? Just names. Names for something deeper that lies beneath the surface. Names that make that something into something that grows real in the naming.
