Game of Thrones 14-minute Sneak Peek (HBO) *spoilers!*

Right. Not central to the story so far. I expect it to become central in the future; otherwise why start the story as it was, and why have all the mystery and tidbits of forgotten lore?

 

For such a megalomaniacal structure there to be no record or collective memory what it was supposed to protect against besides wildlings and Others... well, that's a silly notion on Martin's part as well.

The I&F wiki also writes that initially the wall was much smaller but that they kept increasing it over the years... but that doesn't make sense with no threat behind it that would require such a massive barrier. This is just something that bothers me because even fantasy has to make some logical sense in order to be believable... for me, the Wall just doesn't work. It's a deus-ex-machina that Martin is trying to pass off as man-made with no divine help.

Thanks for the info... then I guess Martin really isn't going anywhere with the Wall since he was happy for it to be depicted as straight in the series. And some more food for thought - why would anybody bother trying to get through or over such a massive wall when it'd be infinitely easier to dig under it?

 

Why would it be easier to dig under it? The ground is frozen just as hard as the Wall.

Now why was the Wall increased in size over the years? I assumed the peril lasted for a while and the Wall was made bigger and stronger during that time. Then such building and maintenance became part and parcel of the routine of the Night's Watch so continued even when the peril disappeared. What else do they have to do up in the frozen North when not defending the land from whatever than continue the routine of building the Wall? And after 8 millennia... well now it's a behemoth. Doesn't seem all that far fetched given we don't have much detail about the time in between when it was built and now.

I think that is the collective memory now. But after 8 millenia a lot is forgotten and people don't believe that the Others even exist any more let alone what they were capable of. The wildliings I think came to be a secondary threat used as a reason to keep the Night's Watch going (as much as it is) and the Wall maintaned somewhat when the Others disappeared.

 

The ground is normally only frozen so deep... if you get beyond the point of freezing, you're good to go. If the ground was frozen beyond what's normal, the subterranean passages at Castle Black wouldn't be possible either.

As for far fetched... well, the whole notion that an entire continent wouldn't see any real technological development in over 8000 years is very far fetched, but the notion that the Night Watch would operate continuously throughout that period despite of all the wars, turmoil and unbelievable amount of history going by and no apparent threat for thousands of years... well, that's not just far fetched, that's real fantasy there.

 

I wouldn't say no progress, but certainly it was slower than our reality. The fantasy in Westeros is certainly different where several millenia of peace on the continent and not much changes is the norm. Is that far fetched? It is compared to our reality sure, but why is something different than our reality far fetched?

 

Well, it is and it isn't. If you view it as strictly fantasy, then anything goes, really. Could be 8000 or 80000 years and if Martin put in neon green flying hippos bent on world domination, it'd still be just fine. But when you've got a very magic-light fantasy setting which borrows most of the elements from our own history (especially the Dark Ages), then it's a bit harder to justify wild deviations from it when the rest is (figuratively) copy/paste from the history books.

I think the crux of the problem is Martin's characteristic low-magic setting. That only works if you've got absolutely nothing in the books that would make infinitely more sense if explained as due to magic.

Say, the Wall. If Martin's explanation was that the Gods helped create it or that it was due to a concentrated effort by several generations of mages, a 210 meter high wall of ice spanning half the continent would make infinitely more sense than trying to sell it as man-made. The thing is, in fantasy literature, you expect deus ex machinae. Where Martin fails is at sticking so much to our own history, but also coming up with such wild plot devices as the Wall, which have nothing even remotely comparable in all of our history. The Great Wall of China, which a number of Chinese states constructed at insanely high cost over a period spanning about 2 millennia is a picket fence compared to Martin's wall of ice. And millions of workers built the Chinese wall, about 1 million are estimated to have died building it and 6 people were required to feed and support every wall builder. All of this in a normal environment, nowhere near as harsh as that in Martin's books.

Anyway, my point is simply that in Martin's setting, such a wall can't really be explained away as simply a product of 8000 years of labour. There are way, way too many problems with that idea. It would have been infinitely better if its construction had been attributed to magic.

 

Sure, but I think it is. The idea is that the world was more magical in the past than it is now. The children of the forest were highly magical and were around at the time of Barndon the Builder Stark when he built the Wall. Just because there is very limited magic seen in the story so far doesn't mean it was very limited in the past.

I think that's what sells it for me: There are constantly hints of a more magical past and forgotten lore. The Godswoods and the carved faces in the weirwoods within. The magical properties of the Wall and of Storm's end. Dragons were around no so long ago but now they are all believed dead until

Spoiler

Daenerys magically revives and hatches three eggs.

The entire nature of the Others and them

Spoiler

bringing the dead back to life (or at least undead).

The Shadow Lands, Asshai, the red priests (Thoros and Melisandre especially) and so on. There's not a lot of magic, but there are hints and portents galore.

Oh, I'll be very disappointed if it doesn't turn out that way

 

I spoilered some of your spoilers to keep this thread relatively spoiler-free.

As for the world being more magical in the past, well, I guess that could work, but then again, the wall was supposedly much smaller at the time of Bran the Builder, with the bulk being added later on, so I don't know. I enjoy Martin's writing overall, don't get me wrong, but I can't help but view the wall as an inconsistency. The depiction of it in the HBO series makes no sense either.

It's disappointing for me because the whole concept of the wall seemed really intriguing to me in the beginning, but it didn't hold up to scrutiny and Martin apparently didn't really do anything with it either. 5+ books is way too long to properly explain the wall in a way that would make sense.

 

Well the Wall itself is sold on me just because no real time was spent explaining it so I can come up with lots of plausibilties myself. I mean it's made of ice in a place that's constantly frozen, so it could have just about built itself after the first part built by Brandon

 

You'd be surprised what you could find people discussing on over 100 pages on the Internet... a prominent feature of a novel series is certainly low on the list of surprising things.

 

I'm with Harbs on this. I've been watching this thread grown in amazement, thinking, how can these guys be arguing about the appropriateness of a friggin' wall in a fantasy book?

But it's been amusing, so I haven't bothered to chime in until now.

You're all geeks! (As if we didn't know that already, posting, as we do, on a CRPG website.)

 

Ha! You're one to talk with all the geekiness in the Diablo threads you and Aldeth expound in.

 

Maybe so, not saying I'm not a geek.

(Are you saying you read all of that when you're not playing D2? I think that confirms your uber-geekiness! )