Arya vs Sansa

 

 

Datrell Cobb

UNIV 375

9 September 2020

 

 

The Game Of Thrones is a very interesting and unique series to watch along with the events and characters specifically the Starks whose names were Sansa and Arya who throughout these sort of medieval times seemed to be rather dominant characters although they were females. Beginning with Sansa Stark, firstly it seemed as if she was an very passive child dreaming of princesses and castles however as times unfolded on her in very negative and harmful ways she somehow managed to overcome all of these horrific experiences she had been through and became a very smart, strong and strategic young lady as well as leader.

 Which comes to a point I am making emphasis on specifically about her decision making I feel as if she first made poor decisions because being that to me her life was a huge negative downside at an very young age where she had little to no control this to me definitely put her mind in places far elsewhere which obviously impacted her train of thoughts as a young girl not really knowing herself and having to obey and grow up to disrespect is also a reason I felt like her decision making was not the best that it could have been in her earlier stages on life.

 When it came to Sansa’s point of views and possibly her ideas some of the important things she has had access to that gives her these strong ideologies and views of the world are firstly her parents she grew up under Ned Stark known as “Lord of the Winterfell” as well as the head of the entire Stark family as well as her mother Catelyn Tully who also had a high honor in her family not mentioning the marriage into the Starks household.

 She has also on her journey been around people who have shown her huge differences between what’s right and wrong therefore her knowledge is top tier which gave her a leader role throughout the entire series which of course shows how her later decisions are depicted as an overall. The next character I’m going to dive in on is Arya Stark she has a very different side of the Starks family to me personally, to me and possibly others I fell as if it’s a little bit harder to depict her as a so called hero or leader because of the majority of her actions don’t really end on a positive note unlike Sansa she doesn’t really think outside the box or more importantly she has very little forms of strategic thinking.

It is almost as is if Arya and Sansa are the opposite of each other although they pretty much had the same background dealing with huge obstacles that were not that positive however it strengthened her in more of a overpowering way rather than being more conservative as I expected, while each of them in the beginning varied female qualities I feel as if those qualities were much rather taken away from them all because of their surroundings and also by who and what they were raised to be.

 The realization of how each of the backgrounds are seen in the beginning of each of the childhoods to me it seems like they are kind of born into royalty and are supposed to have the perfect life being that they had such strong characters as parents however a lot of things were sort of out of the parents hands which to me was the turning points to each of their lives, as I stated earlier they went through practically the same thing growing up however they have different stories and most importantly different and quite interesting outcomes as they became more and more dominant throughout the series.

 For example to me it seemed like Sansa became more of an person who honored respect and kept a positive outlook on many negative situations that basically never had a chance of ending in a positive or good way but when it comes to Arya I feel as she like Sansa did strengthen up however throughout many scenes she didn’t really seem to use that strength in ways you would expect, she was to me rather dark about her growth as well as becoming a young woman with power and authority she basically was very cold hearted compares to Sansa who was more of a people person or someone of wholeness who preferred movement as a whole not for only for themselves.

 With that being stated one main concern about each of these women is how is how does Arya portray Sansa because it is very obvious that they turned out to be quite different in ways that they handled things of conflict and nature in a way, I personally think that these characters fit perfect in the saying “you cant judge a book by its cover” all because who would have ever thought these two little girls that were so innocent upon childhood would grow and become as dominant as they did as the story progressed, however I do feel like Arya does put out a different image that people see and would most likely be easy to put the same picture upon Sansa but as I stated before they are totally different on how they go about things along with that it seems as if many people favored Arya over Sansa being that in those eras it was mainly men with the greatest and highest authority and Arya definitely took the male approach to a different level with how she handled things while Sansa was rather conservative and handled things in a positive way which of course was not very action oriented but more peaceful which to me gave her more power because she actually thought about how outcomes would occur but overall it is for sure that Arya was the more dominant character when it came to the conflict of things.

Now that I have given a fairly good diagnosis on each of these characters the main spark of interest I have came upon is how audiences have gathered all of their opinions and statements about each of these character Arya and Sansa Stark, to begin with it is pretty obvious that many people who have watched the series or at least have seen some clips they all of course tend to favor the fearless Arya I believe this is because of she has many of the scenes that depict action that in these times you definitely would not expect coming from a woman most of her scenes are very male based as she basically shows no emotions when she stands up to people and this to me is what really hypes her character however I feel as if Sansa has more power because she is way more cool calm and collected on situations and whatever she does kind of pushes things in a more positive way which basically distinguishes the main difference between the two.

 

Works Cited

·                                Guerre, Elis de. “What 'Game of Thrones' Got Wrong About Sansa Stark and Abuse.” The Daily Beast, The Daily Beast Company, 7 May 2019, www.thedailybeast.com/what-game-of-thrones-gets-wrong-about-sansa-stark-and-abuse-in-the-last-of-the-starks.

·                                Staff, MTV News. “7 Reasons Why Sansa Stark Is, In Fact, The Smartest Person On Game Of Thrones.” MTV News, 15 Apr. 2019, www.mtv.com/news/3120731/sansa-stark-game-of-thrones-iron-throne/.

·                                Wilson, Angel. “The Women of ‘Game of Thrones’: A Study on Gender Roles.” The Geekiary, 31 Dec. 2019, thegeekiary.com/the-women-of-game-of-thrones-a-study-on-gender-roles/7888.