Write an essay on
''Life is not a song, sweetling.''
''Someday you may learn that, to your sorrow''
Answers
• The above sentence said by George R.R. Martin is true indeed. The meaning you see, is simple. It says that you can't be expecting life without sorrows. You cannot be thinking of a perfect life without any sadness. But there's a thing – Life without sadness is not a perfect life. You are deceived. Life with sadness is the actual perfect life that one has ever observed.
• Life can never offer you one thing at a time. If you are suffering through sadness at present, you'll definitely experience happiness soon, for sure but you will have to be patient for that. Rushing won't provide you anything.
• The fact is that life was ne'er easy nor it'll be someday. It's not a song which may sound always sweet and melodious. It's melancholy too. It'll be a tough thing to face all those pains and cries but remember that light shined for me and one day, same will happen with you too.
• Just mark the thing – sadness and happiness make a perfect life. Half of each will provide you with "li". Sounds similar to a "lie" right? It is, of course.
Answer:
But a voice inside her whispered, There are no heroes, and she remembered what Lord Petyr had said to her, here in this very hall. 'Life is not a song, sweetling,' he'd told her, 'You may learn that one day to your sorrow.' In life, the monsters win, she told herself.
There are plenty of fantasy authors who claim to be doing something different with the genre. Ironically, they often write the most predictable books of all, as evidenced by Goodkind and Paolini. Though I'm not sure why they protest so much--predictability is hardly a death sentence in genre fantasy.
The archetypal story of a hero, a villain, a profound love, and a world to be saved never seems to get old--it's a great story when it's told well. At the best, it's exciting, exotic, and builds to a fulfilling climax. At the worst, it's just a bloodless rehash. Unfortunately, the worst are more common by far.
Perhaps it was this abundance of cliche romances that drove Martin to aim for something different. Unfortunately, you can't just choose to be different, any more than you can choose to be creative. Sure, Moorcock's original concept for Elric was to be the anti-Conan, but at some point, he had to push his limits and move beyond difference for difference's sake--and he did.
In similar gesture, Martin rejects the allegorical romance of epic fantasy, which basically means tearing out the guts of the genre: the wonder, the ideals, the heroism, and with them, the moral purpose. Fine, so he took out the rollicking fun and the social message--what did he replace them with?
Like the post-Moore comics of the nineties, fantasy has already borne witness to a backlash against the upright, moral hero--and then a backlash against the grim antihero who succeeded him. Hell, if all Martin wanted was grim and gritty antiheroes in an amoral world, he didn't have to reject the staples of fantasy, he could have gone to its roots: Howard, Leiber, and Anderson.