“I don’t think it’s fair to say the character was incapable of really loving another person. He was: The love just came out strangled and pitiful, camouflaged as something else.”
– Matt Zoller Seitz (via his [spoilerific, obviously] review of the season 4 GoT finale, here: http://www.vulture.com/2014/06/matt-zoller-seitz-game-of-thrones-season-4-finale-review-deaths.html)
What a humane sentiment for Sandor Clegane. I’ve been thinking a lot about how we construct people / characters (people who are characters) in broad-strokes. One important component of fiction is its ability to help us develop empathy for those we might other cast-off as beyond “saving”, or understanding. It’s a failing of mine that I sometimes write people off unduly, or construct them wholly out of a few select circumstances they’ve experienced.
Elsewhere, in his quasi-obituary for Philip Seymour Hoffman (link below), MZS remarked on addiction with great empathy and understated thoughtfulness. I think the same reductive construction of those around us creates an environment for labels like “addict” or “victim”, allowing us to read a complex, multi-faceted individual in terms of their (potentially defining, yes) trait. But people are always polysemous, and we would do well to recall this when evaluating those around us. After all, the man I might consider to be “incapable of love” is read by MZS as loving a different way, and sometimes the wrong way. There is a world of difference between these assertions. As multitudinal as a reading of PSH as “weak” for succumbing to his addiction and dying by overdose. We can choose to read that addictive lapse as weak, or choose to view his addictive personality as simply outmatching his capacity to abstain.
A semantic difference, perhaps. But one, as I continue to ponder it, which might help me to treat complexity with more pronounced compassion.
MZS’s PSH article here: (http://www.rogerebert.com/mzs/strong-enough-a-note-to-drug-abuse-concern-trolls-concerning-philip-seymour-hoffman)
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