Last August, A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin gave a talk at the Oxford Writers House, where he discussed the ongoing effort to complete his book series, his misgivings about screenwriters who adapt books but "make them their own," his mixed feelings about fame, and his conviction that dragons have two legs, not four, consarnit. Fansite Los Siete Reinos is now drilling down on some other comments Martin made at this event concerning his thoughts about fantasy literature more generally.
Specifically, Martin was asked whether fantasy authors should write stories with a mind towards exploring real world social and political issues. "It all depends on the writer, but I don't think they should," he answered. "You know, [author J.R.R.] Tolkien himself hated people who tried to read The Lord of the Rings that way. He hated allegories. He said, 'I'm not writing about World War I, I'm not writing about World War II, Hitler is not Sauron, stop reading my work like that.'"
That said, Martin doesn't begrudge fantasy authors who write about social issues in their work, or even those who embrace allegory. "There are certainly others who don't agree with that and do things like that. You can read George Orwell's Animal Farm , and say, yes, he's writing about the Soviet Union, this pig is Stalin, this is Trotsky, and all that."
"I think fantasy is bigger than that . It doesn't have to comment on what's happening this week, this year, or even this century. Fantasy is about universal human truth, about love, life, faith, doubt, greed, lust ... all those basic human things that are different but at the same time the same in the Middle Ages, or in 2024, or in Ancient Rome. And those are the things I like to write about the most."
Martin definitely took this approach with A Song of ice and Fire, which is a huge sprawling story about lots of different characters with lots of different points of view. It feels a little too singular and specific for anybody to find explicit parallels between this or that character or event.
That said, while Martin might not have been going for allegory, he did take inspiration from real events. The Red Wedding is partially inspired by the real-life Black Dinner in fifteenth century Scotland. The conflict between the Starks and the Lannisters recalls the medieval War of the Roses, and so on.
All of that falls short of Martin trying to comment on current social issues through his work. But people have still found lots of instances where Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire resonate with current events. That's the irony of trying to stay away from allegory and embracing universality: because you're creating something timeless, people will see it reflected in the world around them no matter when they read it, whereas something like Animal Farm may feel less relevant as more time passes since its publication, and the events it was commenting upon fade beyond memory.
Not that books like that don't have any value, and if any book is successful, it likely has some universal element to it in any case.
Anyway, Martin is currently writing the sixth book in his series, The Winds of Winter. We'll see how universal it feels when (and if) it ever comes out.
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