Episode 52: A GAME OF THRONES, JON VII: "Jon of the Dead" SHOW NOTES!

Hello and welcome to the Not A Cast … podcast: the one true chapter-by-chapter podcast going through A Song of Ice and Fire one chapter a week. I’m one of your hosts Jeff better known as BryndenBFish. 

And I’m your other host Emmett, better known as PoorQuentyn. 

Welcome to the fifty-second episode of the Not A Cast entitled: “Jon of the Dead: An Analysis of AGOT, Jon VII,” in which the dead Night’s Watchmen stare with cold, blue eyes before coming to life cuz this is thriller! Thriller night! 

This episode is brought to you by our Small Council: Hand of the King WolfmanZack, Grand Maester Timothy W, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard Mark N. Lord Travis, Master of Ships and Warden of the Waves, Ser Keith J, Master of Whisperers, Lord Philip the Merciful, Master of Laws, Jancy O, Lady Commander of the Night’s Watch and Archmaester June, Healer of the Lesser Poxes, Ragged Michael, Warden of the North, Nelson the Hammer, Prince of Dragonstone, and Lord Gene, Master of Coin. Thank you councillors very much!

Spoiler warning: All published books - 5 novels, 3 Dunk and Egg novellas, histories, interviews, TWOW sample chapters, as well as Game of Thrones the TV show. Anything and everything!

Question

Ser Patrick D, a Kingsguard Knight asks:

Hi guys! Love everything you guys put out, it is always the best! So keep up the great work! My question is will we see Jon in TWoW or will we see him in ADOS? Also will he be the same once he gets resurrected or will he become more wolfish and savage?

Synopsis

At long last, Jon Snow’s plot begins in AGOT! Sure, George has built the character foundation for Jon and given him some excellent plot moments in the story, but here, Jon’s story finally erupts into a plot and sends him on a course he’s still on even as TWOW drops next week.

Remember that hand that Ghost found at the end of Jon’s last chapter 30 years ago? Welp, it belonged to a Night’s Watchman: Jafer Flowers. But he wasn’t the only dead man present. Othor was there too. And these guys, well, they were Benjen Stark’s men and that leaves Jon feeling numb inside.

But there’s something very, very, very off about these dead men. Their faces are pale white, their hands black and they stare at the sky with bright blue eyes. And there was the matter of the horses. The garons that Elsie Mormont and his men brought to the location of the bodies wouldn’t go near these dead men. The dogs were even worse. When they’d tried to get the dogs take scent from the hand that Ghost brought them, the dogs snarled and whimpered and pulled away from them.

It is only a wood, Jon told himself, and they’re only dead men.

But is it only wood and are they only dead men? As it happens, Jon had a dream the night before where he was back in Winterfell, wandering about the castle, looking for his father. And, of course, because this is a Jon dream, he’d gone down to the crypts. But this time, he’d gone down farther than before. And in the depths, Jon saw the vaults opening and the dead kings coming out from their graves. Jon had rightfully awoken then. He ended up walking the Wall with Ghost and reassuring himself that it was only a dream. 

Back at the dead men in the Haunted Forest, Samwell Tarly is there, but he’s not enjoying the experience. He can’t even look at the dead men. When Jon tells him that he has to look, and that he’s Maester Aemon’s eyes, Sam retorts that he’s a coward. Well, okay, but there’s a dozen rangers around, Jon reassures Sam. No one’s going to hurt you, pal. So, Sam finally looks. Jon keeps his hand on Samwell’s arm to ensure he doesn’t flinch. And Sam can’t stop staring.

But enough on that. Elsie Mormont states that there were six men on the original ranging, but there’s only two here. He turns to Jaremy Ryker: Where are the other four? How the fuck would he know? Well, our good elsie ain’t letting this one go. 

Two of our brothers butchered almost within sight of the Wall, yet your rangers heard nothing, saw nothing. Is that what the Night’s Watch has fallen to? Do we still sweep these woods?

Well, yeah, but …

Do we still mount watches?

Sure, but …

This man wears a hunting horn. Must I suppose that he died without sounding it? Or have your rangers all gone deaf as well as blind?

You would be shocked to find out that Jaremy is unhappy with Mormont’s passive-aggressiveness. There was no horn sounded. And besides, there ain’t enough men to mount rangings these days since Benjen’s been gone.

Fine, fine. But how did they die? Well, looks like Othor’s ax was used against Jafer as there’s a nasty gash in his neck. But there’s no wound in evidence for Jafer. He’s pale as milkglass, but his hands are black. And his eyes? Ah, yes. Again, quite blue. Like sapphires. 

They were probably killed by wildling axes! Uh-huh. So, this is Mance’s work? Of course, it is. Who else?

Jon could have told him. He knew, they all knew, yet no man of them would say the words. The Others are only a story, a tale to make children shiver. If they ever lived at all, they are gone eight thousand years.

And Jon wasn’t some foolish boy listening to Old Nan’s stories anymore with Bran, Robb and Arya. He was a man-grown.

Anyways, back to the action:

If Ben Stark had come under Wildling attack a half day’s ride from Castle Black, he would have returned for more men, chased the killers through all seven hells and brought me back their heads.

Well, sure, but what if Benjen was dead too. If Jon was ill at ease earlier, he’s much more so now. He would cling to the hope that his uncle was alive even if it was a stubborn folly. Ah, but now we get a timeline marker as Jaremy states that it’s been nearly 6 months since Benjen left Castle Black to go ranging north of the Wall. So, Othor and Jafer were probably the last two survivors of the party, but they were ambushed before they could get south of the Wall. Besides these corpses can’t have been dead for more than a day.

NO! Samwell squeaks.

Everyone is startled, and they turn to Sam. Jaremy gets all huffy and says he didn’t ask for Sam’s input. But Jon tells Jaremy to STFU and Mormont allows Sam to talk.

“You can see where Ghost … Jon’s direwolf … you can see where he tore off that man’s hand, and yet the stump hasn’t bled, look …” 

Hot damn, but Sam is right. The place where the hand was torn from Jafer was dry, crusty. If they’d only died a day ago, the blood would still be flowing, and the corpses would reek of death, but as our boy Dywen takes a sniff, he says that Yeah, they don’t smell great, but they don’t smell like corpses either. Oh, and didn’t these bros have brown eyes instead of these blue eyes?

Well, if the whole experience was unsettling before, it’s quickly becoming much, much worse. Burn them, someone says. Someone else repeats the call And who are those two unnamed watchmen? Me! Emmett! The reader! Fucking burn, baby burn. Disco inferno. Burn them! Now! Burn the bodies down! 

Not yet. I want Maester Aemon to have a look at them. We’ll bring them back to the Wall.

What? Are you fucking serious, Mormont? Mission creep much, Mormont? Sigh. 

Well, they try to strap the dead men onto the horses, but even the goddamn horses are like, Burn them, you fucking morons. They refuse to bear the burden. So, the Night’s Watchmen end up cutting sticks and making makeshift sleds and dragging the dead men back. Meanwhile, Mormont commands Ser Jaremy to do his job for once and scout out the woods. And then everyone rides back to the Wall in silence with a damp, gray, overcast sky above them. Hm, sounds familiar and not-at-all ominous again …

Jon rides back in silence, thinking -- thinking about how this was a spirit summer. And that winter would be coming awful soon. The last real winter was when he was a baby. Ghost pads alongside of Ghost for a while, but then he’s off to hunt in the forest. Jon searches the shadows, looking, watching, fearing. He had heard Old Nan’s stories: the ones about the Others and how they came in the darkness, rode pale, dead horses, hated iron and fire, you know the rest of the bit from Bran IV.

But at last, Jon sees the Wall, and man is he ever relieved. He beckons Sam over and tells him he did a good job back in the Haunted Forest. Samwell blushes and stammers out a courtesy. And finally Ghost reappears at the clearing before the Wall. A single horn blast is heard from the top of the Wall. Rangers returning.

At the entrance of the gate, Bowen Marsh awaits the company. He’s got news. There’s a letter, and Mormont needs to come at once. When the good elsie asks what it’s about, Bowen gives Jon a weird look before repeating that Mormont needs to come at once to Maester Aemon’s solar. 

So, Mormont takes off, and Jon heads into the castle courtyard. Everywhere Jon looks, people are staring at him. He passes by Alliser Thorne who proceeds to stare at Jon and smile at him like an idiot. Jon knows that something’s up as he watches the dead men carried to the ice cells. No need to worry about them, right? Right.

Anyways, Jon seeks Pyp and Grenn out, and when he finds them, they tell him that Robert Baratheon is dead. Jon’s stunned by the news. Sure, Robert was fat and old-looking, but he seemed healthy enough. But regardless, now that Robert was dead, that meant that his father Ned would return to Winterfell and bring Arya and Sansa back, right? And since he was coming back, Jon could ask Ned about his mother. He wouldn’t even care if she was some sex worker or not. He just wanted to know.

Ah, yes. Thanks for that George. Anyhow, Pyp asks if the dead men brought back were Benjen’s men. They were. They’d been dead, and their bodies were strange. But go ask Sam about that bit. Jon needs to go attend to the Elsie.

Jon leaves his friends and heads to Mormont’s chambers. There, he meets up with Mormont and Bloodraven, uh, I mean Mormont’s raven. Corn, Bloodraven cries. He’s going to say this a lot. You see, whenever the bird says corn, it’s a complex code that means … nothing. More on this later!

Elsie Mormont asks for a mug of wine, and he tells Jon to pour one for himself. What? Jon pur himself a mug? Uh, okay. Sure. He pours slowly and returns to Mormont with wines in hand.

It’s about my father, isn’t it?

Yup. Daddy Ned and Robert. And it ain’t good news. Robert died in a hunt, because the things we love destroy us every time, lad, Mormont says before reminiscing about Jorah and his former wife Lynesse. Hm. Pretty fucking profound, Elsie. Oh, and get to drinking, kid. There’s hard news. Ned’s in jail for treason. 

No, Jon said at once. That couldn’t be. My father would never betray the king!

Well, Jon’s not wrong. Give him that. In Jon’s mind, Ned would never dishonor himself, but then Jon stops the thought dead in its tracks ... uh, except that one time with fathering a bastard. But what’s to happen to Ned now, Jon asks. Well, Mormont doesn’t know. But the Elsie knows a few members of the small council. Maybe he can write and get Ned to come take the black.

That gets Jon thinking. Sure, it sucks that Ned is accused of treason, but maybe Ned could come here to the Wall and redeem his honor -- even though it would be an injustice to steal Winterfell from Ned. But if it meant his life? But would it matter with Joffrey on the throne? Maybe. Maybe not. It was probably in Cersei’s hands anyways. And speaking of women, it was a bad thing what your lady mother did in abducting Tyrion as …

Lady Stark is not my mother, Jon reminded Mormont sharply.

And then to echo every fanboy out there, Jon says that Catelyn is as much to blame for Ned’s downfall as Cersei. Wrong, Jon. Bad, Jon. 

But Jon asks after both his sisters Arya and Sansa. Correct, Jon. Good, Jon. Well, Pycelle didn’t mention anything about them in his letter. Then Mormont transitions:

This could not have happened at a worse time. If ever the realm needed a strong king … there are dark days and cold nights ahead, I feel it in my bones.

Do you, Mormont? Do you? Could your sense of foreboding have anything to do with bringing in the wrong-ass corpses with blue eyes and no stink of death on them? No? Sigh.

Mormont returns to more immediate matters: Jon. I hope you are not thinking of doing anything stupid, boy. Well, as a matter of fact, Jon had been thinking about Ned at that very moment. Instead of answering, Jon takes another sip of wine. Mormont tells him to get lost but remember something:

Your duty is here now. Your old life ended when you took the black. Whatever they do in King’s Landing is none of our concern.

Hm, the Night’s Watch takes no part: wonder if that will be an enduring internal struggle for Jon?

Well, Jon doesn’t remember leaving, but the next thing he knows he’s heading down the tower stairs, wondering how the fate of his father and sisters could be none of his concern. And then a north wind starts blowing as the sun goes down, and boy oh boy, love the non-ominous, extremely subtle foreshadowing.

When he makes it back to his friends at the common hall for dinner, he knows that they know. Even Three-Finger Hobb gives Jon an extra portion of dinner. And as Jon listens to his brothers talk about how Ned is their father as much as his, interesting that, Jon realizes that these guys are as much is brothers as Robb, Bran and Rickon.

Ah, except for, y’know, Ser Alliser Thorne who’s all chortling like an idiot about how Jon was not only a bastard but a traitor’s bastard. Fuck that guy, he ain’t my bro, Jon thinks as he jumps to his feet, a dagger in hand. Pyp tries to grab him, but Jon wrenches away and runs down the table, knife in hand, looking to put a stab right through Thorne’s eye. It was only when Sam jumped in the way, slowing Jon, Pyp jumped on Jon’s back, Grenn grabbed Jon’s arm and and Toad wrenched the knife from Jon’s fingers that Alliser’s life was saved.

We fast-forward to Jon in his sleeping cell. Mormont comes to visit, telling Jon that he told him not to do something stupid. And to think I had such high hopes for you, Mormont says as Jon is disarmed and confined to quarters. A guard is placed outside his door to make certain he didn’t perform further stupidity. And his friends can’t visit him. But they do allow Ghost to stay in Jon’s room -- which, thank R’hllor for that.

Alone with Ghost, Jon tells Ghost that Ned ain’t a traitor. Jon takes a seat on the floor and watches the candle on the table. 

The flame flickered and swayed, the shadows moved around him, the room seemed to grow darker and colder.

Gather round, boys and girls. This just became a ghost story. 

Jon thinks he won’t sleep, but he dozes off, only to wake up to find Ghost standing on his hind legs at the door, pawing at it. Oh, and his fangs are bared in a silent snarl. Jon tries to reassure Ghost that it’s only him, but then Jon realizes it’s super fucking cold now. When did that happen? Ghost takes a step back from the door, and Jon realizes that the direwolf has left huge gashes in the door. 

So, Ghost is going crazy. It’s suddenly exceptionally cold and dark out. There’s someone out there, isn’t there, Jon whispers to Ghost. The direwolf braces backwards, fur rising on the back of his neck. Jon tries one last time to close his eyes and go back to sleep by reassuring himself that Ghost is just smelling the man who was posted at Jon’s door. Just to reassure himself that nothing is amiss, Jon’s gotta creep-creep over to the door to make sure everything is alright. 

And of course, everything is not alright. Jon opens the door and finds that the guard is head, his head twisted around. Jon is in shocked disbelief. Here? At Elsie Mormont’s tower? I’m having a dream. I’m having a nightmare. 

Ghost bolts past Jon and makes for the stairs, and that’s when Jon hears it. The soft scrape of a boot on the ground and the turning of a latch. Coming from above. From Mormont’s chambers. 

A nightmare this might be, yet it was no dream.

Jon notices that the guard still has his sword on. He grabs it, and he heads up the stairs with shadows swirling around him. Fortunately, Ghost is with Jon the whole way. Mormont’s raven shrieks as Jon enters the room, screaming corn over and over again. Jon bursts into Mormont’s solar, sword in hand and searches the darkness. Who’s there? He calls out. Suddenly one of the shadows slides forward, and Jon looks horrified to see that it’s a man in all black, cloaked, hooded with eyes shining with icy blue radiance.

Ghost jumps the shape, and wolf and wight go tumbling to the ground as Bloodraven shouts for corn. Jon moves towards the window, ripping down the curtain so that he could see better. Finally, he sees black hands tightening around Ghost’s throat, and Jon doesn’t have time to be afraid. He lunges forward, bringing his longsword down, chopping one of the hands off. But something was wrong. The sound was strange. The smell was so queer and cold that Jon almost gagged. Meanwhile, Ghost wriggled away from the other hand. And then the hooded man turned to Jon. Jon slashed with his longsword at his face, opening a wound in the man’s face and nose from cheek to cheek. But those eyes. The eyes, eyes, eyes, like blue stars burning. And suddenly, Jon looks and knows who this is. 

Othor, Jon thought, reeling back. Gods, he’s dead, he’s dead. I saw him dead.

It gets worse. Jon feels something at his ankle. It’s the arm he chopped off, crawling up his leg. Jon is horrified, he pries the arm off his leg and flips it away, but then Othor lunges at Jon. Jon tries to keep the wight at bay, but then Othor slams into Jon as Ghost eats away at the hand on the floor. Jon falls backwards and the fall takes his breath awayyyyyyyyyyy. And he loses his sword. When Jon tries to scream, Othor shoves his fingers into Jon’s mouth and down into his throat. Jon is choking as ice-fingers reach farther and farther down his throat. Othor’s face is up against Jon’s with frost in its blue, blue eyes.

Jon tries everything he can to keep from dying. He bites. He punches. But it’s only when Ghost jumps Othor that the weight gives way, and Jon can breathe again. Jon watches Ghost rip out Othor’s gut. And it’s only then that he remembers he needs to find that sword. But then Jon sees Elsie Mormont, naked and holding a lamplight as the wight arm approaches the Lord Commander. 

Jon tries to shout at the Elsie, but his voice is gone. So, instead, Jon staggers to his feet, kicks the arm away, grabs the lamp from Mormont.

Burn! The raven cawed. Burn, burn, burn!

Jon spins, notices the drapes he pulled down from earlier. He flings the lamp onto the cloth, and the drapes go up in flames. Jon shouts for Ghost, and Ghost wrenches free from Othor. The wight tries to get up as his guts spill from the gash Ghost left him. Jon thrusts his hand into the fire, grabbing a fistful of burning drapes and whips them at Othor.

Let it burn, Jon prayed as the cloth smothered the corpse, gods, please, please, let it burn.

And that is the end of AGOT, Jon VII!

Holy. Shit. That chapter went to 11 quick, fast and in a hurry. And wow, watch George write an amazing, compelling action scene. That was fantastic!

What did you think, Emmett?

Depth

To be honest, my first reaction to this chapter isn’t analytical at all, it’s just hooray, zombies!! Love a good zombie attack, more than any other monster archetype in fact, which may help explain my love for this series. The sense of dread and wrongness you get with the living dead is like nothing else, because they’re both the most human of the monsters and the least. They’re the biological equivalent of the Uncanny Valley in robotics. But Jon VII has to be more than just a jump scare; it has to be an effective and memorable reintroduction of the overarching magical plot, which has been missing in action since Bran’s fever dream as King’s Landing politics took center stage. What allows the chapter to accomplish that task is above all its precise structure. 

Jon VII is ASOIAF/AGOT in 3-act microcosm. The first act is very similar to the Prologue with something not being right about these dead men, the second act is the realm or the reader or Jon forgetting all about the dead men as word of his father’s arrest sends Jon into action. And the third and final act is recognizing, oh yeah, the politics of the realm are important and all that, but it’s like Mormont says at the end of the final Jon chapter When dead men come hunting in the night, do you think it matters who sits the Iron Throne?

• Structural Problem Solving
  • You can feel GRRM struggling with and solving the problem of how he’s going to structure this zombie attack
  • He wants to preserve the surprise, but he’s running up several hills at once
    • We’ve already seen the zombification process at work with Waymar
    • The entire opening scene emphasizes how off-putting the bodies are
    • Media literacy RE zombies is pretty firmly established (more on that later)
  • How can he still catch us off guard when even inattentive readers probably know what’s coming at the chapter’s climax? The art of misdirection, of course!
  • By focusing the middle act of the chapter (as you say) on the ripple effects of Ned’s downfall in King’s Landing, GRRM distracts the reader from the zombies
  • Suddenly, the chapter is about Jon and Ned, and what an asshole Alliser is being about it, and what’s Jon gonna do next??
  • So when Ghost starts pawing at the door and Jon opens it to find his guard’s head twisted all the way around, we go oh shit! Right! Zombies!!!
• Samwell Tarly, Crime Scene Investigator
  • But before that gambit, GRRM takes his time establishing everything wrong about Jafer and Othor’s bodies
  • Beyond the useful exposition, this is an important character moment for Sam
  • At the very beginning of his watch, he must transcend his fears (of not just the bodies, but stern military men who remind him of his father)
  • Not only that, he has to put his unique skills to work, interweaving them with the observations of his new brothers
  • By the time he’s done pointing out everything disturbing about the blood and the flesh and the etc, we’re somehow both grossed-out and very proud of our boy
  • LC Mormont, who has blind spots but is a good-hearted leader, praises him for it
• “Something is wrong”
  • Then, as you say, the political plot rears its head 
  • Suddenly Jon is not a brother among brothers, but the Bastard of Winterfell again
  • This both links the far-flung scenes (geographic cohesiveness) and allows the political and magical plots to clash for really the first time (thematic cohesiveness)
  • Most NW members, from Mormont to Donal Noye to his friends to even random guards, try to comfort Jon, leading him to briefly consider them his new family…
  • ...before Alliser, being Alliser, fucks it all up
  • The hypocrisy of he who fought for Aerys mocking anyone for treason to Robert!
  • Jon immediately and violently chooses his Stark family over his new family
  • Mormont throws him in his room to cool his heels, we feel with him, and then…
• Sudden sidebar attack!
  • Let’s pause to talk about where zombies were as a cultural artifact at the time
  • Zombies are rooted in sources ranging from Haitian folklore to Frankenstein
  • But the tropes we associate with them were codified by George Romero--first with Night of the Living Dead, a genuinely unsettling flick that GRRM is definitely drawing from here, and very influential in its scenario
  • Romero’s decade-later followup Dawn of the Dead, however, is the more influential one in terms of tone--goofy, splattery, more cynical than suspenseful
  • That’s the tone that prevailed in the wave of zombie movies that followed (part of the home video wave of the ‘80s), exemplified by Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive
  • Plus, kitschy fun like Thriller, zombies as kids’ costumes and plastic toys...
  • GRRM is writing AGOT in that context, before Resident Evil and 28 Days Later, before Zack Snyder’s much less gag-oriented remake of Dawn of the Dead, and of course, before The Walking Dead was the biggest thing on television
  • In other words, zombies generally weren’t scary in 90s pop culture
  • It’s the Scream decade, after all; Bart resurrects the dead by saying “Walmart”
  • So writing a zombie attack as a straightforward Night of the Living Dead-esque creepshow, in the context of high fantasy, got attention it might not in 2019
• Dead man walking
  • GRRM achieves a nightmarish quality by a fixation on the unnatural details--the guard’s head turned around, the contradiction of “a shadow in the shadows,” and of course the “icy blue radiance” of the eyes already noted as being all wrong
  • The description of them being like blue stars puts me in mind of Stephen King’s It
  • Jon faces the primal questions of what to do against an enemy that will not stop coming, that has no concept of mercy, and can even lose limbs with impunity
  • There’s a nod to the goofier side of zombie fiction with the wriggling arm
  • Ghost to the rescue, just like Drogon at the House of the Undying, suggesting this is a microcosm of the struggle between the greenseers and the Others

Foreshadowing/Groundwork

Jon’s will he/won’t he struggle over to stick with the Night’s Watch, Part 3!

The animals going nuts around the zombified bodies (classic trope right there) will be repeated in the Prologue to ASOS, as Chett’s dogs refuse to hunt the undead bear. 

First mention of putting dead men in the ice cells. In this case, it’s just cold storage so that Aemon can review the bodies. In ADWD, though, Jon puts the two dead wildlings from the weirwood grove into the ice cells, hoping they’ll rise.

“Wights are monstrous, unnatural creatures. Abominations before the eyes of the gods. You ... you cannot mean to try to talk with them?”

Jon: “Monsters they may be, but they were men before they died. How much remains? The one I slew was intent on killing Lord Commander Mormont. Plainly he remembered who he was and where to find him ... My lord father used to tell me that a man must know his enemies. We understand little of the wights and less about the Others. We need to learn.” (ADWD, Jon VIII)

When the dead men wake up, will they talk to Jon? Will it super be like that gnarly scene from ID4 where the hippie scientist is used as a wight of the aliens with the Others telling Jon that there’ll be no peace, and that they want humans to diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiie? I hope so. 

Jeor’s passing mention of his daughter-in-law Lynesse will be expanded on at length by Jorah in ACOK Daenerys I.

Debunking a minor bad, ugly theory: the corn code. The basic badness that is the theory is essentially that whenever Mormont’s raven says something in triplicate, it’s a cryptogram with commas representing minor deaths and periods representing major deaths. You can read the full insanity of the OP if you’re one of our patrons as we link to it in our show notes.

Needless to say, GRRM debunked it in 2013 as reported by Westeros.org user Cat of the First Men:

I went to an appearance by GRRM and Michelle Fairley in Melbourne tonight and; asked GRRM a question during the book signing at the end. He was signing my DVD cover (sorry people, Google Books!) and I asked whether he puts any codes into his books because people are talking about them. He suddenly looked interested and said "What kind of codes?" It was a fast paced book signing, so I really only had a few moments to explain. I said that it could be something like the Lord Commander's raven screaming "Corn! Corn! Corn!" (verbally saying the exclamation marks) which would mean somebody is going to die (no time to explain the future vs present tense). He said a very definite "No", then commented that people must have found lots of evidence and joked that if its there its accidental. 

Theory/Discussion

What were the Others up to with Othor and Jafer?

• We see them going after the NW command structure here--the Lord Commander and the First Ranger
• Is it a warning to not go beyond the Wall? Perhaps, but the bodies would suffice for that; see for example the heads returned to Castle Black by the Weeper
• Animating the bodies on the other side seems less a diplomatic move than an attack; comparable in some respects to Tyrion sending false envoys to Riverrun
• My thoughts are that the Others were unable to catch Benjen himself, and are so trying to kneecap any further rangings, especially if (as I think) Benjen got to the Horn of Winter ahead of the Others as well as Mance
• I don’t know if they were deliberately trying to lure the NW out to die beyond the Wall, especially since I think they attacked at the Fist specifically because the Horn was there
• It may have been a classic unintended consequence, an invasion sparked by an attempt to head it off, just like Robert vis-a-vis Dany and Drogo a couple chapters from now

Conclusion

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