In A Song of Ice and Fire Men of the Night's Watch kill Jon Snow. Why didn't they burn his body? Didn't they fear that he may become a wight?

Your post is tagged both with the books and show tags so I'll cover both.

In the books, the last we see of Jon is the stabbing, so for all we know they do burn the body after. It's simply unknown what happens next still.

In the show, they give no reason for not burning it immediately, but it's not long after that the Onion Knight and Edd and the rest abscond with the corpse to get Mel to bring him back, so presumably the option wasn't on the table for long.

A Song of Ice and Fire

We don’t know because we see nothing of Jon after the stabbing and murder.

Jon fell to his knees. He found the dagger's hilt and wrenched it free. In the cold night air the wound was smoking. "Ghost," he whispered. Pain washed over him. Stick them with the pointy end. When the third dagger took him between the shoulder blades, he gave a grunt and fell face-first into the snow. He never felt the fourth knife. Only the cold …

_{A Dance with Dragons, Jon XIII}

Game of Thrones

The last we see of Jon in Season 5 is him dying in a puddle of his own blood.

Jon stays on his knees, then falls backwards. The Brothers walk away from him. Jon lays on the ground, expressionless. A puddle of blood spreads to the top of the screen.

_{Game of Thrones, Season 5 Episode 10, “Mother’s Mercy”}

Season 6 then opens with Davos spotting Jon’s body in the snow.

EXT. CASTLE BLACK - NIGHT

Pan down from the inside of The Wall towards Castle Black. GHOST is howling. Slow zoom to JON SNOW’s body, lying in the snow. A sign with the word “TRAITOR” is posted on a beam behind him. Closeup on JON SNOW. He is staring upwards, lifelessly. GHOST howls louder and pushes against the door to his pen.

CUT TO: CASTLE BLACK - DAVOS’ CHAMBER

DAVOS hears GHOST’s howling and exits, then peers across the courtyard and sees JON SNOW’s body. He immediately runs down the steps. He slows as he approaches JON SNOW’s body. Other brothers of the Night’s Watch approach. DAVOS kneels beside JON SNOW’s body.

NIGHT’S WATCHMAN: It’s the Lord Commander!

DOLOROUS EDD and other Night’s Watchmen rush up behind DAVOS.

DAVOS: Help me get him inside.

The other Night’s Watch brothers pick up JON SNOW’s body and carry it away. DAVOS remains, staring at the left over pool of blood.

_{Game of Thrones, Season 6 Episode 1, “The Red Woman”}

Whilst we don’t know for sure why Thorne and the others left Jon’s body there we can speculate on the following.

• To send a message to the others that anyone else that goes against what they want they’ll be killed too.




• To hide that it was them, whilst it obviously was them not being caught at the scene could help their case if they needed to defend themselves.

Or they may have been going to actually get some firewood to burn him, we simply don’t have enough information on the timeframe from them killing him to Davos finding him.