Uh ... Is 'Game of Thrones' is Just Feudal 'Gone With the Wind?'
George R. R. Martin loves Gone With the Wind. Like, way more than you would expect from an old guy from New Jersey who's mostly into mythical creatures and incest. He frequently references it when asked about his work; on the topic of the differences between books and their adaptations, he's fond of replying, "How many children did Scarlett O'Hara have?" to make the point there's no definitive answer to that question. He's also pointed to all the modern reimaginings of the Civil War novel as examples of what he doesn't want to happen to his books, so we're just not going to tell him about our many and lengthy volumes of warging erotica.
He's also outright plagiarized Margaret Mitchell repeatedly throughout the A Song of Ice and Fire series, to varying degrees of ickiness. At one point, Jorah Mormont tells Daenerys Targaryen (who, it should be noted, is about 15 at the time) that she was "made to be kissed, often and well," just as Rhett Butler tells Scarlett O'Hara, "You should be kissed, and often, and by someone who knows how," in the 1939 movie.
Also note: Rhett has the mustache of someone that would say that line to a 15-year-old girl.
Melanie Wilkes demands that Scarlett "Promise me" as she dies of miscarriage complications, just like Lyanna Stark demands the same of her brother before she dies after the birth of Jon Snow.
Those are just two examples. The list goes on and on.
But David Crow of Den of Geek also argues that that entire characters and storylines from the series seem to be lifted from Gone With the Wind, most notably Sansa Stark's journey from a superficial young aristocrat hardened by war and becoming a bargaining chip in a series of unwanted marriages until she turns her focus single-mindedly on reclaiming her family home. (The same can arguably be said for Daenerys, but even Scarlett O'Hara never firebombed a whole town.) Along with Jamie Lannister's similarities with Rhett Butler, both disgraced aristocrats devoted to narcissistic women who become their undoing, and the shared themes of survival and the brutalities of war, it's a good thing one has dragons. Otherwise, it would be kind of hard to tell them apart.
Manna, regrettably, has a Twitter.
Top image: HBO, MGM
