By Caitlin Walsh
News Staff
A few hearts may have stopped along the way, but the third season of HBO’s acclaimed series “Game of Thrones” has finally wrapped up. This past season featured arguably the biggest plot twist of the entire series — something fans of the books were anxiously awaiting, and something fans of only the TV show were far from prepared for. Author George R. R. Martin has gained a number of new enemies.
Martin has published, thus far, five of his rumored seven book series — this past season of the show made it halfway through the series’ third book, “A Storm of Swords.” As fans of the TV series learned just a week before the finale, Martin has no invincible characters — everyone is dispensable to him, including Robb and Catelyn Stark, both of whom were series favorites killed at the notorious “Red Wedding.”
Northeastern English professor Kathleen Kelly, a fan of both the books and the TV show, asserted that part of the huge success seen for the series is due to Martin’s willingness to kill any character off at a moment’s notice. “Martin’s world has no moral core; it is a tale of breaking faith and betrayal after betrayal and putting one’s own desires and imperatives ahead of everyone else’s — and often at the expense of the ties that hold a society together,” she said. “It is fascinating to watch. It is the clichéd train wreck.”
The apparent sources of inspiration in such a fantasy series are not so far off from reality. Though Martin very clearly draws most of his inspiration from the Middle Ages, much like “Lord of The Rings” author J.R.R. Tolkien did (earning endless comparisons between the two), there are also modern day hints — warnings, even — embedded in Martin’s stories.
“Martin’s fantasy world is not alien to us — it is mapped over our own, from something vaguely like Iceland, Greenland and Scotland to the Middle East, Africa, and India,” Kelly said. “This world operates as a cautionary tale for, an allegory of, or perhaps even a snapshot of, our world.”
It is not just the cautionary tales and real world allusions that draw in viewers, however. Not any book series can make for a successful HBO show. The general HBO standard calls for sex, violence and more sex — and Martin more than delivers on that front.
“It must be said that the sex and violence in the books and the series are extremely compelling,” Kelly noted, also adding that this doesn’t necessarily make Martin one of the great authors of our history, despite the large following he has. “Martin is no American Tolkien, despite such claims. He has no poetry. He repeats himself and gives new meaning to the word “prolix,” and his favorite words are ‘whore’ and ‘cock.’ “
One of the biggest concerns of the TV series for the faithful Martin followers, however, is the predicament that HBO will soon be in. Though they’ve broken up the third book into two seasons, and would be wise to consider the same for the fourth and fifth books (each roughly 1000 pages), Martin is notorious for taking his time to publish — mostly attributed to his insistence on not having an editor and doing it all on his own. Were HBO to catch up before he published the next installment, they would be forced to either end the series, go on hiatus until the next novel or go their own way, entirely, rumor has it.
Which is not necessarily a bad thing, at least in the opinion of Kelly. “Then we have two narratives to compare and endlessly discuss,” she said. “People take pleasure in comparing books to films, even when they’re unhappy about an adaptation. Look at the discussions that Baz Luhrmann’s ‘The Great Gatsby’ is generating. Adaptations are opportunities for critical thinking.”
As for the devoted book fans who cry out at the minor changes already made in certain aspects of the series — like the identity of Robb Stark’s wife being different in the TV series than the book — Kelly said much of the same: adaptations are a positive thing.
“When it comes to film and television adaptation, some readers and viewers prefer a ‘fidelity’ model — don’t mess with my favorite book, follow it to the letter — while others see adaptation as an opportunity to imagine, and experience, a different narrative trajectory altogether. Either way, there is pleasure in noticing changes, major and minor, and agreeing or disagreeing with such changes,” said said, adding, “I am sure their changes gained them more viewers who now want to know what the controversy is all about.”
