"Half time!": In which I use poorly drawn charts and graphs to illustrate a few points....

(Before I launch into my blogpost, I want to send a special shot-out to Sweet77 and her very kind comment under my last post. I was having a rough day at work last week (bad clients, bossy bosses, and the beginnings of the flu)when I glanced down at my inbox and saw her complimentary words.  Thanks for reading, Sweet77!)

GWTW the movie is not identical to GWTW the book.  

Of course, we can't exactly fault Hollywood for cutting characters and subplots.  Will, Archie, most of the folks from the county, the Confederate soldiers Scarlett met during the war, and Grandma Fontaine (just to name a few)are fantastic characters that add extraordinary depth to the novel, and I love reading about them.  But GWTW the movie already has a huge cast and a lengthy run time, and I can't fault Selznick and the gang for tightening the focus and consolidating characters in an effort at making the story more coherent.  

However, the Hollywood script writers didn't merely chop GWTW. I would also argue that they changed the fundamental flow of the story as they hacked through the pages and searched for the essence of the story.  As I've said before, MM used the Scarlett/Rhett romance(or anyway, anti-romance) as the backbone of her story, but Hollywood used the romance as the skin of the movie.  As a consequence, the movie and novel deviate greatly in the shape of their story arcs, so much so that an uninformed observer/average non-GWTW obsessive on the street would be excused in assuming that Scarlett's story looks like this: 

 Which is to say, Scarlett's story arc is based entirely around her romantic entanglements/relationships with men.  So Scarlett's movie arc begins when she hears from the Tarleton twins (I miss those guys) about Ashley and Melly's impending marriage, climaxes when she proclaims that "she'll never go hungry again" (and thusly learns to stand on her own feet), and then drops down from that point as Scarlett grows more and more self-centered and power-hungry, continuing until the bitter end when (SPOILER!) Rhett abandons her.

On the other hand, a basic reading of the novel contains those same plot points but the rising and falling actions occur in slightly different places compared to those found in the movie.  In my (very, very, very humble) opinion, I believe a rudimentary drawing of the novel's story arc would look like this:

 Which is to say it begins in the same place (with the Tarleton twins dropping the Ashley/Melly marriage bomb on Scarlett's shoulders) and rises similarly over the course of the war years, as Scarlett grows up, moves to Atlanta, befriends Rhett Butler, and continues mooning after Ashley.  I also think that the return to Tara and Scarlett's "never go hungry again" statement is an all-important plot point in the novel, but I don't think that Scarlett's story arc dips down quite so immediately in the novel.  Selznick and the rest of the film-makers (and quite a lot of critics) seem to be tying Scarlett's eventual decline (I struggle with the notion of the ending being a "come-uppance") to her determination to succeed and her ruthless behavior during the middle and ending of the novel. But I believe that MM actually applauds Scarlett's hard-work and gumption, and I doubt that MM wants the reader to believe that Scarlett "got what she deserved" because she went into business for herself.  Therefore, any "downfall" in the novel cannot begin when Scarlett decides to take control of Tara and do what she can to provide for her family.

Rather, perhaps the correct call is to say that Scarlett's fortunes during the period immediately following the Fall of Atlanta neither rise nor fall and the story arc simply goes off in a straight line for a few years. Scarlett makes a lot of decisions during this part of the novel, and she makes several tough choices including (Spoiler?) offering herself off to Rhett as a prostitute (plot point 1 in the second chart), marrying Frank Kennedy (and subsequently accidentally causing his death which is plot point 2), and then agreeing to marry Rhett for his money even though she doesn't love him (point 3).  None of these three points are Scarlett's best moments, of course, but I'm also not convinced that MM wants us to think that they lead to Scarlett's ultimate downfall and lonely ending.

However, anybody who's read the details of the Butler marriage in the last third of GWTW cannot help but be blown away by the speed/gravity/inevitability of the trouble that eventually occurs between the two of them.  2/3 of the story happens before Scarlett/Rhett get hitched, but they are completely outweighed by the weightiness and the mystery and the pain of the Butler marriage.  Once you get to the end of the book it's easy to point backward and say "she had it coming," but I'm not so sure that she does. But it's also impossible to ignore that there's something heart-breakingly predictable about the way Scarlett's life winds up.  One or another of her life choices eventually causes her to wind up alone and unhappy in 1873, but I'm still not certain which one it was. Hmmmmm....

I'll be looking for answers over the next few chapters, that much is certain.