Self Made Boys is a reimagining of TGG with a modern day view. It makes the original classic novel more relatable to new audiences. However, is slightly changing a classic story into your own work really ethical?
Transforming a classical story to attune to a newer audience has never been new. Tons of the stories we enjoy are just revamped versions of previous texts. For example, even the classic Lion King movies are retelling of the Shakespeare stories of Hamlet and Romeo And Juliet. It never says anywhere that that is where they got the story from, but people also accept it as a unique story. So does changing the characters make it an original work? Is this still considered plagiarism? How long does a story need to be around before it’s considered fair to take the plot of?
I think that the ethics depends on the context. For Self Made Boys, it’s easy to tell the difference from the new plot added, and the original story of the novel. It builds off of the original to make the characters and plot more interesting. On the contrary, this story still uses major parts of the storyline that were not written by this author. I think that this is ethical because of the popularity of the original novel. TGG is known by most people and the author does make it different enough to be unique. However, if TGG was not as big as it is, or came out relatively recently it would not feel as moral. SMB is still a retelling, but it’s one that enhances the original story of TGG for modern audiences.