book review on gone with the wind

Gone with the Wind

By margaret mitchell.

Literary artistry is not what makes 'Gone with the Wind' a timeless favorite for many readers. It is its fascinating characters and plot that has made it endure in relevance even many decades after its publication. Here is a review that points out some of the pros and cons of the novel

About the Book

Article written by Onyekachi Osuji

B.A. in Public Administration and certified in Creative Writing (Fiction and Non-Fiction)

Gone with the Wind is a book about how war, starvation, and adversity can reduce one’s humanity to the basest instinct for survival at all costs. It follows Scarlett O’Hara’s transition from a charming country girl whose only cares in the world were pretty dresses and handsome beaux, to a cold, hardened woman who would cheat, steal, murder, and numb her conscience to every value she once thought sacred in a bid to survive and escape starvation.

It is a very long read that requires patience from readers to understand the detailed picture it tries to paint. The story has sixty-three(63) chapters and is divided into five(5) parts, all of which follow a chronological order. While it has a relatively simplistic writing style and does not contain the most enjoyable of dialogues, it makes up for these shortcomings by being a compelling story of human struggles in difficult circumstances.

Gumption and Survival in Gone with the Wind

Margaret Mitchell shows how different life and values are in times of peace from times of war. How accomplishments that seem very important to society in times of peace and stability become useless for survival in the harsh face of war.

Mitchell once remarked that ‘ Gone with the Wind ’ is a novel about those who have gumption and those who don’t. At any upheaval to society such as war, the normal order of things is destroyed and people begin afresh from an equal playing ground, then some people rise to the top while some others do not.

Mitchell might have oversimplified this quality of survivors she called gumption in her remark. This is because ‘Gone with the Wind’ has complexities to this gumption which makes one survivor different from another. There is the gumption of characters like Scarlett O’Hara who would brazenly spit the world in the face and sell her soul to survive.

Then there are the more demure characters like Melanie Hamilton who adapts to the difficult changing times but still holds on to values like love, loyalty, and commonality without compromise even in the face of the toughest challenge and that is an even more powerful brand of courage.

Gone with the Wind is a book that gives readers a variety of characters to hate as passionately as you love them. Some of the characters are too cruel, while some others are unbelievably good. But it is a point in Margaret Mitchell’s favor that she created unforgettable characters in the story.

On the other hand, the characters are very out of touch with reality and it is hard to find any of them relatable. For instance, Scarlett is not relatable in her insensitivity and selfishness and Melanie’s goodness is too good to be true.

Structure of the Novel

The length of Gone with the Wind is one feature that detracts from the appeal of the novel. The novel has sixty-three(63) chapters divided into five(5) parts. It has almost one thousand pages which could have been edited and reduced to about half that number of pages because it expends pages and pages on descriptions and details that are not relevant to the plot.

The events in the novel follow a linear chronological sequence from the eve of the declaration of war through many years after the end of the war.

One good point for the dialogues in Gone with the Wind is that they contain some of the most interesting quotes in the novel. However, some of the dialogues are too colloquial, heavily accented, and hard to decipher especially from the black characters and this adds to the racial controversies around the novel.

What does the title ‘ Gone with the Wind ‘ mean?

“Gone with the Wind” is a nostalgic expression of loss to the forces of change. The title Gone with the Wind was gotten from a poem ‘ Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae Sub Regno Cyynarae ’ by Ernest Dowson, the beginning line of Stanza Three of the poem reads: “I have forgot much, Cynara! Gone with the wind…”

Margaret Mitchell had other options for the title of the novel, like “Tomorrow is Another Day” but she and her publication team eventually opted for “Gone with the Wind”.

Is Gone with the Wind based on a true story?

No, Gone with the Wind is not based on a true story. It is a fictional story. However, some of the characters and events in the novel were similar to those in Margaret Mitchell’s real life and it is possible that she projected some of her real-life experiences into her writing.

Why was Gone with the Wind banned?

Both the book and the movie adaptation of Gone with the Wind have been banned several times in various places for controversies. It was banned in Nazi Germany during World War II for having views that were averse to war. It is also banned in some schools and cinemas for being racially prejudicial. In 2021, HBO pulled the film from its movie streaming site for racial stereotypes and it is still a major cause of controversies to date.

Gone with the Wind Review: Margaret Mitchell's Controversial Legacy

Book Title: Gone with the Wind

Book Description: A Historical Fiction set in the state of Georgia during the American Civil War

Book Author: Margaret Mitchell

Book Edition: First Edition

Book Format: Hardcover

Publisher - Organization: Macmillan Company

Date published: June 30, 1936

ISBN: 978-0-446-69196-9

Number Of Pages: 1037

Writing Style
Lasting Effect on Reader

Gone with the Wind: Margaret Mitchell's Controversial Legacy

Margaret Mitchell in Gone with the Wind uses Scarlett O’Hara’s journey to tell a story of the depravities of human nature and the upheavals to social order that are made glaring by the harshness of war.

Captivating Storyline
Interesting Themes
Remarkable Characters
Lengthy volume
Racial Controversies
Unlikeable Characters

About Onyekachi Osuji

Onyekachi was already an adult when she discovered the rich artistry in the storytelling craft of her people—the native Igbo tribe of Africa. This connection to her roots has inspired her to become a Literature enthusiast with an interest in the stories of Igbo origin and books from writers of diverse backgrounds. She writes stories of her own and works on Literary Analysis in various genres.

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Book Review

Book Review: Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Author: Margaret Mitchell

Publisher: Macmillan Inc.

Genre: Historical Fiction, Romance

First Publication: 1936

Language: English

Major Characters: Scarlett O’Hara, Rhett Butler, Ashley Wilkes, Melanie Hamilton Wilkes, Gerald O’Hara, Ellen O’Hara, Mammy, Frank Kennedy, Charles Hamilton

Setting Place: Clayton County and Atlanta, both in Georgia, during the American Civil War and Reconstruction Era

Theme: The Transformation of Southern Culture, Overcoming Adversity with Willpower, Survival

Book Summary: Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Set against the dramatic backdrop of the American Civil War, Margaret Mitchell’s magnificent historical epic is an unforgettable tale of love and loss, of a nation mortally divided and a people forever changed. Above all, it is the story of beautiful, ruthless Scarlett O’Hara and the dashing soldier of fortune, Rhett Butler.

Margaret Mitchell’s monumental epic of the South won a Pulitzer Prize, gave rise to the most popular motion picture of our time, and inspired a sequel that became the fastest selling novel of the century. It is one of the most popular books ever written: more than 28 million copies of the book have been sold in more than 37 countries. Today, more than 80 years after its initial publication, its achievements are unparalleled, and it remains the most revered American saga and the most beloved work by an American writer…

Despite boasts that Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell is “the greatest romance of our time,” this approximately 1,000-page book is not just a romance. Its intense focus on a ruthless heroine neatly underscores what this brick of a book is instead: an exploration of transformation, loss, and the deep unfairness of life. Perhaps no story can do more justice to these themes–more memorably and, ultimately, devastatingly–than this, Margaret Mitchell’s Pulitzer Prize–winning masterpiece.

There’s little happiness in Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, something that surprised me even though before beginning I was aware it’s a complex book. Neither heroine Scarlett O’Hara nor Rhett Butler are likable people; their relationship is an unhealthy one, with Butler abusing O’Hara after they marry. It’s the Civil War that hoards the spotlight. This war backdrop, as is true of all war backdrops , lends the story an important gravitas and drama; however, this same backdrop infuses Gone With the Wind with an undercurrent of hopelessness, and an all-encompassing hopelessness it is.

“Hardships make or break people.”

To say that everything hinges on the war backdrop wouldn’t be exaggerating; the war affects each character profoundly, providing the meaning behind their most significant actions. It’s the narrative’s very life force. Margaret Mitchell put a human face on this war that’s remarkable, and her gruesome (but not gratuitously so) descriptions strike all the right emotional chords at just the right intensity.

She impressively juxtaposed the war’s atrocities with Scarlett O’Hara’s superficial frets; this young woman shamelessly laments her lack of stylish dresses while just a few miles away men lie bleeding to death in cramped hospitals without benefit of painkillers. Scarlett O’Hara most certainly is a fearless woman with a strong independent streak, but she’s easy to despise. She’s not so unlikable though. This protagonist is utterly captivating, someone who held me spellbound, much as she does the many characters she manipulates.

“Until you’ve lost your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was or what freedom really is.”

Gone With the Wind isn’t really about Scarlett O’Hara, though, as compelling as she is. The book’s power lies in part on Margaret Mitchell’s spin on the theme of transformation; Scarlett is merely the character she used to drive home that theme. In the world of Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, not all personal transformations are for the better. Margaret Mitchell’s creation isn’t the syrupy maudlin type with inspirational characters turning over a new leaf by story’s end.

This isn’t to say that no one gets their comeuppance in due time or that no lessons are learned, but, like life itself, countless unfair events unfold. Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell isn’t in the business of imparting happily-ever-afters. “The greatest romance of our time” is a surprisingly contemplative tale: real, deeply sad at times, and unafraid to reveal a great many of life’s uglier truths.

“After all, tomorrow is another day!”

Finally, I believe it’s worth mentioning that Gone With the Wind’s Southern sensibility is very strong. The South here is a living character all its own, and this vividness lends even deeper resonance to the story while breathing life into its large cast of characters. I know some have taken–and do take–issue with the Georgia of this era, when slavery and sexism were very much a reality; however, it’s always clear that Mitchell’s goal was only authenticity and accuracy in portrayal, and she wasn’t expressing personal sentiments. Her Pulitzer Prize is well deserved.

Controversy:

Published in 1936, Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind has been banned on social grounds . The book has been called “offensive” and “vulgar” because of the language and characterizations. Words like “damn” and “whore” were scandalous at the time. Also, the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice disapproved of Scarlett’s multiple marriages. The term used to describe slaves was also offensive to readers. In more recent times, the membership of lead characters in the Ku Klux Klan is also problematic.

The book joins the ranks of other books that controversially tackled issues of race, including Joseph Conrad’s The Nigger of Narcissus, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird , Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Buy Now: Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell

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GONE WITH THE WIND

by Margaret Mitchell ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 30, 1936

Don't sell this as primarily a novel of the Civil War. Sell it rather as a novel in human emotions against the background of the Civil War and its aftermath. It has the finer qualities of So Red The Rose , — the authentic picture of people and places and incidents, something of the moonlight and honeysuckle of the glamorous Old South, much of the traditions and manner of life and thought. It has too great length — the author will learn with experience the valuable and essential lesson of selection. But, from the point of view of story and characterization, I found it more absorbing reading, more vital characterization than the Stark Young book. Instead of taking form as a succession of pictures from a family album, the characters come to life with the impact of life upon them, and their impact, one upon the other. The central figure is a girl, spoiled, selfish, dominating, wilful, magnetic, — you hate her, you long to throttle her — but you can't help acknowledging her fascination and admiring her spirit. An opportunist, yes, but she pays the price. The author comes from the state of which she writes — Georgia — and she knows her background thoroughly. She can write.

Pub Date: June 30, 1936

ISBN: 1416548890

Page Count: 33

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1936

HISTORICAL FICTION

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SEEN & HEARD

UK Edition of ‘Gone With the Wind’ Adds Warning

WE WERE THE LUCKY ONES

by Georgia Hunter ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 14, 2017

Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.

Hunter’s debut novel tracks the experiences of her family members during the Holocaust.

Sol and Nechuma Kurc, wealthy, cultured Jews in Radom, Poland, are successful shop owners; they and their grown children live a comfortable lifestyle. But that lifestyle is no protection against the onslaught of the Holocaust, which eventually scatters the members of the Kurc family among several continents. Genek, the oldest son, is exiled with his wife to a Siberian gulag. Halina, youngest of all the children, works to protect her family alongside her resistance-fighter husband. Addy, middle child, a composer and engineer before the war breaks out, leaves Europe on one of the last passenger ships, ending up thousands of miles away. Then, too, there are Mila and Felicia, Jakob and Bella, each with their own share of struggles—pain endured, horrors witnessed. Hunter conducted extensive research after learning that her grandfather (Addy in the book) survived the Holocaust. The research shows: her novel is thorough and precise in its details. It’s less precise in its language, however, which frequently relies on cliché. “ You’ll get only one shot at this ,” Halina thinks, enacting a plan to save her husband. “ Don’t botch it .” Later, Genek, confronting a routine bit of paperwork, must decide whether or not to hide his Jewishness. “ That form is a deal breaker ,” he tells himself. “ It’s life and death .” And: “They are low, it seems, on good fortune. And something tells him they’ll need it.” Worse than these stale phrases, though, are the moments when Hunter’s writing is entirely inadequate for the subject matter at hand. Genek, describing the gulag, calls the nearest town “a total shitscape.” This is a low point for Hunter’s writing; elsewhere in the novel, it’s stronger. Still, the characters remain flat and unknowable, while the novel itself is predictable. At this point, more than half a century’s worth of fiction and film has been inspired by the Holocaust—a weighty and imposing tradition. Hunter, it seems, hasn’t been able to break free from her dependence on it.

Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-399-56308-9

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016

RELIGIOUS FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION

Hulu’s ‘We Were the Lucky Ones’ Adds To Cast

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New York Times Bestseller

IndieBound Bestseller

THE TATTOOIST OF AUSCHWITZ

by Heather Morris ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 4, 2018

The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as...

An unlikely love story set amid the horrors of a Nazi death camp.

Based on real people and events, this debut novel follows Lale Sokolov, a young Slovakian Jew sent to Auschwitz in 1942. There, he assumes the heinous task of tattooing incoming Jewish prisoners with the dehumanizing numbers their SS captors use to identify them. When the Tätowierer, as he is called, meets fellow prisoner Gita Furman, 17, he is immediately smitten. Eventually, the attraction becomes mutual. Lale proves himself an operator, at once cagey and courageous: As the Tätowi erer, he is granted special privileges and manages to smuggle food to starving prisoners. Through female prisoners who catalog the belongings confiscated from fellow inmates, Lale gains access to jewels, which he trades to a pair of local villagers for chocolate, medicine, and other items. Meanwhile, despite overwhelming odds, Lale and Gita are able to meet privately from time to time and become lovers. In 1944, just ahead of the arrival of Russian troops, Lale and Gita separately leave the concentration camp and experience harrowingly close calls. Suffice it to say they both survive. To her credit, the author doesn’t flinch from describing the depravity of the SS in Auschwitz and the unimaginable suffering of their victims—no gauzy evasions here, as in Boy in the Striped Pajamas . She also manages to raise, if not really explore, some trickier issues—the guilt of those Jews, like the tattooist, who survived by doing the Nazis’ bidding, in a sense betraying their fellow Jews; and the complicity of those non-Jews, like the Slovaks in Lale’s hometown, who failed to come to the aid of their beleaguered countrymen.

Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018

ISBN: 978-0-06-279715-5

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018

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Book Reviews

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell: Book Review

This sweeping epic portrays life during the Civil War and Reconstruction through the eyes of Scarlett O’Hara, a young Southern belle who has a stubborn streak a mile wide. She’s in love with the wrong man, marries the wrong men, and is irredeemably selfish, but she’s a survivor. Through it all, she steadfastly refuses the advances of reprobate blockade runner Rhett Butler. Their story is as timeless as it is turbulent.

I feel like the last Southern woman to read Gone With the Wind . My excuse, such as it is: I did try to read it once before, when I was way too young. I thought Scarlett was mean, Miss Melly was a wimp, and Ashley was just useless. I put it down very early on and never wanted to pick it up again. However, as the host of The Southern Literature Reading Challenge , people were shocked that I’d never read this Southern classic, my aunt perhaps most of all. She has read it multiple times and re-watches the movie religiously. She finally told me last year when we were at the Decatur Book Festival together, “How about we do a read-a-long? It’s been years since I re-read it and I would love to get your reactions as you’re reading it for the first time.” With her shove support, I finally got up the nerve to tackle this beast.

I loved it. I have an ancient old mass market paperback with the tiniest font known to man and I still plowed through. My eyes physically hurt from the strain of reading almost 1000 pages of “ant prints” as I call fonts that small, and I still could not put it down.

These characters just came to life for me. Don’t ask me if I hated them or loved them because I still couldn’t tell you and it’s been over 6 months since I finished it. Rhett–I eventually loved him, even though there were times I wanted to smack that smirk off his face. Ashley–I didn’t respect him at all. He was a weak excuse of a man. Melanie–I thought she was weak and silly at first, but she’s probably the strongest character in the book in a lot of ways. She surprised me. Just when I wrote her off as hopeless, she would do something to make me change my mind. Scarlett–I was all over the place. I loathed her, I respected her. She was selfish, she was a survivor. She’s a bitch, she’s a forerunner of the women’s movement. She is complicated. That’s all I know for sure.

I have seen enough of the movie in the past to have a very good idea about the story. I was surprised when these extra kids and marriages suddenly showed up in Scarlett’s life. Holy cow, she was a busy woman. Maybe I missed something, but I think they cleaned her up just a little for the movie.

Grab a copy with a readable font (I do not recommend reading until your eyes hurt), and give this a try. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the epic story you’ll find within.

Banned: I’m having trouble tracking down exactly why Gone With the Wind has been banned or challenged. I’m finding brief references to racism, Scarlett’s behavior, and offensive language. It definitely had some scenes racist scenes that made me uncomfortable, there’s no denying that. But how can you write a book about this period and place in history, keep it historically accurate, and avoid the racist attitudes? You can’t. I’m not excusing the behavior, but there’s no changing history, much as we would like to. Instead, we must remember our history to guard from going down the dark paths again. Scarlett is a strong, single-minded woman, and we all know how that tends to go over with society in general. Heaven forbid a woman should have a mind of her own. The language? Other than the racist stuff, it’s nothing that most of us would even raise an eyebrow at today.

Read an excerpt .

Read more reviews at A Literary Odyssey , A Room of One’s Own , and Age 30+ … A Lifetime of Books .

If you liked Gone With the Wind , you might also like Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, Ahab’s Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund, and Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston.

Buy Gone With the Wind at

I have an affiliate relationship with Malaprop’s , my local independent bookstore located in beautiful downtown Asheville, NC; and Better World Books . I will receive a small commission at no cost to you if you purchase books through links on my site.

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But how can you write a book about this period and place in history, keep it historically accurate, and avoid the racist attitudes? You can't. <~~ Exactly!

Great review! I love this book, I recently re-read it myself.

As many times as I've watched the movie, I can't believe I still haven't read the book! I'm going to have to search the library for a large print copy 😉

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The Literary Edit

Review: Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell

How wrong I was. And how I shall ever be indebted to Lesley for lending it to me. It was perhaps a hundred or so pages into Gone With The Wind that I really fell for this epic tale; and from then on in, I never wanted it to end.

Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler, the hero and heroine of the book are so full of life and their complex relationship is without question the single favourite I have ever come across in the many hundreds of books I have read. My boyfriend at the time paled in comparison to Rhett Butler, whose wit and charm had me, quite literally, swooning.

And alongside this epic romance is a very real war and an intense plot that deals with death, racial discrimination, and triumph over adversity. Gone With The Wind literally took my breath away (no pun intended) and it is, without question, my very favourite book of all time.

About Gone with the Wind

Gone with the Wind is a novel written by Margaret Mitchell, first published in 1936. The story is set in Clayton County, Georgia, and Atlanta during the American Civil War and Reconstruction era. It depicts the struggles of young Scarlett O’Hara, the spoiled daughter of a well-to-do plantation owner, who must use every means at her disposal to claw her way out of the poverty she finds herself in after Sherman’s March to the Sea. A historical novel, the story is a Bildungsroman or coming-of-age story, with the title taken from a poem written by Ernest Dowson.

Gone with the Wind was popular with American readers from the onset and was the top American fiction bestseller in the year it was published and in 1937. As of 2014, a Harris poll found it to be the second favorite book of American readers, just behind the Bible. More than 30 million copies have been printed worldwide.

About Margaret Mitchell

Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell, popularly known as Margaret Mitchell, was an American author, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1937 for her novel, Gone with the Wind, published in 1936. The novel is one of the most popular books of all time, selling more than 28 million copies. An American film adaptation, released in 1939, became the highest-grossing film in the history of Hollywood, and received a record-breaking number of Academy Awards.

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4 comments on “Review: Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell”

GWTW is my favorite too. Margaret Mitchell is incredibly interesting. I’m doing a project right now to read through everything she wrote that’s in print, biographies, her novella, etc. And I’ll probably reread Gone With the Wind for the fourth time.

If you’re ever interested in a biography, I strongly recommend Margaret Mitchell and John Marsh: The Love Story Behind Gone With the Wind by Marianne Walker.

If you’re at all curious here’s a post about a recent visit I made to the Margaret Mitchell House (where she wrote Gone With the Wind ). You can find a link to my Margaret Mitchell project on my about page, with links to books about her.

Cheers! Love your blog!! Excellent goals.

I’m also reading through the classics. 😀

Book Review: 'Margaret Mitchell's 'Gone with the Wind': A Best Seller's Odyssey from Atlanta to Hollywood'

Celebration of 'gone with the wind' puts margaret mitchell's success in a new light.

Just when you think everything has been written about this iconic Southern novel and its equally iconic author, another book issues forth.

Timed to coincide with the 75th anniversary of the publication of "Gone With the Wind," writer Ellen F. Brown and uber-fan John Wiley Jr. have produced a prodigious work that follows the American novel and its dynamic mistress through the throes of writing and publication and all its aftermath.

In a book that should be read by every aspiring writer, Brown and Wiley outline with explicit detail the dealings of Mitchell, her husband, John Marsh, and her brother, Stephens Mitchell, with agents, publishers, movie producers and lawyers as well as the multitude of fans, admirers and imitators.

Privy to documents and collections never before available, the authors give us an intimate over-the-shoulder view of the indefatigable Mitchell's negotiations first with Macmillan editor John Latham, then the publishing bosses George and Richard Brett and eventually, when it got to the movie rights stage, Hollywood mogul/producer David O. Selznick. She proved as tough as any of her characters in these encounters.

Later, fighting the veil of war and the subsequent ruin, she set new standards in international copyright law with her "meticulous" dealings with publishers in other countries.

Today, with the U.S. copyright protected until 2031, Mitchell's fading heirs, through a protective trust, continue to milk the popularity with authorized sequels "Scarlett" (1991) by Alexandra Ripley and "Rhett Butler's People" (2007) by Donald McCaig. The publicity involved in these sequels renewed interest in the original, which continues to sell at a profitable rate with dozens of new editions appearing around the world in recent years - "In 2009, the book appeared for the first time in Albania."

Laden with the minutiae of business, Brown and Wiley's book could easily have bogged down into a boring and unreadable morass. But their work reads like an adventure story forcing readers to keep flipping to find out what is going to happen next. They have accomplished what they set out to do. By "refocus(ing) the lens," they have "solved mysteries (and) corrected misunderstandings, (while producing) ... the most thorough, accurate, and up-to-date exposition on the remarkable life of a remarkable book."

"Born storyteller" and consummate businesswoman Margaret Mitchell would have approved.

Lee Scott lives in Avondale.

Gone with the Wind

Margaret mitchell, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind . Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.

Gone with the Wind: Introduction

Gone with the wind: plot summary, gone with the wind: detailed summary & analysis, gone with the wind: themes, gone with the wind: quotes, gone with the wind: characters, gone with the wind: terms, gone with the wind: symbols, gone with the wind: theme wheel, brief biography of margaret mitchell.

Historical Context of Gone with the Wind

Other books related to gone with the wind.

Full Title: Gone with the Wind
When Written: 1926
Where Written: Atlanta, Georgia
When Published: 1936
Literary Period: Modernism
Genre: Novel, Historical Fiction, Bildungsroman
Setting: American South before, during, and after the Civil War
Climax: The Siege of Atlanta
Antagonist: Yankees, Reconstruction
Point of View: Third Person

Extra Credit for Gone with the Wind

Tomboy. When Margaret Mitchell was three years old, her dress caught fire at the stove. Her mother was so afraid it would happen again that she dressed her in pants from then on. Her brother—who refused to play with girls—played with her as long as she called herself Jimmy and pretended to be a boy, which she did until she was 14.

Controversy. Gone with the Wind has been banned in classrooms for its portrayal of race relations and for painting slavery and the pre-Civil War South in a favorable light. The famous movie adaption of the book has been removed from viewing platforms countless times for the same reason.

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Gone With The Wind

Written by Margaret Mitchell Review by Andrea Connell

With this reissue of Gone with the Wind , I decided that it was time for me to finally read this Pulitzer Prize winning classic and see what all the fuss was about. I hadn’t seen the movie either, so this was going to be a clean slate affair for me.

Well, I am thankful that I read it. This book earns its reputation as one of America’s all time classics. This was the most multilayered, touching, and haunting depiction of war I have ever read. But it is not only about war and loss; it is about love, loyalty, bravery, and survival, and discovering too late what is really important in life.

This is an epic novel about the Confederacy. As a born and bred Northerner, I never understood the Southern point of view of the Civil War. Now, I do. I will always be grateful to this book for engaging my interest in the Civil War and opening my eyes to the Southern states’ suffering and their loss of an era.

On a literary level, Mitchell’s characters are fresh and alive, especially the detestable rogue turned doting father, Rhett Butler, the self-absorbed and determined Scarlett O’Hara, the loyal, sensitive, and saintly Melly Hamilton, and the stern yet loving Mammy. It was hard to find anything likable about Scarlett, a feeling I struggled with throughout the book. The same thought applied to Rhett, up until a certain point. There were enough likeable characters, on the other hand, to make up for that discomfort. But being forced to accept the characters as they truly are was one of the highlights of the novel. The book is HUGE (over 950 pages) and, for the most part, “unputdownable.” The book seems to have been well researched (at least from the Confederate viewpoint), and there are many descriptive details of battles, the burning of Atlanta and of the Georgian plantations, the plights of both slavery and emancipation, and the Reconstruction Era. I highly recommend this book, both for reading pleasure and for a poignant lesson in Civil War history.

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Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell - review

Not many books nowadays are 984 pages long, or set in the 1800's. But of course, some books remain classics, and Gone with the Wind is definitely one of them. Although it took my mother ages to persuade me to read it, and it took me at least 100 pages to get really into the book, after that I was unable to put the book down for almost 4 days in a row.

Scarlett O' Hara is a feisty teenage girl, with everything a girl could possibly want. Mamy to wait on her, a loving family, wealth, men begging to dance with her, good looks and a sixteen inch waist. So when she falls for handsome Ashley Wilkes, and the start of the civil war is announced, her world begins to fall apart. At a ball in Twelve Oaks, she meets Rhett Butler. He's extremely rich and arrogant with a reputation for being a rogue and she forms her opinion of him almost at once.

Then the war is announced and Scarlett's adventure begins. In order to make Ashley jealous, she marries Charles Hamilton. But after going away to fight the Yankees, Charles dies almost immediately. Although Scarlett is left a widow, she realises that she is going to have her first baby and, due to depression, she is sent to Atlanta. Scarlett's life then starts to change dramatically. Being a widow, she can only wear black, and must not talk to men. This makes life very hard for flirty sixteen-year-old Scarlett. Then the civil war really starts to become dangerous, and it is up to Scarlett to save herself.

This book taught me a lot about the Civil war, and the language and the descriptions are amazing. This is a great historical read, and makes a good holiday read, as its long enough to keep you busy reading for at least a week. I loved Gone with the Wind, and I would highly recommend it to anyone over eleven who likes historical stories.

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Book review: margaret mitchell's 'gone with the wind', as a reader, i would say that the popularity of "gone with the wind" is perfectly understandable. as a black man, i find it to be a bit unnerving..

Growing up in Virginia, you could say that the memory of the Civil War is ubiquitous. I’ve been intrigued by the conflict since I first learned of it in elementary school. That interest was reignited last year, not only due to the controversy that arose surrounding the Confederate battle flag, but also because I took an English course whose curriculum partly centered around Civil War-era literature.

Authors like Ambrose Bierce, Louisa May Alcott and a host of others involved in the war provided me with perspectives of the war I hadn’t previously considered. One key lesson I took away from that class was the Confederates were not all villains. And their reasons for taking up arms were as varied as their own names.

In part to gain a better understanding of the Civil War (but also, because between my minimum wage job at the movie theater and my boring burrow of a hometown, I needed an escape.) I decided to read the most popular book set in that chapter of American history: Margaret Mitchell’s "Gone with the Wind." I’ll tell you what I think about it.

Published in 1936, Mitchell’s tale of civilian life in Georgia amid the war and during Reconstruction was immediately met with critical acclaim and booming commercial success. After winning the Pulitzer Prize for Novel in 1937 , the novel was once again thrust into the limelight two years later, when an equally beloved film adaptation starring Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable erupted in theaters across the country. It has remained wildly popular since then. According to a 2014 poll, it is the American people’s second-favorite book to read and the movie version still ranks as the highest-grossing film of all time when ticket prices are adjusted for inflation.

I don’t think I’m far-fetched when I say that most Americans are at least vaguely familiar with "Gone with the Wind." Before reading, I knew that the story would involve a Southern Belle’s luckless love life, that some of the action took place during Sherman’s siege of Atlanta. And that toward the end, a mustachioed man who looked like a pirate would utter something frank about not giving a damn. (Rhett Butler does, in fact, turn out to be a kind of swashbuckler. But smuggling goods across the Union blockade proves to be the most benign of his crimes, as we’ll see.)

Oh, and I also figured there’d be a bit of awkward racism here and there — most of the black characters would be dimwitted and content to be slaves. But that shouldn’t be too much of a problem, right? It is a period piece set during a time when slavery was legal, and in a location where it was often perceived as a moral good.

That last bit still didn’t discourage me from reading, though. So in June, I purchased the novel on my E-reader. It took me around three weeks to read all 1,080 pages. Having not only read the novel but having had considerable time to mull over it, do you know what I think?

As a reader, I would say that the novel's popularity is completely understandable. As a black man, and someone opposed to racial injustice, I find it to be a bit disturbing.

The novel does, in fact, paint a rosy picture of slavery as a perfectly benevolent system that kept unruly blacks in line who might otherwise run rampant and cause havoc. The institution is treated as a paternalistic one in which whites watch over their slaves as if they were children and provide all of their needs, only asking for service and subservience in return. The reader is expected to think that freeing slaves is the equivalent of turning week-old puppies loose into the woods. “Slaves were neither miserable nor unfortunate,” Mitchell’s narrator says. “The negroes were far better off under slavery than they were now under freedom.”

The important black characters are perfectly happy in their condition as livestock, and often seem little more than props. Mammy, Pork, Prissy, Dilcey, Uncle Peter and Big Sam have few, if any, aspirations, goals, or motivations apart from serving their supposed superiors. Even after emancipation, when they are free to come and go as they please, they all unhesitatingly stay by the O’Haras’ side because, as Mitchell would have had readers believe, that’s what moral blacks would’ve done.

Big Sam, one of the field hands on the O’Hara’s plantation of Tara and a “good one,” is perhaps the most ridiculous example of this. After he’s freed by Union troops, he travels all the way to Boston but decides freedom isn’t for him. He comes running back to Georgia just so he can be of service to his erstwhile owners. When he learns that his master, Gerald O’Hara has died, he weeps as if he hasn’t anything else to live for.

Further, any ex-slave who fully embraces freedom, who tries to survive independently of the charity of white people, is treated as a villain. Nearly every character, even the black ones, refer to them derisively as “free-issue niggers.” They’re lazy, unscrupulous, and (as the narrator often takes care to remind us) “insolent.” Mitchell even makes the Freedmen’s Bureau into antagonists, treating it as an inherently corrupt agency whose sole aim was to take down the planter class and promote miscegenation among blacks and whites. According to Mitchell, the point of the Freedmen’s Bureau was not to set up former slaves for success, but to keep them fed “while they loafed and poisoned their minds against their former owners.”

In "Gone with the Wind," the loss of black life is as inconsequential as the deaths of non-human animals. In early Reconstruction, Scarlett O’Hara’s principal love interest and nineteenth-century heartthrob, Rhett Butler, is imprisoned in a makeshift jail run by Union soldiers. Why? Because he killed a so-called "nigger" for being rude to a white woman, and as he puts it, “What else could a Southern gentleman do?”

Yet, Mitchell does not appear to have intended for the reader to detest Rhett Butler and he is presented in a mostly positive light. Later in the story, Scarlett’s husband and other men of Atlanta out themselves as members of the fledgling Ku Klux Klan and track down and murder a black man and his white accomplice for attempting (and failing) to rob Scarlett, thereby restoring her honor.

Yep. The KKK are the good guys in America’s second-favorite book. That isn’t even the end of it. There’s much more content in "Gone with the Wind" deserving of mention, but I haven’t the space to touch on every last bit of it here.

In the end, I find the white supremacist elements of "Gone with the Wind" to be especially tragic because I think the novel is a veritable masterpiece otherwise. If you cut out its overindulgent use of racial slurs, overlook its comparisons of Africans to apes and monkeys, and forget that its author appears to consider it a tragedy that black bodies can no longer be bought and sold, what you have is likely one of the greatest novels ever written in English.

Margaret Mitchell did not only have a gift for storytelling but also a knack for poetic prose; the diction and prose in "Gone with the Wind" paint beautifully vivid pictures in the mind’s eye of the reader. Its wide cast of (white) characters is incredibly fleshed out and well-developed, such that an attentive reader may feel real emotion when something good or bad happens to them. Mitchell manages to take the reader on a journey to a different time, a different place, and introduce them to more authentic personalities than those of many of the people they've probably met in real life. I cannot deny that the book is a monument of language.

Much like the United States itself, "Gone with the Wind" simultaneously offers things to detest and to love about it. Is the book deserving of all of its accolades, or should it be treated as something more on par with a racist manifesto? One could make valid cases for either argument. Personally, I would recommend that anyone who is interested read it for themselves, if they can spare the time. All art is subjective, and at the end of the day your own point of view is no more or less valid than that of anyone else on the planet.

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Grateful beyond words: a letter to my inspiration, i have never been so thankful to know you..

I can't say "thank you" enough to express how grateful I am for you coming into my life. You have made such a huge impact on my life. I would not be the person I am today without you and I know that you will keep inspiring me to become an even better version of myself.

You have taught me that you don't always have to strong. You are allowed to break down as long as you pick yourself back up and keep moving forward. When life had you at your worst moments, you allowed your friends to be there for you and to help you. You let them in and they helped pick you up. Even in your darkest hour you showed so much strength. I know that you don't believe in yourself as much as you should but you are unbelievably strong and capable of anything you set your mind to.

Your passion to make a difference in the world is unbelievable. You put your heart and soul into your endeavors and surpass any personal goal you could have set. Watching you do what you love and watching you make a difference in the lives of others is an incredible experience. The way your face lights up when you finally realize what you have accomplished is breathtaking and I hope that one day I can have just as much passion you have.

SEE MORE: A Letter To My Best Friend On Her Birthday

The love you have for your family is outstanding. Watching you interact with loved ones just makes me smile . You are so comfortable and you are yourself. I see the way you smile when you are around family and I wish I could see you smile like this everyday. You love with all your heart and this quality is something I wished I possessed.

You inspire me to be the best version of myself. I look up to you. I feel that more people should strive to have the strength and passion that you exemplify in everyday life.You may be stubborn at points but when you really need help you let others in, which shows strength in itself. I have never been more proud to know someone and to call someone my role model. You have taught me so many things and I want to thank you. Thank you for inspiring me in life. Thank you for making me want to be a better person.

Waitlisted for a College Class? Here's What to Do!

Dealing with the inevitable realities of college life..

Course registration at college can be a big hassle and is almost never talked about. Classes you want to take fill up before you get a chance to register. You might change your mind about a class you want to take and must struggle to find another class to fit in the same time period. You also have to make sure no classes clash by time. Like I said, it's a big hassle.

This semester, I was waitlisted for two classes. Most people in this situation, especially first years, freak out because they don't know what to do. Here is what you should do when this happens.

Don't freak out

This is a rule you should continue to follow no matter what you do in life, but is especially helpful in this situation.

Email the professor

Around this time, professors are getting flooded with requests from students wanting to get into full classes. This doesn't mean you shouldn't burden them with your email; it means they are expecting interested students to email them. Send a short, concise message telling them that you are interested in the class and ask if there would be any chance for you to get in.

Attend the first class

Often, the advice professors will give you when they reply to your email is to attend the first class. The first class isn't the most important class in terms of what will be taught. However, attending the first class means you are serious about taking the course and aren't going to give up on it.

Keep attending class

Every student is in the same position as you are. They registered for more classes than they want to take and are "shopping." For the first couple of weeks, you can drop or add classes as you please, which means that classes that were once full will have spaces. If you keep attending class and keep up with assignments, odds are that you will have priority. Professors give preference to people who need the class for a major and then from higher to lower class year (senior to freshman).

Have a backup plan

For two weeks, or until I find out whether I get into my waitlisted class, I will be attending more than the usual number of classes. This is so that if I don't get into my waitlisted class, I won't have a credit shortage and I won't have to fall back in my backup class. Chances are that enough people will drop the class, especially if it is very difficult like computer science, and you will have a chance. In popular classes like art and psychology, odds are you probably won't get in, so prepare for that.

Remember that everything works out at the end

Life is full of surprises. So what if you didn't get into the class you wanted? Your life obviously has something else in store for you. It's your job to make sure you make the best out of what you have.

Navigating the Talking Stage: 21 Essential Questions to Ask for Connection

It's mandatory to have these conversations..

Whether you met your new love interest online , through mutual friends, or another way entirely, you'll definitely want to know what you're getting into. I mean, really, what's the point in entering a relationship with someone if you don't know whether or not you're compatible on a very basic level?

Consider these 21 questions to ask in the talking stage when getting to know that new guy or girl you just started talking to:

1. What do you do for a living?

What someone does for a living can tell a lot about who they are and what they're interested in! Their career reveals a lot more about them than just where they spend their time to make some money.

2. What's your favorite color?

OK, I get it, this seems like something you would ask a Kindergarten class, but I feel like it's always good to know someone's favorite color . You could always send them that Snapchat featuring you in that cute shirt you have that just so happens to be in their favorite color!

3. Do you have any siblings?

This one is actually super important because it's totally true that people grow up with different roles and responsibilities based on where they fall in the order. You can tell a lot about someone just based on this seemingly simple question.

4. What's your favorite television show?

OK, maybe this isn't a super important question, but you have to know ASAP if you can quote Michael Scott or not. If not, he probably isn't the one. Sorry, girl.

5. When is your birthday?

You can then proceed to do the thing that every girl does without admitting it and see how compatible your zodiacs are.

6. What's your biggest goal in life?

If you're like me, you have big goals that you want to reach someday, and you want a man behind you who also has big goals and understands what it's like to chase after a dream. If his biggest goal is to see how quickly he can binge-watch " Grey's Anatomy " on Netflix , you may want to move on.

7. If you had three wishes granted to you by a genie, what would they be?

This is a go-to for an insight into their personality. Based on how they answer, you can tell if they're goofy, serious, or somewhere in between.

8. What's your favorite childhood memory?

For some, this may be a hard question if it involves a family member or friend who has since passed away . For others, it may revolve around a tradition that no longer happens. The answers to this question are almost endless!

9. If you could change one thing about your life, what would it be?

We all have parts of our lives and stories that we wish we could change. It's human nature to make mistakes. This question is a little bit more personal but can really build up the trust level.

10. Are you a cat or a dog person?

I mean, duh! If you're a dog person, and he is a cat person, it's not going to work out.

11. Do you believe in a religion or any sort of spiritual power?

Personally, I am a Christian, and as a result, I want to be with someone who shares those same values. I know some people will argue that this question is too much in the talking stage , but why go beyond the talking stage if your personal values will never line up?

12. If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would it be?

Even homebodies have a must visit place on their bucket list !

13. What is your ideal date night?

Hey, if you're going to go for it... go for it!

14. Who was/is your celebrity crush?

For me, it was hands-down Nick Jonas . This is always a fun question to ask!

15. What's a good way to cheer you up if you're having a bad day?

Let's be real, if you put a label on it, you're not going to see your significant other at their best 24/7.

16. Do you have any tattoos?

This can lead to some really good conversations, especially if they have a tattoo that has a lot of meaning to them!

17. Can you describe yourself in three words?

It's always interesting to see if how the person you're talking to views their personal traits lines ups with the vibes you're getting.

18. What makes you the most nervous in life?

This question can go multiple different directions, and it could also be a launching pad for other conversations.

19. What's the best gift you have ever received?

Admittedly, I have asked this question to friends as well, but it's neat to see what people value.

20. What do you do to relax/have fun?

Work hard, play hard, right?

21. What are your priorities at this phase of your life?

This is always interesting because no matter how compatible your personalities may be, if one of you wants to be serious and the other is looking for something casual, it's just not going to work.

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Challah vs. Easter Bread: A Delicious Dilemma

Is there really such a difference in challah bread or easter bread.

Ever since I could remember, it was a treat to receive Easter Bread made by my grandmother. We would only have it once a year and the wait was excruciating. Now that my grandmother has gotten older, she has stopped baking a lot of her recipes that require a lot of hand usage--her traditional Italian baking means no machines. So for the past few years, I have missed enjoying my Easter Bread.

A few weeks ago, I was given a loaf of bread called Challah (pronounced like holla), and upon my first bite, I realized it tasted just like Easter Bread. It was so delicious that I just had to make some of my own, which I did.

The recipe is as follows:

Ingredients

2 tsp active dry or instant yeast 1 cup lukewarm water 4 to 4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 1/2 cup white granulated sugar 2 tsp salt 2 large eggs 1 large egg yolk (reserve the white for the egg wash) 1/4 cup neutral-flavored vegetable oil

Instructions

Combine yeast and a pinch of sugar in small bowl with the water and stir until you see a frothy layer across the top.
Whisk together 4 cups of the flour, sugar, and salt in a large bowl.
Make a well in the center of the flour and add in eggs, egg yolk, and oil. Whisk these together to form a slurry, pulling in a little flour from the sides of the bowl.
Pour the yeast mixture over the egg slurry and mix until difficult to move.
Turn out the dough onto a floured work surface and knead by hand for about 10 minutes. If the dough seems very sticky, add flour a teaspoon at a time until it feels tacky, but no longer like bubblegum. The dough has finished kneading when it is soft, smooth, and holds a ball-shape.
Place the dough in an oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and place somewhere warm. Let the dough rise 1 1/2 to 2 hours.
Separate the dough into four pieces. Roll each piece of dough into a long rope roughly 1-inch thick and 16 inches long.
Gather the ropes and squeeze them together at the very top. Braid the pieces in the pattern of over, under, and over again. Pinch the pieces together again at the bottom.
Line a baking sheet with parchment and lift the loaf on top. Sprinkle the loaf with a little flour and drape it with a clean dishcloth. Place the pan somewhere warm and away from drafts and let it rise until puffed and pillowy, about an hour.
Heat the oven to 350°F. Whisk the reserved egg white with a tablespoon of water and brush it all over the challah. Be sure to get in the cracks and down the sides of the loaf.
Slide the challah on its baking sheet into the oven and bake for 30 to 35 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through cooking. The challah is done when it is deeply browned.

I kept wondering how these two breads could be so similar in taste. So I decided to look up a recipe for Easter Bread to make a comparison. The two are almost exactly the same! These recipes are similar because they come from religious backgrounds. The Jewish Challah bread is based on kosher dietary laws. The Christian Easter Bread comes from the Jewish tradition but was modified over time because they did not follow kosher dietary laws.

A recipe for Easter bread is as follows:

2 tsp active dry or instant yeast 2/3 cup milk 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 1/4 cup white granulated sugar 2 tbs butter 2 large eggs 2 tbs melted butter 1 tsp salt

In a large bowl, combine 1 cup flour, sugar, salt, and yeast; stir well. Combine milk and butter in a small saucepan; heat until milk is warm and butter is softened but not melted.
Gradually add the milk and butter to the flour mixture; stirring constantly. Add two eggs and 1/2 cup flour; beat well. Add the remaining flour, 1/2 cup at a time, stirring well after each addition. When the dough has pulled together, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic, about 8 minutes.
Lightly oil a large bowl, place the dough in the bowl and turn to coat with oil. Cover with a damp cloth and let rise in a warm place until doubled in volume, about 1 hour.
Deflate the dough and turn it out onto a lightly floured surface. Divide the dough into two equal size rounds; cover and let rest for 10 minutes. Roll each round into a long roll about 36 inches long and 1 1/2 inches thick. Using the two long pieces of dough, form a loosely braided ring, leaving spaces for the five colored eggs. Seal the ends of the ring together and use your fingers to slide the eggs between the braids of dough.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place loaf on a buttered baking sheet and cover loosely with a damp towel. Place loaf in a warm place and let rise until doubled in bulk, about 45 minutes. Brush risen loaf with melted butter.
Bake in the preheated oven until golden brown, about 30 minutes.

Both of these recipes are really easy to make. While you might need to have a day set aside for this activity, you can do things while the dough is rising or in the oven. After only a few hours, you have a delicious loaf of bread that you made from scratch, so the time and effort is really worth it!

Unlocking Lake People's Secrets: 15 Must-Knows!

There's no other place you'd rather be in the summer..

The people that spend their summers at the lake are a unique group of people.

Whether you grew up going to the lake , have only recently started going, or have only been once or twice, you know it takes a certain kind of person to be a lake person. To the long-time lake people, the lake holds a special place in your heart , no matter how dirty the water may look.

Every year when summer rolls back around, you can't wait to fire up the boat and get back out there. Here is a list of things you can probably identify with as a fellow lake-goer.

A bad day at the lake is still better than a good day not at the lake.

It's your place of escape, where you can leave everything else behind and just enjoy the beautiful summer day. No matter what kind of week you had, being able to come and relax without having to worry about anything else is the best therapy there is. After all, there's nothing better than a day of hanging out in the hot sun, telling old funny stories and listening to your favorite music.

You know the best beaches and coves to go to.

Whether you want to just hang out and float or go walk around on a beach, you know the best spots. These often have to be based on the people you're with, given that some "party coves" can get a little too crazy for little kids on board. I still have vivid memories from when I was six that scared me when I saw the things drunk girls would do for beads.

You have no patience for the guy who can't back his trailer into the water right.

When there's a long line of trucks waiting to dump their boats in the water, there's always that one clueless guy who can't get it right, and takes 5 attempts and holds up the line. No one likes that guy. One time my dad got so fed up with a guy who was taking too long that he actually got out of the car and asked this guy if he could just do it for him. So he got into the guy's car, threw it in reverse, and got it backed in on the first try. True story.

Doing the friendly wave to every boat you pass.

Similar to the "jeep wave," almost everyone waves to other boats passing by. It's just what you do, and is seen as a normal thing by everyone.

The cooler is always packed, mostly with beer.

Alcohol seems to be a big part of the lake experience, but other drinks are squeezed into the room remaining in the cooler for the kids, not to mention the wide assortment of chips and other foods in the snack bag.

Giving the idiot who goes 30 in a "No Wake Zone" a piece of your mind.

There's nothing worse than floating in the water, all settled in and minding your business, when some idiot barrels through. Now your anchor is loose, and you're left jostled by the waves when it was nice and perfectly still before. This annoyance is typically answered by someone yelling some choice words to them that are probably accompanied by a middle finger in the air.

You have no problem with peeing in the water.

It's the lake, and some social expectations are a little different here, if not lowered quite a bit. When you have to go, you just go, and it's no big deal to anyone because they do it too.

You know the frustration of getting your anchor stuck.

The number of anchors you go through as a boat owner is likely a number that can be counted on two hands. Every once in a while, it gets stuck on something on the bottom of the lake, and the only way to fix the problem is to cut the rope, and you have to replace it.

Watching in awe at the bigger, better boats that pass by.

If you're the typical lake-goer, you likely might have an average-sized boat that you're perfectly happy with. However, that doesn't mean you don't stop and stare at the fast boats that loudly speed by, or at the obnoxiously huge yachts that pass.

Knowing any swimsuit that you own with white in it is best left for the pool or the ocean.

You've learned this the hard way, coming back from a day in the water and seeing the flowers on your bathing suit that were once white, are now a nice brownish hue.

The momentary fear for your life as you get launched from the tube.

If the driver knows how to give you a good ride, or just wants to specifically throw you off, you know you're done when you're speeding up and heading straight for a big wave. Suddenly you're airborne, knowing you're about to completely wipe out, and you eat pure wake. Then you get back on and do it all again.

You're able to go to the restaurants by the water wearing minimal clothing.

One of the many nice things about the life at the lake is that everybody cares about everything a little less. Rolling up to the place wearing only your swimsuit, a cover-up, and flip flops, you fit right in. After a long day when you're sunburned, a little buzzed, and hungry, you're served without any hesitation.

Having unexpected problems with your boat.

Every once in a while you're hit with technical difficulties, no matter what type of watercraft you have. This is one of the most annoying setbacks when you're looking forward to just having a carefree day on the water, but it's bound to happen. This is just one of the joys that come along with being a boat owner.

Having a name for your boat unique to you and your life.

One of the many interesting things that make up the lake culture is the fact that many people name their boats. They can range from basic to funny, but they are unique to each and every owner, and often have interesting and clever meanings behind them.

There's no better place you'd rather be in the summer.

Summer is your all-time favorite season, mostly because it's spent at the lake. Whether you're floating in the cool water under the sun, or taking a boat ride as the sun sets, you don't have a care in the world at that moment . The people that don't understand have probably never experienced it, but it's what keeps you coming back every year.

Top Creators

1. Brittany Morgan, National Writer's Society 2. Radhi, SUNY Stony Brook 3. Kristen Haddox , Penn State University 4. Jennifer Kustanovich , SUNY Stony Brook 5. Clare Regelbrugge , University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

‘Gone With the Wind’ Revisited

A flawed but universal work of art misunderstood by elite book burners..

April 19, 2024 by Danusha Goska 53 Comments

[Pre-order a copy of David Horowitz’s next book, America Betrayed, by clicking here . Orders will begin shipping on May 7th.]

On April 7, I attended an eighty-fifth anniversary theatrical showing of Gone with the Wind . In recent weeks, I’ve been through an earthquake, seen a solar eclipse, and spent hours in church for Easter. Even so, watching GWTW for the fifth time in a theater was a religious experience.

Manohla Dargis, the New York Times chief film critic, interrupts her April 12 review of a new movie to restate her righteous indignation against an unrelated film. Gone with the Wind , she insists, is a “monument to white supremacy and the myth of the Southern Lost Cause.”

Yes, both the book and the film are racist. No, GWTW’s racism is not the works’ alpha and omega. And, no, GWTW is not the only flawed work of art. Have you heard any rap lyrics lately? Rather, GWTW addresses universal themes. Audiences from diverse ethnicities and social classes recognize these themes and even just the film’s soundtrack reduces listeners to tears. GWTW brings the power of myth to a universal experience: growing up, leaving childhood innocence, and entering a world that isn’t invested in your survival, and that can engineer relentless freight trains full of misery and steer them right at you. It’s about who survives the collision, how, and why, and at what cost. “Hardships make or break people,” as Rhett Butler says.

Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 novel sold more than a million copies in its first six months; it went through multiple printings its first year. It was the top fiction bestseller for 1936 and 37. It won the Pulitzer Prize, it has sold thirty million copies, and it has never been out of print. GWTW has 1,207,952 ratings on Goodreads and many of those have been posted in the past month alone, in several different languages. A Latvian reader proclaims , “This novel is timeless … we have advanced in technology … However, a person remains a person … even after almost 100 years, the depths of human nature are revealed.” And readers still name their kids after the characters. In Bangalore, Melanie P. Kumar writes , “The name Melanie encountered a bit of resistance, being a Christian name in an Indian home, but my father stood his ground. He loved what Melanie stood for and hoped that the daughter named after her would in some way reflect her.”

The movie was released in 1939, Hollywood’s annus mirabilis. The Wizard of Oz , Stagecoach , Mr. Smith Goes to Washington , and many other superlative films premiered that year, but GWTW swept the twelfth Academy Awards, winning ten. Adjusted for inflation, GWTW remains history’s highest grossing film.

A diverse team created it. Producer David O. Selznick, of Eastern European Jewish stock, driven by amphetamines and ancestral ambition, pushed himself and everyone around him to the brink. Vivien Leigh was born in Darjeeling of partial non-European ancestry. Olivia de Havilland was a member of an Anglo-Norman gentry family; she was born in Tokyo. Leslie Howard had Hungarian Jewish ancestry.

Hattie McDaniel became the first African American to take home an Oscar. Both of McDaniel’s parents had been born into slavery. Her father fought for the Tennessee 12th U.S. Colored Infantry Regiment. McDaniel willed her Oscar it to Howard University, where it disappeared. One rumor recounts that a disgruntled student threw it into the Potomac River to protest racism.

The American Film Institute ranks the film’s soundtrack the second greatest film score of all time. They put Star Wars first, which is, of course, a sop for nerds who don’t fully understand the distinction between a movie and a video game.

Composer Max Steiner was, like Selznick, another Hollywood giant of Jewish ancestry. “Tara’s Theme” evokes, in the hearer, a yearning for lost grandeur. Decades ago, “Tara’s Theme” served as the intro to a New-York-City-area TV show. “Million Dollar Movie” showed old films on TV. It opened with “Tara’s Theme.” That intro is now on YouTube . The comments there attest to the power of Steiner’s “Tara’s Theme.” Many didn’t realize that “Tara’s Theme” was from GWTW. They just knew it made them long for a lost, better world. That’s the power of art. Some of their comments, below.

“I’m almost 55 years old and I tear up each time I listen to this.”

“I can never get enough of this theme. Just warms my heart. Life seemed so tough back then in the urban jungle but compared against this nightmare society it was almost heavenly”

“originally from The Bronx! This brings back sweet memories.”

“am 68 & I cry too. Memories”

“Memories of my mom letting me stay up late watching tv with her on that little black and white set in our living room. My dad would come home from work and say, ‘what are you still doing up?’ and then he would give me the Tastykake he saved for me from his lunch. He has been gone a while now but when I hear this I can still see him in the doorway, smiling.”

“you can not help getting emotional when you hear this. let me go back just for one day!!!”

“what a treat it was for a youngster to stay up late, either on a non school nite, or snowed in, and see the late movie, and falling asleep on the couch in the den with the black and white tv set flickering”

“Wow…glad I ain’t the only one catching feelings over this. just a small piece of nostalgia to take your mind back to a far better time. Now who used to use the trick of turning the knob in between channels to get a better reception? Hey, we was ghetto! I ain’t ashamed!”

“my mind flashed back to this theme, evoking memories of my Bronx childhood.”

There are hundreds of more such teary-eyed testimonials. “Ghetto” people from the Bronx and Brooklyn are overwhelmed by detailed memories of their childhood on hearing “Tara’s Theme,” written by an Austrian Jew, about a plantation in Georgia. This is what art does. Art is universal.

Yes, the book and film contain racist material. The book uses the N word over a hundred times. GWTW repeatedly refers to blacks as “apes” and “monkeys;” one is a “gorilla;” another is a “baboon.” After the war is over, Scarlett encounters freed blacks. They “turned insolent grins at her and laughed among themselves … How dared they laugh, the black apes! How dared they grin at her, Scarlett O’Hara of Tara! She’d like to have them all whipped until the blood ran down their backs. What devils the Yankees were to set them free, free to jeer at white people!”

Simian vocabulary is used even as Mitchell insists on how beloved Mammy is. “The upstairs hall seemed to shake as Mammy’s ponderous weight came toward the door … Mammy with shoulders dragged down by two heavy wooden buckets, her kind black face sad with the uncomprehending sadness of a monkey’s face … Scarlett ran to her, laying her head on the broad, sagging breasts which had held so many heads, black and white.”

After Scarlett’s daughter Bonnie dies, Mammy takes it upon herself to seek out help. But even in this mission, Mitchell depicts Mammy as less than human. “Mammy waddled slowly up the kitchen steps of Melanie’s house. She was dressed in black from her huge men’s shoes, slashed to permit freedom for her toes, to her black head rag. Her blurred old eyes were bloodshot and red rimmed … Her face was puckered in the sad bewilderment of an old ape but there was determination in her jaw.”

The movie is less poke-you-in-the-eye racist, but the slaves are depicted as simple, happy, and in their proper place. Their liberation puts respectable white women at risk and the – unnamed in the film – Klan must protect whites from freed blacks. In the book, Rhett Butler is jailed on suspicion of being a Klansman who killed an “uppity” black man for insulting a white woman. In the movie, the Yankees arrest Rhett because they think he has Confederate gold.

GWTW is not just condemned because it is racist. It is also condemned because it is popular, because it is erotic, and because the main character is a woman. Those who are better than you and I, that is academics and taste-makers, sneer at the book.

In the American canon, to quote one scholarly publication , Mitchell’s place is “as a vulgar aside having to do with numbers rather than words.” “ Gone With the Wind hasn’t a place in anyone’s canon; it remains a book that nobody wants except its readers.”

Elizabeth Austin threw away her copy of GWTW in 2020 to protest the death of George Floyd. The schizophrenia of Austin’s book burning is reflected in her final gesture. Austin literally kissed the book goodbye. Her father had given her the copy for Christmas in 1975 when she was 17. He knew how much his daughter loved the work. Austin watched the movie six times in one week when she was 11 because she was “spellbound … enraptured.” She went on to read the book numerous times because she loved Scarlett “driven, practical, energetic, and fierce.” She confesses, “In one vestigial corner of my heart, I still yearn to be like Scarlett … I fully understand the absurdity of this confession.”

Austin had owned that copy of GWTW for forty-five years! When she was 62, she realized that GWTW is “pernicious … vicious … evil … disgusting … wrong … a disgrace … poison that weaves a spell … in feminist deathlessly lyrical prose … it deserves the same treatment as Mein Kampf and Triumph of the Will … It is time to send Gone with the Wind to the ash heaps of cultural history.” Austin demands that only “scholars” be allowed to read GWTW “as a problematic text.” “Anybody who champions either book or movie is standing up for the cause of white supremacy and should be judged accordingly.”

Hey, lady. Sending folks to the guillotine for their reading choices? You first. Remember the fate of Robespierre; the revolution always eats its young.

Somehow folks like Austin never protest the book’s other hatreds. GWTW is replete with condemnations of Yankees. Poor white trash are the book’s lowest caste. “Contempt for white trash” makes one a true Southern gentleman, even if, like Scarlett’s father Gerald, he was born in Ireland. There are good blacks; there are no good white trash. Scarlett is sexually assaulted by two men. One is black; the other is white trash. She is rescued by a black man.

The Slatterys are poor and must resort to begging. “The sight of Tom Slattery dawdling on his neighbors’ porches, begging cotton seed for planting or a side of bacon to ‘tide him over,’ was a familiar one. Slattery hated his neighbors with what little energy he possessed, sensing their contempt beneath their courtesy … The house negroes of the County considered themselves superior to white trash, and their unconcealed scorn stung him, while their more secure position … stirred his envy. By contrast with his own miserable existence, they were well-fed, well-clothed and looked after in sickness and old age. They were proud of the good names of their owners and, for the most part, proud to belong to people who were quality, while he was despised by all.”

Scarlett’s mother Ellen, a devout Catholic, dies a martyr’s death. Ellen tends to the Slatterys when they are ill and catches typhoid from them. As Mammy puts it, “Miss Scarlett, it wuz dem Slatterys, dem trashy, no-good, low-down po’-w’ite Slatterys dat kilt Miss Ellen. Ah done tole her an’ tole her it doan do no good doin’ things fer trashy folks, but … her heart so sof’ she couldn’ never say no ter nobody whut needed her … Ah tole her an’ tole her ter let dem w’ite trash alone … Dey is de shiflesses, mos’ ungrateful passel of no- counts livin’. An’ Miss Ellen got no bizness weahin’ herseff out waitin’ on folks” like the Slatterys.

Life is complex; witness this episode from Mitchell’s biography. Benjamin Mays was the son of former slaves. He became a Baptist minister and the “ intellectual conscience ” of the Civil Rights Movement. Mays mentored Martin Luther King, Julian Bond, and others. He was president of Morehouse College. “In 1942, when Mays needed money to help poor students … he went to Margaret Mitchell. Over the next seven years [until her death] the author of Gone With the Wind paid the tuition of dozens of young black men to go on to medical school.”

And also this , from her postmortem legacy. “In March of 2002, Eugene Mitchell, the nephew of Margaret Mitchell, donated $1.5 million to Morehouse College … one of the largest individual gifts in the history of Morehouse College.”

For me, as a reader, there’s an even more significant feature than Mitchell’s charity work that complicates our betters’ book burning of GWTW. In Mammy and other characters, Mitchell created people I experience as real. When I read the above passage about Mammy’s grief after Bonnie’s death, I become furious at Mitchell for using the word “ape.” I want to throw “my” book at her. I want to scream, “How dare you dehumanize Mammy?” Through the magic of art, Mitchell created a character I want to protect from Mitchell’s bigotry.

GWTW was published a mere seventy-one years after the end of the Civil War. Its first readers were closer in time to the end of the Civil War than we are to the end of World War II. Readers related to Union soldiers, and readers who were themselves impoverished by the Depression, didn’t read a 1,037 page book to hate on wicked Yankees and vile white trash. These readers recognized that GWTW is told from the point of view of a girl, sixteen at the book’s opening, who has a limited understanding of the world. She hates all Yankees, even the Yankees who provide her dying mother with medication and tender care.

GWTW includes a vehement condemnation of war profiteers. These profiteers are “scoundrels … I call down the just wrath and vengeance of an embattled people, fighting in the justest of Causes, on these human vultures who bring in satins and laces when our men are dying for want of quinine, who load their boats with tea and wines when our heroes are writhing for lack of morphia. I execrate these vampires who are sucking the lifeblood of the men who follow Robert Lee … How can we endure these scavengers in our midst with their varnished boots when our boys are tramping barefoot into battle? How can we tolerate them with their champagnes and their pates of Strasbourg when our soldiers are shivering about their camp fires and gnawing moldy bacon? I call upon every loyal Confederate to cast them out.”

Rhett Butler, the hero of the book, was a war profiteer. And yet GWTW includes the above excoriation of war profiteers. Back in the day, when English was still taught in schools, readers were sophisticated enough to recognize that the truth value we are to assign to any given text depends on the author’s point of view, the author’s convictions, and the reader’s. Somehow the New York Times could call Soul on Ice “brilliant” and not assume that readers would, like the book’s author, become rapists. And yet Thought Police insist that GWTW will turn readers into racists.

Audiences don’t turn to GWTW as an instruction manual on how to join the Klan, any more than they expect it to teach them how to make a dress out of curtains. In Scarlett’s mind, and maybe in Mitchell’s mind, too, Scarlett’s suffering during the Civil War was caused by Yankees. But in the reader’s mind, that suffering is caused by war, by the war, actual or metaphorical, closest to the reader.

At least one blogger reads a passage from GWTW as an “anti-war gem.” He quotes Rhett Butler, the war profiteer. “All wars are sacred to those who have to fight them … But, no matter what rallying cries the orators give to the idiots who fight … there is never but one reason for war … money.” Is that the POV of, as Manohla Dargis warned , a “monument to white supremacy and the myth of the Southern Lost Cause”? No, it’s a fictional character in a novel expressing his POV.

My friend Sue, a pacifist, reports that GWTW is one of the two “great anti-war” novels she has read, showing “as it does, war from the losing side.” Mitchell, Sue says, “shows the hype and glorification of it all that comes before and then the reality” of the impact of defeat: death, disease, and destruction.

GWTW’s greatness and its flaws exist in different compartments, in the same way that the woman who called Mammy an “ape” appears to have existed in a different compartment from the woman who underwrote numerous black students’ educations.

I saw Gone with the Wind for the first time with my mother and Mrs. Manning, very much not Southern belles. My mother was short; Mrs. Manning, aka “Toots,” was 4’10”. One had six kids; the other, eight, many of them over six feet tall. That such short women had such tall sons and daughters testifies to the malnutrition in their youths. Their legs were sturdy and their hands were workworn. They wore conservative dresses – they wouldn’t think to attend a movie in slacks. Their garments were threadbare but very clean. They wore red lipstick, short, perm-curled hair, small crosses around their necks, and they carried, in the crook of their elbows, pocketbooks full of tissues and reading glasses and other mysterious paraphernalia.

Toots grew up during the Depression. She learned how to find beauty and fun in the most unexpected places, and where they didn’t exist before, she created them out of thin air. She loved her garden full of roses in a small plot in a row of tightly packed, tiny, Cape Cod houses. Her husband worked in Paterson’s textile dye industry.

My mother never recovered from that final trip on an ox cart from her beloved village in Slovakia to a train station, and then to a very big ship. In Pennsylvania anthracite country she knew the kind of poverty where there are no shoes and nothing to fill empty bellies and apa – father – has lungs that are shot and he can’t mine coal any more.

Both Toots and my mother would later lose sons with the same name. Mike Manning and Mike Goska would both die young from cancer. My mother lost a second son; Toots’ daughter was hit by a car, and crippled for life. How did these women make it through? As Mammy says after Scarlett loses her daughter Bonnie, what my mother and Toots had to stand, the good Lord gave them strength to stand.

As we drove home from the movie, I said that I thought Scarlett was mean. Toots and my mother seemed to be sharing a secret between them, one they assumed that I would not be able to understand. “When you get older, you will understand,” they told me. This exchange troubled me. I would understand what?

Shortly thereafter, someone mentioned to our teacher, a nun, that GWTW was playing in Pompton Lakes. Sister, that quick, said, “Let’s call off class and let’s go see the movie.” Saint Francis School shut down. We filled the Colonial Theater with our giggles, our flying popcorn, and our applause. The boys laughed when pregnant Scarlett tripped and went thump-thump-thumping down a flight of stairs. Their laughter clued me in to the jump-the-shark-level melodrama of the scene. Sister insisted with calm authority that Scarlett should have married Ashley, because “opposites attract. She’d support him and he’d get to read poetry all day.”

No child today will experience the magic of that day. The nuns would be accused of racism. The boys would be accused of sexism. Helicopter parents would sue the school for the unapproved, spontaneous field trip. Kids lack the attention span for a four-hour movie. The Colonial theater, founded in 1913, closed in 1996. Saint Francis School, founded in 1905, closed in 2014. There are hardly any nuns any more. What theater owner today would accede to a phoned-in request from a nun to screen a movie for four hundred school kids arriving in minutes? And back in the day Hollywood made a serious movie about death and war and even rape that many generations could watch and discuss together. Toots, my Slovak mother, my celibate nun teacher, and even snotty little boys could get a kick out of it.

Third time: I was “mature,” maybe late teens, and I thought I had outgrown it all, so I brought my ironic sneer to the theater. The only thing I remember is the gasp from the women in the audience when Rhett Butler first appeared onscreen, and having to acknowledge that as much as I dislike Rhett, he exerts a potent testosterone allure.

Fourth Time: Krakow, 1989. Someone screened GWTW on the top floor of the dormitory. Communism was crumbling all around us and we students, in street demonstrations, were doing our part to hasten the end of the Soviet empire. There were tears and messianic pronouncements. Everyone thought that the movie was all about Poland, World War II, Communism, surviving, and rising from ashes. And of course they were right. International audiences react similarly; see the scholarly article “ Scarlett O’Hara in Damascus .”

I’ve read the book three times. My older sister Antoinette read it; I inherited it. Our copy was a sky blue, 1968, Pocket Books paperback. The print was tiny and the pages were yellowing. That edition is now a collectible and is on sale for $475 .

I am dyslexic. I was slow to learn to read and to this day every single word I write is a humiliating obstacle to my urge to communicate. For a year, I sat on the cement stoop in front of our house on sunny days, and curled up on winter nights with a flashlight. That I was not just able, but also eager, to work my way through 418,053 written words is testimony to the power of Mitchell’s writing.

After finishing it, I reread short passages over and over till I realized that I was both addicted and obsessed, and I got rid of the copy because I knew I didn’t have the self-discipline to stop. I moved on to other books. None has matched it.

Then I was a Peace Corps volunteer, and long books were the order of the day. In remote villages in Africa and Asia I read The Far Pavilions, The Winds of War, Freedom at Midnight, The Snow Leopard, War and Peace, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, The Tao of Physics. In Nepal, at seven thousand feet, in a village without electricity or running water, no roads, no glass, no plastic, no outhouse, I broke my fast and indulged myself and read GWTW the second time. Something about Nepal disenchanted the book for me. One of my students died of a bad tooth. Another died from dysentery. I had no patience for Scarlett and Rhett’s childish shenanigans that had previously struck me as so tragic and so complex.

I read the book a third time a few years back. The third time was a mixture of the first reaction – wow this is addictive writing – and the second time. Wow, these two are so dysfunctional. And the racism was more obvious and much harder to jam into its compartment.

With every viewing, and on every reading, I always recognized that Melanie and Scarlett, Ashley and Rhett, are archetypes. They occupy distant points on a graph and the tension, the push and pull between them, propels the narrative. We can reduce the characters to the following.

Melanie represents Christian spirituality. She’s close to a Christ figure. Her physicality is the opposite of robust Scarlett. Melanie has a “thin childish figure” and a “serious heart-shaped face that was plain almost to homeliness.” Melanie dies a martyr’s death. She knows she shouldn’t have another child, but she loves her husband and she loves babies and so she tries, and dies. But Melanie is strong. Melanie is generous, supportive, and slow to anger. With her charity and reliability, she builds a network of admirers and allies around her, from wealthy and powerful matrons to penniless and crippled war veterans. With this community, she is able to accomplish important goals, always goals that somehow make someone else’s life better.

One of the oppositions that drives the novel is the tension between weakness and strength. Scarlett is overtly strong; she arouses lust, she gives birth, she plants and harvests, she makes money, and she kills. Melanie is small and physically fragile. But while Scarlett’s selfishness and boldness alienate many, and weaken her, Melanie’s love for mankind empowers her. Scarlett’s vitality protects Melanie physically. Melanie’s Christian love protects Scarlett emotionally and socially.

GWTW does not make clear whether Melanie knew about Scarlett and Ashely’s love and lust for each other, or about their few stolen kisses. My Melanie knew. And she was so spiritually strong, that she didn’t care. She loved both her husband and her “sister” Scarlett anyway.

Scarlett represents laissez-faire capitalism. She’s a one-woman Industrial Revolution. After the war and Sherman’s destruction of Atlanta, Scarlett rebuilds the city, through her lumber mill. Her forward momentum is unstoppable. She focuses on the next job that needs doing. The past can take care of itself, and anyone who gets hurt in her wake is not her problem. In the end, they’ll thank her, because her money keeps mouths full and roofs over heads. Her beneficiaries include blood relatives, former slaves, and people she doesn’t much like and who don’t like her. They batten at her trough even while quietly cursing her. They are too intimidated to cross her.

Audiences condemn Scarlett’s selfishness. Selfish Scarlett is the greatest benefactor in the book. She makes money so she can redistribute it. “She didn’t want her children raised in … poverty and grinding hardships and insecurity. She never wanted children of hers to know” the suffering she had known. “She wanted a secure and well-ordered world in which she could look forward and know there was a safe future ahead for them, a world where her children would know only softness and warmth and good clothes and fine food.”

Scarlett loves Ashley. Ashley “moved in an inner world that was more beautiful than Georgia and came back to reality with reluctance.” Gerald repeatedly warns his daughter Scarlett that Ashley is “queer.” Scarlett is “furious at the slur of effeminacy.” Gerald asks Scarlett, “Do you understand his folderol about books and poetry and music and oil paintings and such foolishness?”

“Oh, Pa … if I married him, I’d change all that!”

Ashley is a bleeding heart liberal. Scarlett hires convict labor at her lumber mill. Her overseer is brutal. “I do not believe that happiness can come from money made from the sufferings of others,” Ashley protests.

But you owned slaves, Scarlett reminds Ashley.

I would have freed them after father died if the war had not freed them, he retorts. But Ashley, like any bleeding heart liberal, is a good relativist. He insists to Scarlett that he is not judging her. “Scarlett, don’t think I’m criticizing you! I’m not. It’s just that we look at things in different ways and what is good for you might not be good for me.” Sheesh, Ashley, take a stand.

I fell in love with Ashley on that first viewing. I thought all women would prefer Ashley, the nice guy, to Rhett, the bad boy, who threatens to crush Scarlett’s skull. Boy, was I wrong. I’ve never met another Ashley girl. I even just tried googling “I love Ashley” and I can’t find any women who share my passion. I found only women who “love Ashley” as a baby name – for a girl.

Rhett is the least realistic. He is a fantasy figure representing an impossible-to-achieve combination of women’s desires. He’s a self-made millionaire who satisfies Scarlett’s every whim. He gives her “f— you money” although in GWTW it’s “go to hell” money. He pays enough attention to Mammy to know that the perfect gift/bribe for her is a red taffeta petticoat. In real life, self-made millionaires tend to look like Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, or Mark Zuckerberg, not Clark Gable. Rhett has the body of an athlete, in spite of his drinking, smoking, and debauchery. In real life, really gorgeous guys tend to be gay, self-absorbed and shallow, or gym rats who have time for little other than their mirrors.

In spite of his departure from real life, Rhett is larger than life. He exerts the pull that every woman has ever felt around a charismatic bad boy. Rhett the libertine represents libertarianism. He breaks rules, does what he wants, and condemns everyone, except Melanie, as a hypocrite. “I am a monster of selfishness … I always expect payment for anything I give.” Among the first things we learn about Rhett is that he was expelled from West Point for reasons too terrible to spell out. Rhett smilingly profits from the Civil War while scoffing at the ideals Southerners mouth to support it. He’s a regular customer at the whorehouse.

After our betters condemn the book’s racism, they condemn the rape scene. There are debates about why women readers find the scene erotic – see this 1995 New York Times article, “ Feminists Give a Damn .”

Let me uncloak the mystery. Rhett is pure alpha male, but the entirety of his maleness, all the power, all the privilege pre-feminism Scarlett could never hope to exercise, is devoted entirely to Scarlett. Rhett hands his superpower, his maleness, to Scarlett. He notices her. He listens to her. He cares about her. He thinks about her while going years without seeing her. He knows her better than she knows herself. He explains her motivations to her. Before Rhett carries Scarlett up the staircase, even as she’s fighting him off, there are three thousand words of text – three thousand words! – mostly devoted to Rhett talking to Scarlett, revealing how besotted he is with her.

A man who’d listen to me? Rather than chiding me that I talk too much and have too many opinions? A man who’d pay attention to me? I once asked a boyfriend what color eyes I have. He didn’t know. The attention Rhett pays to Scarlett, not the rape, is the most erotic aphrodisiac any novelist ever concocted.

Which brings me to Sunday, April 7. I’d been looking forward to the eighty-fifth anniversary theatrical screening for months. I was psyched for a rollicking good time. I got a lecture. Leonard Maltin appeared first. He said, yes, this is one heck of a movie, but there’s racism in it. Then there was a written warning, repeating the same message Maltin had delivered. Oh, that these same Thought Police would append their warnings to every sexist, racist, violent rap song.

Then, finally, Max Steiner’s killer “Tara’s Theme” rose on the soundtrack. I had been waiting to hear that familiar music in a theater for so long. Rather than rejoicing, I suddenly felt very sad. I had not expected that.

This viewing was a memento mori. I’m old. I know more dead people than live ones. Toots, Mommy, Antoinette, all gone. There are adults in Poland for whom 1989 and our anti-Communist demonstrations are nothing but an historical footnote.

And there’s more. When I saw this movie for the first time, the movie hit me so hard because I recognized its deepest message, which is not a message about racism. It’s about how you do life and life’s vicissitudes. At that first viewing, I was looking forward to life and trying to decide on the strategies I’d deploy once I entered the arena. Should I be mean Scarlett or saintly Melanie?

Life is no longer something that is before me. It is something that is behind me. My questions now are, “Who should I name as the decision-maker on my ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ form? Which Medicare Advantage Plan is best?” I’m not planning my path through life; I’m planning my path through death. Life is something I look back at, rather than forward to. I see all the times I should have acted like Scarlett and instead I acted like Melanie, or all the times I should have shot a Yankee soldier, and I let Sherman burn my home.

While watching GWTW this fifth time, I remembered a man. His name was, well, let’s call him Mister. I was young and vulnerable. Mister was my superior in a leftwing, save-the-world type organization. He had outsized power over me and all of my colleagues.

Mister could have played Ashley in a remake. He was six feet tall and he weighed about a hundred pounds. He didn’t eat meat, he didn’t smoke or drink, and he never raised his voice. He practiced Buddhist meditation and he played guitar and sang about peace and love. The injustices that white people have visited upon “people of color” upset him terribly. He shared his poetry with me. He paid me the same compliments Ashley paid Scarlett, as he, my superior, invited me, younger and entirely vulnerable to his outsize power, to share a sleeping bag with him, in an entirely platonic way, of course. And then he screwed me over so badly I’ve been agog ever since.

I got over the crying jags pretty quickly, but any rational interpretation of his behavior has eluded me for decades. How could anyone so kind, so maternal, so Ashley be such a prick? I don’t know the answer. If I could afford a high-priced psychic, that’s the first question I’d ask.

That dizzying switchback from bleeding heart to utterly heartless: I’ve seen Mister’s behavior reflected in the wider world. I’ve seen bleeding heart liberals voice the highest ideals, and yet do serious harm to the populations they claim to serve; check out the real impact of LBJ’s Great Society on black people, for example, in this video . And hard-as-nails conservatives Heather MacDonald and Abigail Thernstrom demand the kind of values that could uplift my neighbors in Paterson. Scarlett, exemplar of capitalism, lacked empathy, but her innate qualities filled bellies and put roofs over heads. Bleeding hearts don’t do that. Scarlett, and indeed my own mother, could be a bitch. But with them you knew where you stood, and the rug was never pulled out from under you in a way that left you reeling for the rest of your life.

My mind gets this. My heart does not. Reading GWTW for the third time, and watching the film for the fifth time in a theater, I fall in love Ashley, and I want to be like Melanie. One of the lessons of GWTW is that we are what our biology makes us, and if we try to change, we just become “a mule in a horse’s harness,” as Mammy, the font of wisdom, was wont to say.

Danusha Goska is the author of God Through Binoculars: A Hitchhiker at a Monastery

Reader Interactions

April 19, 2024 at 6:06 am

Danusha Hoska, how I missed you. Two weeks without Danusha Goska is like two weeks without sunshine. Welcome back.

I remember watching GWTW in a movie theater when I was about 8 years old my sister dragged me to see it. All I can remember is being bored out of my skull. Maybe I should give it another try now that I’m grown.

There is one movie that was a super-intense, religious, spiritual, experience for me the first time I saw it and every time I’ve seen it. I was lucky enough to see it in a revival house in 1985 and the whole audience stood up and gave it a standing ovation at the end. What a great experience that was.

April 19, 2024 at 4:25 pm

Two weeks without THX is like breathing fresh air. But I guess we will never get to experience that. Because some people are such narcissists they just have to opine on everything, to show us just how smart they think they are.

I know, you could always revisit Gone With the Wind while listening to Jimi Hendrix’s version of the National Anthem.

Oh yeah, she still won’t date you. But suck up a little more. Who’s Hoska?

April 21, 2024 at 8:04 pm

Jimi Hendrix in blackface performing “I Wish I Was In Dixie” at Woodstock would certainly have been a riot and actually entertaining.

April 19, 2024 at 7:33 am

I never read GWTW but your review reminded me of Far Pavilions by MM Kaye. I stayed up late, reading this book in the NCO dorm at Keesler AFB while attending technical school.. It was too compelling for me to put down. I remember there were passages that included small facts about where the word Khaki came from or that there were blue-eyed, blond Afghanis in the north that could pass for Europeans, among other things.

The story itself is the reason to read and enjoy this book. I think it was around nine hundred pages but I wished it could have been longer because I hated to see it end..

Anyway, this book may end up being securitized and condemned as Islamophobic or Hindu-phobic or even homo-phobic. I got none of that from the book. To me, it was a great story. Sad that some will miss that for the sake of appeasing something political. Can’t they enjoy anything.?

April 19, 2024 at 6:30 pm

Upon further reflection, let me add that yours was a terrific review, however, I was trying to comment on the current trend of criticism that looks for any hint of racism or supremacy and disregards the overall story-telling.

And if I may say so, it’s more likely to come across an Ashley of GWTW than an Ashton of Far Pavilions. The world is lousy with Ashleys and Misters so don’t waste any cash on psychics.

April 20, 2024 at 6:06 pm

It occurred to me that you meant to say Psychologist instead of psychic. Either way, I suppose some Ashleys are just jerks.

April 19, 2024 at 10:11 pm

Oops, I meant scrutinized, not securitized..

April 19, 2024 at 8:34 am

Wonderful article, I’d be a fool to think I could add anything.

April 19, 2024 at 8:47 am

Nothing racist about the film

April 19, 2024 at 9:24 am

The Burning of Atlanta the Solder having his leg amputated(No Antacids)and his FRANKLY MY SEAR I DONT GIVE A DAMN(four letter swear word back then)and I do believe Hatti McDaniel was the first Black Actress to win a Supporting Role Oscar

April 19, 2024 at 11:53 am

You know Danusha, if you get the chance to see “Gone With the Wind” in a theater again, you should. Just ignore whatever about it you don’t like, especially any bad connotations it may bring up. Concentrate on what you love about the movie and story.

You’re right that it’s so much better on the big screen in a theater with a loud musical score. The red skies behind Tara Scarlett’s strength and Clark Gable were great. I recently re-watched it on my big screen TV which has great picture quality but it wasn’t the same.

I was nine and my brother was eight when we saw that movie in a theater and we loved it.

Sorry about the bad guy you were once with. I think most of us end up with at least one bad person at some point. I know I’ve been self cursed by more than one. But there are always good ones out there. Me personally, I just learned to avoid the bad chicks and spend time with nice ones, although some of them are crazy……I mean actually crazy but nice.

April 19, 2024 at 1:01 pm

“ The injustices that white people have visited upon “people of color” upset him terribly.”

They never ever consider that white Caucasian people are a small minority.

They never ever consider that if Africans had been organised enough instead of tribal, they would have invented weapons and financial systems and they would have wiped out white people and enslaved them too.

April 19, 2024 at 11:00 pm

Whitey is the majority worldwide. Check the population figures of countries. And remember that most South Americans and virtually all people in India, which has a larger population than China, are white. Canada, America and Europe are obviously majority white as well. Australia, New Zealand, Greenland and Ice Land. Even the Near East, Middle East and north Africa.

Nobody humps more prolifically than whitey. Nigerians and Cameroonians do have more kids, though. I can attest from personal experience that Nigerian and Cameroonian chicks are tarts, not that I’m complaining.

https://drive.google.com/drive/home?lfhs=2

https://drive.google.com/drive/my-drive?lfhs=2

I can’t show the other ones because they’re all nudes or X rated. I really like Nigerian and Cameroonian chicks because she’s American and hates all my ex hoes.

April 20, 2024 at 12:44 am

That’s a lot of personal information. But don’t stop you can provide us with your social security number, bank account PIN number, date of birth, your mother,s maiden name, and home address too.

April 20, 2024 at 12:12 pm

Yeah, I noticed that I revealed the personal files on one of my laptops but I don’t give a shit. What is anybody going to do with that info? I don’t have property deeds or bank account numbers on it. Just personal info and lots of chick picks, most of them with my money shots on their faces.

April 20, 2024 at 7:37 pm

My actual point is that when the queers and the homos flaunt their sexual lifestyles, sexual escapades, sexual perversions, and sexual promiscuity in everyone’s faces decent people are rightly offended.

A person’s sex life should be their private business.

When “religious”, “conservative”, heterosexuals like yourself do it, it doesn’t make it any less offensive. Maybe it makes it more so.

“If a man cannot overcome his vices, he should at least have enough sense to conceal them.” – Lord Chesterfield

“Sex is one of the most important aspects of man’s life and, therefore, must never be approached lightly or casually. A sexual relationship is proper only on the ground of the highest values one can find in a human being. Sex must not be anything other than a response to values. And that is why I consider promiscuity immoral. Not because sex is evil, but because sex is too good and too important.” – Ayn Rand

“One cold winter’s day, a number of porcupines huddled together quite closely in order through their mutual warmth to prevent themselves from being frozen. But they soon felt the effect of their quills on one another, which made them again move apart. Now when the need for warmth once more brought them together, the drawback of the quills was repeated so that they were tossed between two evils, until they had discovered the proper distance from which they could best tolerate one another. Thus the need for society which springs from the emptiness and monotony of men’s lives, drives them together; but their many unpleasant and repulsive qualities and insufferable drawbacks once more drive them apart. The mean distance which they finally discover, and which enables them to endure being together, is politeness and good manners. Whoever does not keep to this, is told in England to ‘keep his distance’. By virtue thereof, it is true that the need for mutual warmth will be only imperfectly satisfied, but on the other hand, the prick of the quills will not be felt.” – Arthur Schopenhauer

April 21, 2024 at 11:36 am

Sorry for your psychiatric assessment but I only have chick picks, not men, and I don’t have to boast because getting laid is easy. Even ugly people do it.

And anybody who doesn’t value sex has issues, not me.

April 20, 2024 at 5:40 pm

You could do the same but you are too chicken sh*t to do it. Except for that PIN number since you don’t have any money.

April 21, 2024 at 12:35 am

“If a man cannot overcome his vices, he should at least have enough sense to conceal them.” – Lord Chesterfield

Or ’tis better to keep one’s mouth closed and thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

Perhaps you should take your own advice and shut the hell up.

April 19, 2024 at 11:02 pm

My GIRLFRIEND is American born and hates those Nigerian and Cameroonian chicks I know.

April 20, 2024 at 11:02 pm

The racist profiteers also ignore the people who hunted and rounded up the Africans in Africa and sold them into slavery in Europe and the New World. They also ignore the fact that slaves are sold every day of the week in Northern Africa by non-whites. They also ignore the racist behaviors presented by nonwhites in Europe and the New World in today’s wokeism.

April 19, 2024 at 2:39 pm

While I thought the movie was good, I have never wanted to see it again. It is the book I love. I appear in the review as Sue – a “pacifist” – though actually I am not a pacifist, but I am neutral, taking no sides in the divisive politics and cruel wars of “the world”, the current wicked system of things on the earth. If the notorious rapist who is usually invoked in the context of pacifism attacked me, I would fight back as hard as I could. (And, given my age, I could also attempt to return good for evil by suggesting he stop missing his Optician’s appointments.)

But, yes, I do think that “Gone With the Wind” and Ballard’s “Empire of the Sun” are the two finest anti-war novels I have ever read, telling as they do of the reality of war, both making the contrast between the way war is glorified by “the world”, and what it actually is.

I have never cared for Scarlett, though she is a vividly realised character. But I will give her this, she is an equal opportunity racist. When she can no longer have African-Americans as slaves, she simply switches to poor whites instead – to convict slave labour.

And I think that the book also tells the truth about slavery and racism. The author does not soften it. Really, shouldn’t it shake us up even more than Uncle Tom’s Cabin? However, I can also understand why some people might want it banned, or heavily censored, even though I am not in favour of book burning as such. But I can see how hurtful, how painful, some of it, a lot of it, is to African-American readers. And if they say they cannot bear for this book to remain in existence, then I completely understand.

April 19, 2024 at 3:13 pm

The book was a long read but the movie was excellent with great acting and music . The entire cast and especially Clark Gable and Vivian Leigh were superb .

April 19, 2024 at 5:00 pm

Speaking of GWTW: https://politickles.com/behindtheheadlines/1998/aug98/98-0803a.html

April 19, 2024 at 5:54 pm

This is a wonderful essay. My first reading of GWTW was when I was seven, and I read it over and over for years. Never knew anyone else who loves the book as much as I do, until now. I appreciate this analysis so much! Blessings.

April 19, 2024 at 6:16 pm

Margaret Mitchell book is a treasure. The movie, just a typical Hollywood epic that distorted the characters to the point of ridicule.

April 19, 2024 at 6:41 pm

A testimonial to the power of narrative, and how books and movies can reach beyond the authors’ viewpoints and intentions.

April 20, 2024 at 9:54 pm

Why were the O’Haras Catholic? 19th century Georgia planters weren’t.

April 21, 2024 at 3:44 am

Yesterday as today, American immigrants keep the religion of their country of origin, whatever the State they ended up settling in. Read the book about the origin and story of Gerald O’Hara and of his neighbors.

April 19, 2024 at 7:10 pm

I’ve read it hundreds of times—no exaggeration—& even now, in my 60s, read it once a year. Mitchell’s insight into so many people was written so well you could see thru the world thru their eyes. It doesn’t mean I have to agree with what they see—it shows me why they see it that way. One of the most impactful was Will speaking at Gerald’s funeral, about people whose “mainspring” is “busted”. What a profound truth expressed in such a simple heartfelt way! How Scarlett, after coming thru the Yankee Army & coming home to find her mother is dead…when put to bed, the stories of her people, told in her childhood, come back to her & give her strength to face her future… Melanie, who reminded me so of my own Cajun grandma, whose heart was so like hers…but she had the capabilities of a Scarlett. When Gerald said Ashley was queer, it wasn’t because he was effeminate—it was strange, odd. Most masculine southern men didn’t read books, let alone poetry. But Ashley could ride & hunt & drink with the best of them. I’ve known some “Rhett” types—& it wasn’t unusual for them to keep their manly build until their late 40s, when their excesses began to catch up with them. And for all the hardness, & rascal ways, if you earned their respect, they would treat you with respect, & with a graciousness that belonged to another era. GWTW helped me in hard times—after Katrina, when we seemed forgotten, & our world was chaos, basic needs unattainable, & the price gouging. And now, as our money becomes worthless & the cost of food & other necessities almost become luxuries. I am not offended by GWTW—it is set in another era, & a good description of it. History is flawed, because people are flawed. GWTW shows this remarkably well.

April 19, 2024 at 7:23 pm

Remember Mammy’s words when you read the news today—there are so many “mules” in a horse’s harness on parade! Look at Soros, Gates, Bezos, the World Economic Forum & all its attendees…!!!

April 20, 2024 at 12:09 am

The “best” review that GWTW ever received happened in WWII. In occupied France, the Germans were executing people who they caught with copies.

April 20, 2024 at 3:47 am

This is filler- the @#$&*€£¥ system here won’t allow my simple question.

April 21, 2024 at 3:56 am

The movie was released in France in 1950 only, when the German occupants had been gone for 5 years. Plus, there were no ‘copies’, tapes, discs or reels available to the public in those days, you are fantasizying. There is no need to add on to the harm they have done there (and anywhere else) during WWII.

April 20, 2024 at 3:36 am

Carol Berrnet dose a parody of Gone with the Wind the Dress with the Curtain Rod left in it

April 20, 2024 at 3:45 am

What a lovely, thoughtful and meaningful insightful essay, Danusha, one that urges me to reread the book after half a century. I don’t feel the same way about “Atlas Shrugged”!

April 21, 2024 at 8:33 pm

That’s because “Atlas Shrugged” is beyond you, the teacher will appear when the student is ready. Most people love and prefer “The Fountainhead”, it’s a much easier read, and fewer pages.

Actually, truth be told, “Atlas Shrugged” is didactic and preachy, and very, very, long, but it has to be so. Rand’s philosophy and specially her moral code is historical and revolutionary. It represents a paradigm shift in history.

I used to feel the same way about Jane Austen’s novels. I tried and tried for ten years to “get” her. I actually came to think that she was included in the Western Canon only because she was a woman and the feminists needed a woman in the Canon. I used to think Austen was one of the most boring novelists ever, nothing happens in these novels I thought, these are just chronicles of silly girls hunting rich husbands.

But one day I had been deceived, self-deceived, betrayed, and self-betrayed, so painfully and I picked up “Sense and Sensibility” for the 10th or 20th time and all of a sudden I understood Austen! I finally “got” her! And ever since then I’ve been a Janeite! When the student was ready, the teacher appeared.

April 20, 2024 at 4:24 am

Tara’s Theme from GWTW, though very sweet and memorable, takes second place, in my opinion, to Lara’s Theme by Maurice Jarre in Dr Zhivago – for many of the same reasons Dash cites in favour of the former. Both are amongst the best. Good to read you again, Dr Goska.

April 20, 2024 at 8:43 am

Give me “Rocky’s Theme Gonna Fly Now” and it’s the Bicentennial again and I get goosebumps all over and I want to start running down the middle of the street in the middle of traffic!

April 21, 2024 at 12:38 am

That must have been a rough time for you….all that patriotism and flag waving going on.

“I don’t recognize any such absurdity as service to my country. I recognize a moral responsibility to my freedom and liberty and the freedom and liberty of those I love.* — your words, not mine you little troglodyte.

April 20, 2024 at 4:53 am

So GTWTW is racist. Now I hear that “To Kill a Mockingbird” is introduced to kids in school with a trigger warning. Oh my ears and whiskers, where is this world headed.

April 20, 2024 at 5:55 pm

Racist? How about a product of its time.

April 20, 2024 at 9:52 pm

Dr Goska, I hope we didn’t distress you too much with our comments. If I did, I apologize. Take care. and continue to write reviews and essays. And if I comment, I’ll be brief.

April 20, 2024 at 11:12 pm

“….One of the lessons of GWTW is that we are what our biology makes us, and if we try to change, we just become “a mule in a horse’s harness,””

Which may be why a classic like GWTW will not be much allowed in America in America’s Dem/leftist world today. ‘Brilliant wokesters’ view such biology as a ‘social construct’, which is precisely what they themselves suffer.

Too many view look outward through a lens of racism. That is an illness in perception.

April 21, 2024 at 12:36 am

Everything else will be Gone With the Wind and all that will be left in the perpetually ‘offended’ West is….. Aunt Pittypat.

“Oh, oh dear, ahm gonna faint, bring me my smelling salts.”

April 21, 2024 at 4:31 am

There is always a gap between what people declaim and what they expect of others, and there lies the difference between word and deed for even the best of us. People guard against low expectations. An open mind is something a man grows into, if he doesn’t self-destruct before he gains experience….. and watching others self-destruct is in fact a large part of that experience.

April 21, 2024 at 6:41 pm

I tbink that Margaret Mitchell and Betty Smith (A Tree Grows in Brookltn) both should both have won the Nobel Prize for Literature. I think the reason why neither one of them did is that Scarlett O’Hara and Francie Nolan are such RESILIENT heroines and the Nobel Prize for Literature committees, over the years, have preferred weak, doomed women. So why didn’t Tennessèe Williams win? Blanche DuBois is a woman after their their hearts.

April 21, 2024 at 8:55 pm

I saw the movie “A Tree Grows In Brooklyn” maybe twenty years ago and I really loved it. It has stayed in my memory ever since. I loved Dorothy McGuire and that awfully sweet, lovable, face of Peggy Ann Garner, those beautiful, innocent, earnest, and tender doe eyes make you want just squeeze her in your arms and protect her forever.

But, last August I borrowed the book from the library, and it’s a whole different story. The book is brutal. It was so depressing I didn’t finish it, I only got halfway through.

April 22, 2024 at 12:05 am

Don’t you think it’s wonderful, the way Francie triumphs over the brutality?

April 22, 2024 at 8:10 am

I’ll have to borrow the book again and finish it to say.

I think we have our own real-life Francie Nolan in Danusha Goska, reading the book reminded me of Professor Goska’s stories about her own childhood growing up in poverty.

April 21, 2024 at 7:03 pm

Dear Dr. Goska: Who paid for the tickets when your class of working class Catholic children went to see GONE WITH THE WIND? I have a theory that a novelist, or a movie scriptwriter can COMBINE a RACIST opinion of Blacks, or a SEXIST opiniin of women, with a high opinion of the human race as a whole. His low opinion of Blacks, or women, is pulled up by his opinion of the human race in general. Lòok at the Black butler in JEZABEL and the Black FBI man in the remake of THAT DARN CAT Pompton Lakes,made me think of Albert Payson Terhune. Remember Lad: A Dog? Terhune could also be very racist.

April 21, 2024 at 7:17 pm

Anyone interedted in how Blacks were portrayed in. American films shouldvwatch CHARLIE CHAN IN EGYPT. The character Stepin Fetchit plays, Snowshoes, is a.n offensive, racist portrait of a stupid Black man, except for a scene between him and an Egyptian con man. Then the scriptwriter’s nationalism takes over from his racism Fetchit’s character is MORE than a match for the Egyptian

April 21, 2024 at 8:18 pm

When will they start introducing Eric Knight’s classic childrem’s tearjerker Lassie Come Home with a trigger warnng? It oozes and drips with regional prejudice. The character of Hines, the kennelman is whining, sycophantic, cruel, incompetent, physically weak-and a Londoner. How about a trigger warning for Peter Pan? Wouldn’t want to upset any amputees

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The book, Gone With the Wind was officially released today 6-30 in 1936
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COMMENTS

Gone with the Wind Review: Mitchell's Controversial Legacy
Gone with the Wind is a book about how war, starvation, and adversity can reduce one's humanity to the basest instinct for survival at all costs. It follows Scarlett O'Hara's transition from a charming country girl whose only cares in the world were pretty dresses and handsome beaux, to a cold, hardened woman who would cheat, steal, murder, and numb her conscience to every value she once ...
Book Review: Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Book Review: Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell. Despite boasts that Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell is "the greatest romance of our time," this approximately 1,000-page book is not just a romance. Its intense focus on a ruthless heroine neatly underscores what this brick of a book is instead: an exploration of transformation ...
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
August 15, 2021. (Book 619 From 1001 Books) - Gone With The Wind, Margaret MitchellGone with the Wind is a novel by American writer Margaret Mitchell, first published in 1936. The story is set in Clayton County and Atlanta, both in Georgia, during the American Civil War and Reconstruction Era.
Book Review: "Gone With the Wind" by Margaret Mitchell
Updated: Apr 1, 2024 7:00 PM EDT. I might say Gone With the Wind is well-known to quite a lot of people around the world. Whether they have come across the novel or its famous film adaptation, Margaret Mitchell's characters are familiar to most and loved by many. I read this book for the first time just after I finished high school.
Gone with the Wind: Echoing Through the Ages
At just over 1,000 pages, Gone With the Wind is quite the chunkster. Its subject matter, too, is hefty. Combined, the length and plot are seemingly daunting and the primary reason why it took me so many years to take this book down off the shelf, where it has been sitting for a half-decade. Surprisingly, I found myself breezing through a ...
GONE WITH THE WIND
BOOK REVIEW. by Roy Jacobsen & translated by Don Bartlett & Don Shaw. Don't sell this as primarily a novel of the Civil War. Sell it rather as a novel in human emotions against the background of the Civil War and its aftermath. It has the finer qualities of So Red The Rose, — the authentic picture of people and places and incidents, something ...
Books to give you hope: Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Gone With the Wind is a story about civil war, starvation, rape, murder, heartbreak and slavery. It is not necessarily a book one would associate with hope. And yet, at the novel's heart lies ...
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell: Book Review
Read more reviews at A Literary Odyssey, A Room of One's Own, and Age 30+ … A Lifetime of Books. If you liked Gone With the Wind, you might also like Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, Ahab's Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund, and Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. Buy Gone With the Wind at
Review: Gone With The Wind
Gone with the Wind is a novel written by Margaret Mitchell, first published in 1936. The story is set in Clayton County, Georgia, and Atlanta during the American Civil War and Reconstruction era. It depicts the struggles of young Scarlett O'Hara, the spoiled daughter of a well-to-do plantation owner, who must use every means at her disposal ...
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Introducing Scarlett O'Hara. From the New York Times, June 1936: Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind (Macmillan $3) is an outsized novel of Civil War and Reconstruction days in Georgia. It is, in all probability, the biggest book of the year: 1,037 pages. I found it — well, it is best to delay the verdict for a few paragraphs.
Gone with the Wind (novel)
Gone with the Wind is a novel by American writer Margaret Mitchell, first published in 1936.The story is set in Clayton County and Atlanta, both in Georgia, during the American Civil War and Reconstruction Era.It depicts the struggles of young Scarlett O'Hara, the spoiled daughter of a well-to-do plantation owner, who must use every means at her disposal to claw her way out of poverty ...
Book Review: 'Margaret Mitchell's 'Gone with the Wind': A Best Seller's
Timed to coincide with the 75th anniversary of the publication of "Gone With the Wind," writer Ellen F. Brown and uber-fan John Wiley Jr. have produced a prodigious work that follows the American ...
Book Review: Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Gone with the Wind Book Reviews. The preceding words: There is nothing new in the world. If you don't look at "Gone with the Wind" as a romantic novel, I want to regard it as a reflection of culture. It tells the story of what to do with the culture that accompanies it when a system collapses. Our feelings for culture are perhaps the most ...
Gone with the Wind Study Guide
Gone with the Wind has at times been proposed a contender for the Great American novel. Other contenders with similar themes of racism and Reconstruction are Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, and Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Uncle Tom's Cabin can be the most closely compared with Gone with the Wind because it also ...
Gone With The Wind
Hell no! This book is a masterpiece on another level. And most importantly it takes immense guts to start writing a book over 1200 pages with your central character being a stupid, spoiled ...
Gone With The Wind
The book is HUGE (over 950 pages) and, for the most part, "unputdownable.". The book seems to have been well researched (at least from the Confederate viewpoint), and there are many descriptive details of battles, the burning of Atlanta and of the Georgian plantations, the plights of both slavery and emancipation, and the Reconstruction Era.
Book Review: Gone with the Wind
The Book. Gone with the Wind follows the young Scarlett O'Hara and her incessant love triangle with Rhett Butler and Ashley Wilkes.In fact, to call it a "love triangle" seems to actually sell short the always confused and ever persistent O'Hara. The novel begins immediately before the Civil War, describes the burning of Atlanta, and the eventual political aftermath of emancipation and ...
Gone with the Wind: Full Book Summary
Gone with the Wind Full Book Summary. It is the spring of 1861. Scarlett O'Hara, a pretty Southern belle, lives on Tara, a large plantation in Georgia. She concerns herself only with her numerous suitors and her desire to marry Ashley Wilkes. One day she hears that Ashley is engaged to Melanie Hamilton, his frail, plain cousin from Atlanta.
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Not many books nowadays are 984 pages long, or set in the 1800's. But of course, some books remain classics, and Gone with the Wind is definitely one of them.
Book Review: Margaret Mitchell's 'Gone With The Wind'
Book Review: Margaret Mitchell's 'Gone With The Wind'. As a reader, I would say that the popularity of "Gone with the Wind" is perfectly understandable. As a black man, I find it to be a bit unnerving. Photo courtesy of the city of Marietta. Growing up in Virginia, you could say that the memory of the Civil War is ubiquitous.
'Gone With the Wind' Revisited
Manohla Dargis, the New York Times chief film critic, interrupts her April 12 review of a new movie to restate her righteous indignation against an unrelated film. Gone with the Wind, she insists, is a "monument to white supremacy and the myth of the Southern Lost Cause.". Yes, both the book and the film are racist.

Gone with the Wind

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Gone with the Wind Review: Margaret Mitchell's Controversial Legacy

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Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell: Book Review

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Review: Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell

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About Margaret Mitchell

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Book Review: 'Margaret Mitchell's 'Gone with the Wind': A Best Seller's Odyssey from Atlanta to Hollywood'

Gone with the Wind

Gone with the Wind: Introduction

Historical Context of Gone with the Wind

Extra Credit for Gone with the Wind

Gone With The Wind

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