Feb 08 2009
Gone With The Wind
Last week, in my mass communications class, our weekly discussion was about the last non-assigned book we read. Mine was Gone With The Wind, which has become one of my absolute favorite books. I love the movie, and the book was even better.
I wanted to post my response I wrote, because I was so proud of it, and frankly I like sharing what that book means to me.
I got Gone With The Wind for Christmas this year (as well as a few novels that people have written in years since based on the original), and cracked the binding Christmas Day. I finished it the night before school started back up, and carried it with me everywhere like a child carries a favorite blanket. I won’t stop talking about it either. I always reference points the books make, and use it to describe how I feel about a lot of things.
I read it as I have watched the movie so many times I just had to know what it was based off of. The fact that the book was 1,037 pages never bothered me. In fact I tried reading the book in 6th grade, after the first time I saw the movie, but failed. Also, the movie version always reminded me so much of my own life, and a lot of the struggles my family has been through in the last 12-13 years. Yet, Scarlett comes out on top in the end, and has no regrets about what she did, save for Rhett. But not only do her struggles remind me of my own, but I’ve also had my own versions of Ashley and Rhett. Seeing her stuck between these 2 men makes me think of how I had my heartbroken by the first person I truly loved, and how yet, my true love was already staring me in the face.
Gone With The Wind won the Pulitzer Prize in 1937, and has sold over 30 million copies. Time Magazine even considered it one of the 100 best English language novels written from 1923 to 2005.
I absolutely loved the book, for so many reasons. The caliber of writing in it is amazing. Margaret Mitchell apparently took 10 years to write it, and it’s evident in so many (good) ways. On the mechanical level, her grammar is astounding, and she was able to have long, fluid sentences that were neither wordy, nor run-ons. Everything was described in such detail that you felt as if you were sitting on the porch of Tara, talking to the Tarelton Twins, or running from Atlanta with Rhett, Prissy, Melly, and baby Beau, just trying to make it home to your mother and father. And the story itself seems real. Even though it was released 70 years after the war, it’s written with such authenticity that you could swear Margaret Mitchell lived through it. But it’s not just the war that’s authentic, it’s everything about Southern society that’s real. And oddly enough, by the end of the story, you find yourself wondering if slavery really is/was as bad as the history books say, and you feel more sympathetic to Scarlett loosing her slaves than you do to the slaves who were made to work the fields before the war. The Old South truly was a land of aristocracy, and decency, where “gallantry took its last bow” before the world was torn apart by much bigger wars, and international problems.
Why was it a best seller? On the official level, I don’t really know. But in my opinion, it was a best seller for so many reason. One, it tells a story about something important in history, but it’s not just dates and battles. Even though it’s fiction, everything that happens are things that may have very well happened. Mitchell allegedly based a lot of her stories off of stories her grandmother told her about her experiences in the war. But the story, as a whole, is easy to relate to. I know not many people are keen on reading, nevertheless reading a 1,037 page book, but you’re not trying to think about the date that Atlanta fell to Sherman, as much as what people were thinking and feeling as they were running away to Macon, or wherever it was they had to run. It appeals to our very core of being human. Secondly, it’s the war from the “loosing” perspective. We’re always told how bad slavery was and how treacherous the owners were. But this book paints the owners as gracious masters, who lord over their workers fairly and justly, loving them as their own family. And in return, the slaves value and cherish their masters in the same manner. Some slaves even felt as if their masters’ children were just as much their own, having raised, nursed, and taught them from day one. Big Sam even tells Scarlett in the story that it sure was good to see “fambly” again.
Gone With The Wind has become my absolute favorite book, right there with Jane Eyre. But I like it for the same reason I like Jane Eyre: It tells the story of my life.
It’s odd how much this book has come to mean to me. It reminds me so much of my own struggles in life, and how I’ve had to do whatever it takes to overcome. But the point that strikes me most, is how Scarlett and Ashley both talk about how they feel like their lives were disrupted. They were raised to be something other than what they had to be. While they did keep their heads above water and succeed, ultimately, they knew they weren’t meant to be “workers”. They were gentry. They were meant for cushy lives under magnolia trees, enjoying parties and society, and books, music, and poetry (at least for Ashley). They were meant to have families, grow old, and enjoy telling stories of the beauty of their lives. But war did come, and war tore their lives apart.
My dad often says that we were the perfect, golden family, before my mother died, and he was right. My brother and I were in the process of being raised to be smart, well educated, well rounded people with chances at the best schools for whatever we wanted. My could’ve been a star athlete in school, and I could’ve ended up at an Ivy League school (though I think, tragedy or not, I never would’ve gone that far as I can’t stand stuffiness and snobbery) or at school in Europe somewhere. But problems did arrive, and things didn’t turn out how we wanted. But I think we’ve all made the best of what we have. In a lot of respects, I can’t complain.
And, the way Scarlett always thinks of her parents always reminds me how I consider my own. I’ve always put a sort of idealism or heroism on my mom, always wanting to be kind and loving and sweet and generous like she was. Well, I turned out crazy, loud mouthed, talkative, and aggressive. Basically just like my dad. Unlike Scarlett though, I’ve come to realize I am what I am, and I at least enjoy it. But I never stop remembering who my mother was, and to be honest, I still sometimes think I’d be a better person if I had turned out more like she was.
“Mother was–Oh Rhett, for the first time I’m glad she’s dead, so she can’t see me. She didn’t raise me to be mean. She was so kind to everybody, so good. She’d rather I’d have starved than done this. And I so wanted to be like her in every way and I’m not like her one bit. I hadn’t thought of that–there’s been so much else to think about–but I wanted to be like her. I didn’t want to be like Pa. I loved him but he was–so–so thoughtless. Rhett, sometimes I did try so hard to be nice to people and kind to Frank but then the nightmare would come back and scare me so bad I’d want to rush out and grab money away from people whether it was mine or not.” ~Scarlett O’Hara, “Gone With The Wind” (talking to Rhett after Frank died about how she felt about her mom. It reminds me so much of everything I’ve ever been through).
