Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (1936)

I suppose that I have to start somewhere? Margaret is one amazing writer; the book is so much more than the movie. Initially I had a hard time getting the movie out of my head but combining the two is comfortable as long as the book leads the way.

So because no one else had done it for me I created a little companion sheet to keep track of the characters. I made it to fold in half and keep in your book.

My 60^th anniversary copy with box cover had probably never been opened; I’m sure that I am the 1^st reader. 

The movie covers way too much ground too quickly to give the characters justice. Because the book offends all with great fairness it is easy to like and pull from it any story YOU like and disregard what is offending. But for a movie it had to be mostly un-offending and as such was redesigned to win hearts.  All of us see things, many of us understand things but, Margaret could write them down. I was so hoping to meet Will in the movie; I suppose he was the solder that took care of Mel’s baby in a one minute scene but never seen again.

Will is an important “teacher” to Scarlet and his speech at Gerald’s burying is a masterpiece; if your mainspring is broken you’d be better off dead, it’s what’s inside of you that defeats you. The “mainspring” that’s inside of us all!!!

Scarlet is a psychopath. Margret has created her (and Rhett) to allow conversations about delicate subjects with complete immunity. She is brilliant. Margaret is lecturing us on all sorts of topics I have yet to categorize them all but the obvious ones include the Southern view point on Slavery, southern bells, southern reconstruction, Yankees, and a host of others. Many of these are sliced amazingly thin and are argued with such persuasiveness that only being raised in it could one come up with and / or understand some of them. I now see that these characters are are just vehicles for her to express differing points of view. As with most “simple” issues the shades of grey between them are there only if you are open to and fair to the DISCUSSION. I know almost no one that can discuss topics without entering into the realm of talking head exaggeration as soon as they feel you’re not on their side.

The bitterness of what came about during the reconstruction is palpable; the war went on too long, caused too much pain and so brought about the standard human over reaction to “teach them a lesson” and “not let them rebuild the old system.” From the sound of it reconstruction was applied in a ham-fisted manner resulting in ridiculous overreactions by people who were making it up as they went. Margret gives me the impression that it was the handling of the reconstruction more so than the war itself that is the root of the bitterness that the South developed and maintains toward the North.

Ole Miss gives us an insight into the mind of (what I call) the ‘brutal rich’ in chapter 40 when she describes in great detail the virtues that make her family (and Scarlet) survivors. Ole Miss defines the survivor as being flexible; “When trouble comes we bow to the inevitable without any mouthing, and we work, and we smile, and we bide our time. And we play along with lesser folks and we take what we can get from them. And when we’re strong enough, we kick the folks whose necks we’ve climbed over. That my child is the secret of the survival.” And after a pause she added: “I pass it on to you.” Then Ole Miss goes right on to “bookend” the brutal rich with this regarding what I’ll call the ‘soft or lucky rich:’ “there never was anything to those folks but money and darkies, and now that the money and darkies are gone, those folks will be Cracker in another generation.” I know many different types of rich people of and its true; many 2^nd and 3^rd generation rich (considered high born) would be incapable of remaking what their (low born) antecedents did.

And since we are on the subject of class, I have to say that the Indian’s have it right; there are classes of people and it’s OK to say it. Remember, there can’t be an “us” unless there is a “them,” (we are only human after all.) So if we admit that there are classes then what to do about it? We cannot MAKE the low born high born (they can however start a new line) and as we have seen over and over the high born are often just Crackers with money. The only thing we can do is PROTECT the low born from the high born, thus allowing for social mobility up and down without retribution; and we do that with what’s called “the rule of law.”Equality exists only on the day we are born (if we are lucky) and diminishes day by day until the day we die. Each decision we make informs the next and before you know it… you’re in a class of your own!

I had tears in my eyes for the entire "Melly dies"chapter, none of us wanted to see her go. I won't speak about Mellie, you need to see her for yourself. It was gratifying in the end to see Scarlet hammered by the revaluations regarding her foolish and insensitive approach to her past life and friends.

Gone with the Wind has changed my life, I only wish I would have read it sooner.