Book Review: Gone With The Wind

It's officially 2013, so I can start writing in earnest again.  Then again, we'll see how busy school and a second job (or a full time position, depending on what comes my way) and the rest makes life.  Luckily for you (the ever-diligent reader that you are, that is), I have some backlog of reviews to post over the coming weeks.  Even some stuff that I was reading back at the end of Fall 2012 semester and postponed so I could take a break over the winter holidays.  Such as the review below.

Enjoy.

Source: Amazon.com

Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell

From the book’s cover:

Margaret Mitchell's epic novel of love and war won the Pulitzer Prize and went on to give rise to two authorized sequels and one of the most popular and celebrated movies of all time.

Many novels have been written about the Civil War and its aftermath. None take us into the burning fields and cities of the American South as Gone With the Wind does, creating haunting scenes and thrilling portraits of characters so vivid that we remember their words and feel their fear and hunger for the rest of our lives.

In the two main characters, the white-shouldered, irresistible Scarlett and the flashy, contemptuous Rhett, Margaret Mitchell not only conveyed a timeless story of survival under the harshest of circumstances, she also created two of the most famous lovers in the English-speaking world since Romeo and Juliet.


Synopsis:

A full synopsis of the plot would take awhile, and seems a bit superfluous. Many know the story well enough from their exposure to the film version (which I will attempt not to draw comparisons to, at any rate), and far be it from me to try and gild the lily too much as it is. So I'll give my estimation of what I read. Read on, gentle reader. Read on.

Gone With The Wind is something of a historical romance novel that also seems to draw strong analogies between the character's lives and the struggles of the South, both before the American Civil War, during and after. The majority of the book is seen from the point of view of Scarlett O'Hara, the main protagonist, who starts as a selfish and simpering sixteen year old southern belle on a large and profitable plantation, and who ends as a fairly rich but morally deficient survivor of the Civil War and its aftermath. And she ends the book back on the plantation she started at, or at least on her way back there. In between there are a great many adventures, including the deaths of many of her would-be suitors in the war, the impoverishment of the Confederate States of America as the Union breaks the South down bit by bit, and then the gradual process of Reconstruction that embitters the South and leaves some struggling to stay afloat and others riding high on Scalawag and Carpet-Bagger fortunes. O'Hara is among this latter group.

The author, Margaret Mitchell.  Pretty lady. / Source: MargaretMitchellHouse.com

There are quite a few other characters in the book. In fact, there are too many for me to do justice to them with this brief synopsis. I'll touch on the highlights instead. Scarlett is "in love" with a young man from the next plantation over, an educated member of the local gentry who is turns out to be unfit for the real world, named Ashley Wilkes. He marries Melanie Hamilton, a cousin of his, and this leaves Scarlett angry and frustrated. She can't seem to see that Ashley is not the man she really wants, and the reader spends most of the book wanting to cuff her sharply across the side of the head over it.

Meanwhile, Melanie Hamilton Wilkes is the best of souls, frail and yet full of heart. She spends the whole book looking out for Scarlett and over-looking our heroine's faults and flaws, and even defending her when Scarlett gets into an apparently compromising position with her own husband. Melanie is the sort of friend we'd all like to have at least one of. She is foolish in her way, but she is noble of spirit, and that is a valuable commodity in a friend.

Then there is Rhett Butler, a scoundrel to make Han Solo look like a choir boy. He takes a liking to Scarlett O'Hara on their first meeting at the Wilkes plantation when Scarlett tries to confess her feelings to Ashley in what she thinks is a private moment (Rhett is lounging on a sofa and overhears the whole exchange), and spends most of the book in love with Scarlett. He has a funny way of showing it though, as he is both blaggard and rouge, and yet there is good in the guy. Rhett is one of the more well-developed characters in the novel, and by the end he actually takes over the book's focus of narrative for some while, during the period in which he is reforming for his daughter's sake and Mitchell is showing us how good a guy he really is.

These four people are the nexus of the book. There are a host of ancillary characters, some of which were not in the movie at all (such as Will Benteen, a poor country farmer who comes to the O'Hara plantation after the war and stays on to run the place after Scarlett goes back to Atlanta to make her fortune), and all play a relevant role in the book.

I'll not summarize things further than this. The book, though it is a bit long and quite detailed, is worth reading and so you, the reader of this review, can find out more yourself in that way. Or Google it. Either way (grin).

Clark Gable, who played Rhett Butler in the film version of Gone With The Wind, wrote an article in Liberty Magazine in 1940 which explained his feelings on the part.  The title alone is interesting, but the rest of the story is educational as well.  Check it out here. / Source: DearMrGable.com

What I liked about it:

I don't know how to put this in any sophisticated way, so I'll say it plainly. I liked the way Scarlett O'Hara was an idiot. The evolution of the character throughout the book, though not a complete metamorphosis by any means, was enthralling. She changes as the book progresses, and yet she stays the same. And the manner of her change is quite subtle at times. But at the same time, often she evolves in ways that leave the reader - such as myself - wanting to shout "do the right thing! This time, do the right thing!"

Mitchell's ability to make characters that are sympathetic and also equally and almost wholly unsympathetic is great. It is a pleasure to read fiction that has such characters. A great example of this is Rhett Butler. A scoundrel if there ever was one, and yet for the sake of his child, he becomes so very tender. The human quality of this man is admirable. Hard and rascally, and yet gentle and... well the book uses the term quite a bit, but it fits: gentlemanly. Not that I personally know what a gentleman is (wink).

Sadly, though I admired all of Mitchell's characterizations, I identified with Scarlett more than I like to say. I can understand some - if certainly not all - of her foibles. I was raised right, but as a an adult, I discovered that what a man can do and what a man can't do are finer points and easier to navigate than all the niceties. I found some of Scarlett's actions reprehensible (the turning a blind eye at her foreman who mistreats the convict work crew at the lumber mill, for instance), but could understand the blind impulses that drove her to make other mistakes that everyone saw but her (such as riding around un-escorted and putting herself at risk, so that others should have to eventually avenge her bruised honor and get themselves killed/their families put in jeopardy with the federal troops). There are so many instances of these two sides of the coin that it was a bit scary to think how well Mitchell pegged the personality of this fictional character to be identifiable to the readers.

I also appreciated how the slippery slope leads Scarlett to an bad end. In fact, at one point Rhett remarks to someone (I forget who - it might actually be Scarlett) that the person he is speaking to is not sorry for doing something wrong, but only for being caught. This seems to be much of the end of the book. Yes, she has come to some real hard realizations. But just the same. She only feels bad because everything is made clear to her. Yes, people usually need things to be clear to them before they can feel genuine guilt. So my point is self-proved. But the way the book leads up to it is pretty good. Never loved Ashley at all, huh? Relied on Melanie as your arm of strength, huh? And now feel like crap? Yup. 

Homer Simpson paraphrasing one of Scarlet O'Hara's famous lines. / Source: TheHeroinesBookshelf.com

What I didn’t like about it:

Well one complaint I had - and it isn't much - was that there seemed an air of the tawdry "romance" novel in Gone with the Wind when Mitchell is talking about Rhett and Scarlett experiencing passion for each other. Lots of "his strong but graceful body pushed up against her," and the like. Thankfully the book makes up for this in 99.5% of the rest of its contents. But every so often it would rear up, and when it did... well I'm no expert in romance novels, cheap or otherwise. But I still got a whiff of it, and it was annoying to me. This is not so much a real quibble against the book, but more a personal dislike. So take my comments with a grain of salt, for sure.

Also, and this complaint is a bit more serious (though understandable) there is a chapter during the Reconstruction period of the book when Mitchell seems an apologist for slavery as an institution. Granted, the perspective she gives is one that is not the widely accepted or "P.C." version of today. And so it is easy to discount it on the one hand, and to appreciate it on the other - as a point of view clearly differing from the abolitionist side of the coin.

On the other hand, there seems to be some lobbying here to the "genteel" side of African slavery in the South that I found distasteful. I'm not saying that the "Yankees" weren't as racist, if not more so in some ways, than the Southerners. No doubt about it. But saying black slaves were treated universally like children, and that the actions of the Klu Klux Klan were strictly brought about by so-called "upity niggers," and the desire of southern manhood to protect their womenfolk... that's awfully one-sided too. As though it was somehow fair to bring a race of people across the ocean and sold into bonds for the course of their entire lives in the majority of cases. And on top of this, that they should be grateful for being "civilized" and treated like "pets." Seems a bit ridiculous to me.

Anyway, there is a chapter or so of this sort of thing, and while I don't entirely disagree with it as a point of view and as a fact in some cases, the apologist nature of the material turned me off somewhat. Mitchell seemed to have done a good job in being fairly even-handed in many places, even though she is clearly telling one side of the story. But this part? The politics of slavery gets mixed too thickly into her narrative. It was distracting from the story, and annoying for its racist overtones.

And of course, the ending gets dinged too. "Tomorrow is another day." Duh. You could just as well end it, "And the sun will rise tomorrow," or "Like sands through the hourglass, these are the days of our lives," or "bugger off." OK, not that last one. I'm reading Paul is Undead as I write this, so that is slipping in. Sorry.

I liked the end well enough, but the last line was a bit of a let-down. The book really takes an emotional nose dive when Rhett leaves Scarlett, but then she gets all optimistic and everything. Yeah, she still has Tara, but she's really screwed herself otherwise. Not to put too fine a point on it or anything. But she really is in a bad place. Personally, I think the very end, which my wife claims is Mitchell's way of saying that Scarlett can't be beaten, is silly. Sure she can't. But did it have to be so transparent? Especially after much of the preceding material was so tour-de-force? I don't know. But for myself, the very end seemed a bit of a break from how good most of the book was. A bit too convenient. Sorry. But there it is.

The famous artist Thomas Kinkade painted this scene from Gone With The Wind, which shows the Southern Plantation in its glory and splendor.  Probably an exaggeration, but it suits the beauty that the book portrays for places like Tara and Twelve Oaks.  / Source: PierSideGallery.com

What I learned, if anything:

Scarlett says to Rhett: "You are just a rascal," to which he responds, "You can't make me mad by calling me names that are true." The book is full of gems like this. Mitchell's talent for dialogue and depicting personality is first-rate. Great stuff.

The history involved did make me want to learn more about Reconstruction in the South too. Not that Gone With The Wind is a good book to study for history, in and of itself. But it does help spur interest. And that is a good thing, I'd say.

Recommendation:

Permit me a bit of nostalgia, if you will. I remember as a child I would play with my Lego guys and Star Wars figures and what-have-you on my mom's old cheap aluminum bookshelf. Bear with me and I'll connect this back to where I'm going, I promise. Anyway, the spines of the books would create hallways for the action taking place, and being a boy quite taken with combat and warfare, 99% of the time the variety of ridges and outcroppings of these book spines were cover for running battles or desperate last stands. This is actually my first memory of the book, Gone with the Wind.

You see, my mother owned an old battered paperback copy, and I would sometimes look with childish innocence on the heaving bosom of Scarlett O'Hara as she languished in the rippling muscled arms of Rhett Butler. I'm sure from time to time, this very copy would be pulled out so it was flush with the book shelf's edge, so that it would form a door or other sort of barrier in my play. And I wondered what this particular book was about, because the cover was so much more interesting than 99% of the stuff in the bookcase.

The details were the hook. I would wonder at the pictures on that cover; of the man and woman on it, and the fire in the background, and the small inset images of a plantation house and wagons and soldiers and... well, that's all I remember. Up until I was in my teens and saw the movie for the first time (it was on TV, I believe, when I first actually paid attention to it more than whatever I was doing at the time instead), this was all I knew of the story.

The book was great, but to be honest, this sort of scene would have lightened things up just a bit. / Source: AnyoneForRhubarb.com

Now as an adult, I have been able to read the whole book for myself. I must confess, without my wife's encouragement, I would have continued to remain in ignorance of Gone With The Wind. I blame this on both the film, which I have tired hard to avoid drawing comparisons with in this review (since I set out specifically not to do a Dual Review, as I sometimes do), and also on that old paperback copy on my mom's bookshelf. I thought I knew the story well enough. Why read the book, I reasoned? What possible good will it do?

And so I get to the recommendation part of this recommendation part. I would recommend Gone With The Wind. I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. Mitchel weaves in so much of history and the culture - both before and after the Civil War - and a great love story (yes, I'm man enough to say so), and all this with so many human touches. There is an undercurrent of allegory as well that even a neanderthal such as I was able to pick up, and I enjoyed what was grooving there, if you catch my sentiment.

Here's where I sell out on my movie-avoiding tactics. If you have seen the movie and liked it, the book is better. If you haven't bothered with the movie, which seems odd to me, as it is another one of those cultural things that are hard to avoid, and this review has perked your interest, by all means, read the thing. It is not a short read, but it is not terrifically difficult stuff to get through. And though it is a bit melodramatic at times, and fairly one-sided (the South's point of view, of course), it is still worth the trouble. A good book, in this reviewer's opinion. I'm nobody to say so, but in my estimation, the label of "classic" seems well deserved here.

Learn more about Gone With The Wind, by Margaret Mitchel, on Amazon.com 


The parting comment:


Last semester I finished my second semester of Spanish.  Got an "A" too.  Cool, huh?  Well, last semester (that's spring 2012) my Spanish professor showed us part one of this video, and I got a kick out of it.  Above is part two.  With Eric Estrada.  I think you'll agree, most things are better with Eric Estrada.