Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Reader Rating:

I finally got around to reading this and I'm so glad I did. The book was a monster at over 1000 pages. This was the first book ebook I purchased on my Nook and I enjoyed reading it. For the most part, the movie is true to the book minus a few characters that were removed in the movie. I had no idea that in the book, Scarlett actually had two other children, one from each of her marriages. Other things that they left out in the movie was the presence of the KKK and a lot about the slaves. In the book, many Southern men joined the KKK to protect themselves and their women from the free slaves that were wreaking havoc in the community. The North was determined to rule the South as a conquered territory and in most cases, treated the freed slaves better than the Southerners. It also painted the picture that some of the slaves wished that they had not been freed because they were treated well by their masters. When the war was over, the rich plantation owners were left penniless and could no longer support themselves or the loyal slaves that stayed but didn't have the heart to turn them away. Upon being freed, many of the slaves had no sense of direction and longed for someone to tell them what to do and take care of them. This perspective of course was from those of the house servants and not the field slaves. This is so different from everything that we have been taught about slavery growing up. In the book Scarlett and others defended their slaves as family members.

One of the main things I took from the book was how sad of a love story it really is. Throughout the book, you know Rhett is in love with Scarlett but she is too stubborn to see that she is in love with him. At the end when Rhett finally leaves her he tells her that he didn't tell her how much he loved her because she uses people's love for her as a whip against them. This is true because throughout the book, whenever she thinks he is falling in love with her, she tells herself that she'll make him fall in love with her and when he does, she'll hurt him. He also tells her that the reason why he loved their daughter Bonnie so much is because he wanted Scarlett to love him so that he could spoil her too but she wouldn't and so all the love he wanted to show Scarlett was shown to Bonnie instead because Bonnie was the only person who loved him in return. When Bonnie died, Rhett gave up. Another sad thing about the end of the book is when Melanie dies. Throughout the book Scarlett wishes that Melanie would die so that she could marry Ashley. Melanie defends Scarlett from everyone and when she dies, Scarlett realizes how much she really loved her. So in the end, she loses the two people who cared about her the most but didn't realize how much she loved until they were gone. Pretty tragic.

A side note, I couldn't get over how Scarlett had a 17 inch waist and after 2 children was upset over her 20 inch waist!

A few facts about Gone with the Wind:

• Scarlett's character was originally named Pansy.
• It took Margaret Mitchell 7 years to write it and another 8 months to check historical references.
• "Tote the Weary Load" and "Tomorrow is Another Day" were other titles considered.
• One of the bestselling novels of all time. At the time of it's release, the two most prominent books in the American home were Gone with the Wind and the Bible, which people displayed proudly side by side.
• This was Margaret Mitchell's first and only novel.
• Margaret Mitchell was killed crossing the street by a speeding taxi.