Zen Cho's Reviews > Gone with the Wind

I kept thinking about Huckleberry Finn, glad I wasn't the only one =P

It was the romanticizing of the KKK that I found appalling when I re-read GWTW four years ago. (The first time I read it, I was 13 and didn't notice the KKK references).

What I found most disturbing was Ellen's system for work assignments for the slave children. The best and the brightest were selected to be the house servants, the next level down were trained for a trade and the rest (the majority) became field hands. In Mitchell's narrative, the house servants stayed because they were smart enough to recognize their own limitations and their need for the white folk to take care of them. It was the shiftless field hands that caused all the trouble.

What a shame that you have missed the point of the novel almost entirely. Margaret Mitchell represented a time as it was, not as someone in the 21st century might have wished it to be. Remember that the book was written at a time much closer to the Civil War, and even closer to that brutal time known as "Reconstruction."

If you notice, the war is over before the story is half told. The remainder is devoted to the survival efforts people went through after being brought to their knees and then beaten almost to death AFTER the treaty was signed. That period is a very large blot on the United States to think that those who did not leave the union believed that they had some obligation, not only to defeat the South, but to continue a brutal punishing process long after the war was over. It should be noted also here, that there is no documentation that southern troops ever looted the homes of residents around areas where battles took plased, as union soldiers are documented to have done throughout the South. Yes, they took boots off dead soldiers, and they likely forraged for food as their supplies dwindled, but the southern "code" would not have permitted them to do something as shameful as stealing valuables from ordinary citizens.

The story, though reflecting racial attitudes, is not intended to be racist, any more than Huckleberry Finn is. You simply cannot overlay attitudes of the 21st century on a work written many years before and expect to get any sense of understanding about its true context. The so-called n-word did not become universally derisive until the 1960s, when it came to represent a completely negative attitude toward African-Americans. Take a look back to old England, where the natives of India were often called "niggers" by British imperialists.

When Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn, his attitudes, as expressed through the thoughts of an unschooled boy were far ahead of his time. After all, while referring to Jim as a "nigger," Huck is actually observing that, contrary to attitudes of his time, black people actually experienced emotions and were, after all, human and worthy of respect. It was Twain's way of giving a sermon while never stepping into the pulpit.

The same goes for Mitchell. GWTW is a reflection of what she perceived as a love affair with a lifestyle long gone and the futility of clinging to the past. After all, as a man of his time, didn't Rhett Butler represent a break with the false gentility of Charleston? Didn't Ashley Wilkes represent the attitude of a man educated elsewhere and aware of the world outside the narrow provincialism of his region? Didn't Melanie represent the kindness and charitability that we could all do well to emulate? Did Mitchell express admiration for the Tarleton boys, who wasted their educational opportunities on gettting drunk an in troublde and being expelled from universities all over the country? GWTW is a much more deep and insightful story that one can find in a Harlequin Romance, to which your review seems to have reduced it.

Granted, the KKK has never been a noble organization, but at the time it began, it was, indeed, a group effort to protect whatever remained of family dignity and safety. Had Reconstruction not bought the low-rent "carpetbaggers" and "scalawags" and other profiteers to the south after the war and used the ignorance of the former slaves to vote them into office to impose punitive taxes and to completely decimate what was left of southern people for their own brutal and greedy purposes, the KKK would likely not have come into existence and then been perpetuated into our time among succeeding low-rents whose only purpose in joining IS racist.

Despite the love story elements, in GWTW, Margaret Mitchell displays remarkable insights into not only the romantic elements of a lost era, but also into the terribly flawed system that attempted to create an aristocracy that silly humans seem to long for, no matter what the cost to civilization.

All in all, your review shows a truly superficial understanding of Mitchell's magnum opus.

^Fred is so right.

It’s interesting that you mention Huckleberry Finn’s use of we-all-know-what as a mode of comparison to GWTW. Because the two are not like. AT ALL. For all Scarlett’s incisiveness, the thought never crept into her shrewd little head that blacks have a personhood equal to her own. Yes, as you noted, Mitchell dismantles notions of Southern honor, of masculinity and femininity, of “The Cause”, undoing these societal bulwarks time and time again (…to, largely, build them back up again, but I digress…), but not once is the institution of slavery ever questioned. Morally, socially, economically, nothing. And the only people to do so, the Yankee ‘n-gger lovers’, are, of course wily scum. (The assertion in a comment above that the North essentially wrought the KKK upon themselves, by the way, is just…we’ll say slipshod, and leave it at that.) The black characters in GWTW are substantial, and integral to the narrative—but, let’s consider their portrayal. With the exception of Mammy (and even her rightheadedness is dismissed by Scarlett as childlike), they are simple. They are stupid. (Not merely ignorant, but plain ol’ stupid.) They are like children. They are ugly. And lest we forget, animalistic jungle heathens who are just itching to destroy, destroy, destroy. Mitchell allows these characters not one iota of human dignity, and you want to be upset with the original reviewer, and others, who have a problem with the novel because of its non-treatment (and, some might say, out and out glamorization) of slavery? Get real.

Excellent review, Fred.

It's true the book glamorizes the KKK and defends slavery but it's still an important, fascinating work because it shows the psychology of that side.

I totally agree with Fred on this...

Fred - you hit the nail on the head. Said everything I had been thinking but couldn't put into words.

@Fred: I think there is a major difference between Huckleberry Finn & this, in that Huckleberry Finn is clearly anti-slavery while this book is at least sympathetic to it. Also, I'm not American, but I think if I recall correctly, the political success of the protagonists in putting an end to the Reconstruction as celebrated in this novel, is otherwise known as the beginning of nearly a century of racial segregation in America.

I'm glad you noticed the terrible, unforgivable scene in the field behind Twelve Oaks. That one sentence made me run around reading it to friends while wanting to throw the book in an open sewer. It hurt my stomach.

"I'd known this was racist in a vague sort of way, not remembering much about the book or movie except bosoms and swooning, but wow, I didn't know it was that mindblowingly racist."

Well, duh. It's set in the South during the Civil War. *Of course* Scarlett, et al are going to have racist viewpoints.

I agree wth what Fred said as well. Of course the book shows racism. Look at the time period and the location it's set in. How could you expect it to be anything less than racist?

Tyler wrote: "I'm glad you noticed the terrible, unforgivable scene in the field behind Twelve Oaks. That one sentence made me run around reading it to friends while wanting to throw the book in an open sewer. I..."

What sentence is this? I don't remember it and I am genuinely curious.

Mind Blowingly racist is the nicest way to describe this book. Reading it was an anthropological study into the self deception that persists today in America. Margaret Mitchell's story was nothing less than a perpetuation of the Lost Cause myth. Readers who justify her racism as a product of her time are being intellectually lazy. Her racism is not just present in her characters voice but in her narration. finally the book was poorly written and in serious need of editing. The characters were 2 dimensional props designed to evoke nostalgia for a criminal past. I think your concentration camp analogy is right on the mark. All of those plantation tours down South are essentially glitzed up representations of prison labor and inhuman brutality. I recommend reading "The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism," by Cornell professor Edward E. Baptist to cleanse one's brain after Mitchell's travesty. http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketco...

I’m with you, Zen and Ajax. When I first started reading I kept hoping that book was satire and the narrator would pull back the curtain for us a bit. But no. Mitchell was clearly progressive when it came to women’s rights but if the narrator represented her perspective, her progressive attitude didn’t extend to people of color.

Also, a good editor could have cut the length of this book in half. How many times do we have to hear about the virtues of Ellen, and the paradise of Tara. I listened to a podcast that mentioned that Mitchell worked on GWTW for 10 years, stashing finished chapters in hiding places around her house. After she sent it to the publisher, she found chapters that she had forgotten, still in her hiding places. That probably saved us from another 500 pages.

You know who else liked burning books?

Jasmine wrote: "The black characters in GWTW are substantial, and integral to the narrative—but, let’s consider their portrayal. With the exception of Mammy (and even her rightheadedness is dismissed by Scarlett as childlike), they are simple. They are stupid. (Not merely ignorant, but plain ol’ stupid.) They are like children. They are ugly. And lest we forget, animalistic jungle heathens who are just itching to destroy, destroy, destroy. Mitchell allows these characters not one iota of human dignity..."

The slaves are shown to be as smart, and sometimes smarter, than their masters. In the very beginning, the Tarleton twins are berating their slave, Jeems, but he is shown to be smarter than they are, when he points out why Scarlett's mood changed. Uncle Peter holds a position of authority in Pittypat’s house, and basically is responsible for her care because he’s more capable than she is.

Just which slaves are actually shown to be "simple" and "stupid?" Prissy? She's a twelve year old child.

II quote "t would be enlightening to hear Gone with the Wind’s defenders explain their willingness to overlook the scene in which Scarlett is violently attacked and threatened with rape by two men—one of them a black man “with shoulders and chest like a gorilla,” Later that night, the local Ku Klux Klan—led by Ashley Wilkes and Scarlett’s husband, Frank Kennedy – head out on a lynching party to kill the men"....She off-handedly endorses racial violence and the Ku Klux Klan’s depredations."
"Black characters are caricatures. Big Sam’s “watermelon-pink tongue lapped out, his whole body wiggled, and his joyful contortions were as ludicrous as the gambolings of a mastiff”. It goes on and on."

Shock horror that a book set in those times and in that location is pro-slavery! I never would’ve thought it!

Louise what's your point? Of course contest matters BUT shes doing a review and why shouldn't she criticize this part of the writing? Being set in those times doesn't mean I can't criticize what the author wrote....

also, just so you know, people that weren't racist existed in those times too freaking DUH