Posted on 07/18/2015 3:27:50 PM PDT by EveningStar
When Americans think about the Confederacy, they often think about Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 classic, Gone With the Wind. Inspired by recent debates over the Confederate flag, I decided to give the book a try. I confess that I did not have high hopes. I expected to be appalled by its politics and racism, and to be bored by the melodrama. (Scarlett O’Hara, Rhett Butler, and Ashley Wilkes? Really?) About twenty pages, I thought, would be enough. I could not have been more wrong. The book is enthralling, and it casts a spell.
Does it make a plausible argument for continuing to display the Confederate flag? Not even close. But it does raise a host of questions—about winners’ narratives, about honor and humiliation, about memory, about innocence and guilt, about men and women, about what’s taken for granted, about the particularity of human lives, and about parallel worlds. Teeming with life, it offers surprising insights into the Confederacy and the Old South. To be sure, its presentation of slavery is appalling. But at its core, it’s much less about politics than it is about the human heart. On that count, it has a lot to say, not least about how to come to terms with history.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
Structurally speaking, GWTW is an “epic”.
Within the epic, “romance” was used as a plot device, not as the main theme; and as I explained, it was an excellent vehicle for her subject matter.
Oh and I forgot to mention Selznick was consciously trying to “top” Birth Of A Nation with GWTW; I was only speculating on how he might have felt about the silent film’s overt racism.
With that in mind, you could have called GWTW “Death of a Nation” because that’s its main theme... the death of the Old South.
I agree with most of what you say. Thanks for the ping.
I agree. It really wasn’t, to me at least, a romance. There far to many facets involved. The movie focused more on the romance.
The fact that MM wrote such a book is a huge accomplishment. Not because I consider her a substandard writer. Quite the contrary. But because the research had to be monumental and tedious at that point in time.
Though even the most religious today don’t recognize it, Mitchell titled “Gone With The Wind” about the death of the Old South as a literary allusion to Proverbs 103:16
http://biblehub.com/psalms/103-16.htm
“For the wind passes over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.”
That’s interesting, Sontagged. Thank you!
TY2
:)
I didn’t know that, thank you.
How appropriate.
Thank you for your family anecdotes. They are interesting.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.