Bokrecension: Gone With the Wind av Margaret Mitchell

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This review is about a true masterpiece when it comes to American literature,
Gone with the wind, written by Margaret Mitchell.
It follows the trials and tribulations of Scarlett O’Hara, a southern girl who has to endure a lot of pain in her young life. In spite of all this, Scarlett does whatever she finds necessary to take care of the ones closest to her.
Gone with the wind is often referred to as the greatest love story of our time but it is also a story of sadness, death and unrequited love.
Margaret Mitchell grew up hearing stories about the Civil War and she based this book on her knowledge of the war and moments from her own life. She had hesitations about showing the manuscript to a publisher, but I think she made a decision she never had to regret.
Gone with the wind has sold more than 28 million copies in 37 countries.

The scenery changes quite a bit in this book. It starts out in April 1861 and ends ten years later. We follow Scarlett through many husbands, many homes and many cities. Most of the time is spent in Atlanta, Georgia. A town where Scarlett finds love and loses it. However, I think that Tara is the most important place in this story. This is where she faces some of her hardest times and it is also where she gets her strength and finds hope. Tara is the place she will always call home.

The main character is of course Scarlett O’Hara. The book begins with her as a spoiled 18-year old and it ends with her as a spoiled 28-year old. I think Scarlett is very two-faced, she acts one way to seem very pure and sweet but at other times, she is fierce and almost evil. She is also very manipulative and she does anything and everything to get what she wants. In the book, Rhett says something that I find to be very true about her, “You‘re so brutal to those who love you, Scarlett. You take their love and hold it over their heads like a whip.” Scarlett is not very likeable and she does not have many good qualities. The only thing I personally like about Scarlett is that she would never give up. I do not think that she had changed very much in the end, she was still the same spoiled girl that felt that whatever she wanted, she deserved to get.

We first meet Rhett Butler at a barbecue before the war starts. It is very obvious from the beginning that Rhett is not a southern gentleman. He is brutally honest and not afraid to voice his opinions on things that one should be quiet about.
Rhett knows from the first time he sees Scarlett that they are meant to be. He also knows that Scarlett does not love him, but regardless of that, he waits for her and tries to be near her as much as possible. At first Rhett seems like a perfect man but it is soon very obvious by the way he acts that he is definitely not perfect. He is very jealous and I think he takes great pleasure in hurting Scarlett.
I do not doubt that he loves her, but I feel that he loves her too much for his own good. Rhett does make a great change in the end, he felt that he had reached his limits for how much he could take of Scarlett’s coldness towards him and left her.

Although Melanie Hamilton is not a main character, she is a big part of this book and I felt that I needed to include her. She is the sister of Scarlett’s first husband, Charles Hamilton. She is also married to the man Scarlett has always wanted, Ashley Wilkes. Melanie loves Scarlett very much and trusts her more than anything. She seems to be incapable of thinking bad about anyone and is always looking for the good in each person she meets. Scarlett always thinks of Melanie as very weak and stupid, not understanding that Melanie is in fact a lot smarter than Scarlett thinks. Sadly, she dies in the end and not until then can Scarlett see how much Melanie really meant to her.

I do not know if there is something the author wants to tell people with this book, maybe that we should never take each other for granted. I feel like that is a good message since there is a lot of that going on. Scarlett thinks that Rhett will never leave her, Ashley will always love her and Melanie will never stop protecting her.
Ironically, all these things happen and Scarlett is left all alone.

I could spend an eternity speaking about this book and how much...