Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Gone With the Wind
Book Review: America's Greatest Novel
Summary: 5 Stars
I began this novel in the 11th grade prepared to hate it to the core. Everything I knew about it made me expect a silly, eye-batting trip into a fairy tale world of the Old South with its impossibly virtuous ladies, its foppish gentleman and grinning content slaves, and I was actually looking forward to making fun of the characters, story and author.
I could NOT have been more wrong about this novel. Margaret Mitchell, I salute you!
This is to American letters what Les Miserables is to France, or War And Peace is to Russia. Nowhere else are characters like these to be found or is the human spirit portrayed as so unconquerable. I fell in love with this book. From its would-be detractor I became its most vocal champion. I was stunned over and over at how inutterably magnificent this contribution to literary greatness was. As one reads along about the lives of these larger than life men and women all set against the backdrop of the fall of an entire civilization, any sensitive person can only be compelled to acknowledge that there on the open page is a book that shall live in literary eternity.
Of any work of fiction a person might feel compelled by "duty" to read at some point in a lifetime, Gone With The Wind deserves to be at the head of that list.
Book Review: LOVE IT! A MUST read!
Summary: 5 Stars
GWTW-I discovered it on the shelf of my highschool library & having never heard of it, I decided I would read it. I was completely unprepared for the ride! While we all want to be Melanie, the truth is-we're all a little Scarlett on the inside! I have since read the book many times (and of course own the DVD) and never tire of it. A definite book for gals-you get a glimpse into southern life at the time of the Civil War and experience a love story of enormous preportions. "Fiddle Dee Dee" is our catch phrase around the house! LOVED IT>Book Review: T H R E E.....V I E W S.....O F....T H I S.....B O O K....
Summary: 4 Stars
Remembering when this book, "Gone With The Wind", first came out, my mother told me that my her brother, a doctor from Montreal Canada, who had settled in the USA, had read it all the way through, finding it compulsively readable. Years and years, (and years!), later, on the 50th Anniverary of GWTW, (the movie, I think), TV GUIDE ran two -- or perhaps it was three -- articles on this book / movie phenomenon. One was a general overview of the movie, and comments from surviving leading players. The other two were equally as fascinating: one was written by a White woman, the other, by a Black man.
The White woman said that the value she had gotten from this book was that she had learnt from it, to withstand any hardship, no matter how great.
The Black man said that he had been SO ashamed to buy this book. As much ashamed as he would have been, had he bought a pornography book! After reading it, he opined that it did NOT focus on the cruelty, pain, and degradation of slavery, but instead on a woman in love with another woman's financee and later, husband. He compared the book to a hypothetical novel set in World War II, wherein a Nazi officer, a guard in a concentration camp, was having a romance with a secretary. The pain and suffering of so many people, all around them, is all but ignored, in this hypothetical book, as all the attention is on the two lovers. Obviously, the Black gentleman who wrote this article for TV Guide did not like GWTW at all....
I think it's important to keep BOTH viewpoints in mind. Because both are very accurate, and both speak volumes about the meaning of "Gone With The Wind".
Book Review: There is a reason this novel is called a classic!
Summary: 5 Stars
This is my favorite novel ever! Wonderful historical background and wonderful characters, especially Scarlett, Rhett, and Melanie. If you liked the movie, but have never read the book, you will love the book. There are so many more details and events that occur in Scarlett's life in the book that aren't included in the movie. Even though the book is long, I have read it many times and love it just as much each time.Book Review: You reap what you sow
Summary: 4 Stars
Selfish, sought after, sixteen-year-old Katie "Scarlett" O'Hara has everything a Southern Belle could want as the story begins in April of 1861: a loving family; a plethora of attentive suitors, and a lovely home on a plantation situated 25 miles from Atlanta, Georgia, maintained by the family's (p 279) hundred slaves. She soon learns that the primary object of her affections, Ashley Wilkes, is to about to announce his engagement. And before you know it, she has professed her love to one man, encountered another (Rhett Butler) for the first time, become engaged, married, pregnant and widowed. Meanwhile, most of the local males have become Confederate soldiers, battling on the side of the South in the Civil War. As the locals mourn their dead and the battles rage on, Scarlett chooses to return to Tara. After surviving a harrowing journey, she learns the fate of her family and home, and takes on roles of caregiver, operations manager, and manual laborer for the plantation along with its remaining inhabitants. She marries, again with ulterior motives, and moves to Atlanta, where her behavior as sole businesswoman starts tongues wagging. One wonders, will she ever find love?
When the story ends, twelve years later, the war is over and many of her loved ones have passed. While she learns a few things about friendship, family, love, and loss, some things never change, like her feelings (contempt and disdain) about slaves and beliefs about slavery (better for them than their freedom). With its racist rhetoric, negative stereotypes, and inflammatory words for blacks (the "n" word alone appears ninety times), it is a lesson on the incomprehensible capacity of humans to justify their infliction of suffering on others and will likely cause many readers to squirm. But it is also a masterful epic on life and love in the South during the Civil War, with great character development and spectacular writing (including some neat old, odd words) which make it a worthy read from start to 700-plus page finish.