For the past month or so, I’ve been on a Civil War kick. I watched the movie Gettysburg to celebrate July 4th, read Gods and Generals, wrote a short story about a time traveler at Gettysburg, and have been listening to a lot of Civil War music as I write. One of the books I decided to give a shot was Gone With the Wind, that classic American novel that’s tied so closely with the Civil War.
It’s definitely a good book. There were parts of it that I really enjoyed, such as the perspective of the people of Atlanta as Sherman’s troops got steadily closer. The poverty of the plantation owners after Sherman’s march to the sea provided a stark contrast to the pompous gaiety of society before the war. You definitely get a sense of what it means to be Southern while reading the book–it’s surprising how similar some things are to the way they were. And just in general, the sheer sense of immersion that the novel gives you is just incredible. It’s rare that I’m sucked into a world as thoroughly as I was sucked into the quiet charm of the antebellum South and the frenzied optimism of Confederate Georgia.
Halfway through GONE WITH THE WIND. Rhett Butler is an ass and Scarlett deserves him. #amreading
— Joe Vasicek (@onelowerlight) July 18, 2014
The real shock to me was that I could enjoy the book even as I hated the main characters. Scarlett is a bitchy, stuck-up brat–an entitled rich white girl who cannot comprehend that the world does not revolve around her. Rhett Butler isn’t nearly as stuck-up as she is, but he is an arrogant jerk who sneers at other people, profits from their misfortune, and hides his cowardice with his biting cynicism.
The fact that I enjoyed reading about them even though I disliked them so much is a testament to the fact that not every character needs to be likable. Even thought Scarlett really peeved me off, I still found her fascinating because I felt like I really understood her. Margaret Mitchell does an excellent job of getting you into her characters’ heads and showing where they come from. In some ways, I felt that I understood Scarlett better than she understood herself.
But I have to be honest–from page one, I was only interested in Scarlett for the schadenfreude. I already knew how the story ends, with those classic lines “frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn,” and “tomorrow is another day.” If I’d been waiting instead for Scarlett to experience a growth arc (and she really does start in an excellent place for one), I probably would have thrown the book across the room much sooner.
The part that made me stop reading–and yes, this will spoil the book–was the part where Scarlett steals Frank Kennedy, her sister’s fiance, in order to get the money to save Tara. She’s so singly focused on saving the plantation (Tara) that she’s willing to backstab her own family, who ought to matter a lot more to her than a house and a spot of land. Yes, I understand that it was entirely in her character to do that, but when she actually betrayed her sister like that, I just couldn’t stand it anymore. I skipped to the last chapter, had my juicy moment of schadenfreude, and returned the book to the library.
I had a lot more sympathy for everyone who locked horns with Scarlett (except for Rhett) than I ever did for Scarlett herself. The O’Hara overseer who gets fired in the first or second chapter for making the poor Slattery girl pregnant–I didn’t think it was noble for him to try and steal Tara through his postwar connections, but I could see why he’d do it. He probably didn’t feel like he could marry the Slattery girl because the O’Hara’s weren’t paying him enough. Even if they were, the fact that he married her showed that at least he was trying to set things right. And though I didn’t admire the way he went about trying to get his revenge, a part of me wanted him to succeed.
My favorite character was probably Melanie. As soon as she showed up on the page, I liked her, and as the story progressed, I came to actively admire her. Ashley, too, was a very interesting character to me–his thoughts on the war and on the passing of the old way of life were fascinating. But I could never really respect him, because it was always so easy for Scarlett to manipulate him.
And even though Rhett wasn’t so prone to Scarlett’s machinations, I still couldn’t respect him because he was always such an ass to everyone. It’s not that he wasn’t a gentleman–there were plenty of gentlemen in the book who were jerks, and plenty of men who weren’t gentlemen who were still good people. The thing was, Rhett was just never a good person to anyone except Melanie, and throughout the book, that never changed.
I guess the takeaway here is that it’s almost impossible to have any sympathy for a character who treats their friends and family like garbage. For me, at least, if a character constantly betrays the people who are closest to them, I really want nothing to do with them. But I guess that’s just me–judging from the success of Gone With the Wind, I guess I can’t generalize that at all.
I don’t know. What do you guys think?
