A most excellent book in making you question morality and social conventions

[[deleted user]]

Gone With the Wind is considered the GREATEST work of Southern literature of all time as well as the best-selling Southern novel ever written. Its easy to see why just by the love story between Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara which is considered one of the most touching romances in all of fiction and this is remarkable in that Gone With the Wind isn't even a romance novel. This love story alone is so heart-wrenching and emotional to such an extent that is rarely found even in most romance novels and dramas.

However the love story between Rhett and Scarlett is just scratching the surface of the complexity and merits of this classic that makes it such a masterpiece. There is so many subplots and characterizations that one can spend days of chatting about Gone With the Wind and still not touch the depth of the story. Everytime you re-read the book (even mere parts of it) you always find something new or think of something you never thought about before.

IMHO another aspect of the book thats just as good (and I feel at times even better) is how the book makes you wonder about the concept of morality and social norms. There is so much to chat about this aspect I will only post my favorite example, which is Ashley Wilkes and Rhett Butler.

As you seen from the story, these two characters are in the far opposites of the morality spectrum. One would think that Ashley is the more admirable one. Yet as you read through the story, you bein to see the flaw of white an dblack morality. Just seeing how much of a failure Ashley was in the post-antebellum South is enough to make you question about being "Saintly" and "Good".

However Rhett's success in the New South would make the reader downright insulted because he was such a criminal thuge who swindled and stole to become the success he is. He was already a crook at the start of the story.

Yet as you read many of Rhett's opinions you find yourself agreeing with him. Especially on how nonesense many Southern social conventions were such as how women were expected to be docile.

In the end you find yourself having a love-hate relationship with both Rhett and Ashley. Ashley because he really is a kind-hearted man but he is unable to move on with the times and adapt. Rhett because he is such a violent scoundrel yet you find yourself agreeing with so many of his opinions on how stupid social norms of the time were and how naive many morals are. You also find yourself respecting Rhett because of how much he's willing to endure for those he loves, no matter how much of a thug he is.

Not even scratching the surface and I can go on and on such as how the narrator puts a rather racist tone to the story yet many of the main characters have opinions that are contrary to the racist atmosphere of the story and act in ways that were ahead of the time period. Scarlett O'Hara is the best example particularly on how she viewed former black slaves as more trustworthy than most Southern whites and how she felt her slaves were such close family, more than even her siblings.

I'll leave the examples there.

So what do you think? Is Gone With the Wind a story that makes you question social conventions and morality like I believe?

[Carina]

When I first read the book I thought it was an amazing story. It is only now after reading other peoples views about it that I have started to look beyond simple enjoyment.

It has been a number of years since I read the book but I do think that I would pay more attention to the examples of slavery having learnt more about that recently (and having read other books in which slavery is predominent). Other controversial issues I cannot really comment on without reading it again!

[Colleen]

GWTW- The greatest work of Southern literature of all time???? Really? According to whom- the inbred community of Mississippi? I didn't always appreciate the complex vernacular of Faulkner but on his worst day he was a far superior writer and is viewed that way by literary critics.