Never Gone With The Wind

No one will doubt that Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind is one of the world's most popular books, with more than 25 million copies sold---in 27 languages and 185 editions. The charm of it increases as time goes by. It makes a legend, and the legend will never be gone with the wind.The thesis is an attempt to explore the charm. Gone With the Wind is an encouraging book, a book of hardship and survival. It was issued against the background of a savage depression. The world was as badly off. There was something in Gone With the Wind for all who read it. The people in the Depression could easily understand, without prompting, how it was to be in a suddenly collapsed world, which was formerly rich and stable. The brave, undefeatable Scarlett represents something of a wish fulfillment for them. She succeeds grandly in business and gains security. That's what they dreamed. And in those who came through depression, there has to a little bit a Melanie, who bends but never breaks. War and constant pain and hard work had been powerless against her sweet tranquility in mind. To any people in their nation's hard time, Gone With the Wind shows an example of the fortitude and ideals of a civilization which had faced monumental uncertainties and had survived in spirit.Scarlett, the most vital woman in American literature, is going to survive any time. This character is very charming, though she may have some shortcomings. She's self-centered. Her whole life centers around her own wants, and what she wants foremost is attention and adulation in a setting of comfort and security. And she is independent. In fact, after the death of her mother and the breakdown of her father, Scarlett never depends on another human being other than herself. Scarlett is never to look back. She knew that the lazy luxury of the old days was gone, never to return. She is also supremely utilitarian. Even though it was said that "she would never be able to understand a complexity," in fact, the only complexities she failed to understand were those that had no practical usefulness to her. The most moving part of the book is the tragic love story of Scarlett and two men---Ashley and Rhett. Only when it is too late, does Scarlett understand that "only like marries like, can there be any happiness." If she has ever understood Ashley, she would never have loved him; if she has ever understood Rhett, she would never have lost him.Many critics criticize Gone With the Wind for its lack of subtlety and self-consciousness. However, that is in its favor. GWTW is primarily a story, in which things happen to people, not, as is the case with so much modern fiction, a study, in which people happen to things. Truly, there is little conscious craftsmanship in GWTW, but it is just this that makes it so popular. The mass seldom care about the craftsmanship, neither do they appreciate it. They just care about the story, about what happen to the brave Scarlett, and applaud for success, cry for her lost love. No other Civil War novel has much "breadth" in conception as Gone With the Wind. What it lacks in "depth" and in "art" is compensated for in the clarity and vitality of its presentation of the diverse and yet unified issues involved in sustained narrative interest. The conflict which it dramatizes is as old as history itself. It has been presented more skillfully before, and no doubt will be again, But it will never be done more excitingly or appealingly than it is here.Gone With the Wind will never be gone with the wind.