Analyze The American Spirit From Gone With The Wind

Gone with the wind was written by Margaret Mitchell in 1936. Once published, the novel immediately caused a great sensation in the world. It has ever reached sales of 50,000 a day and 2 million copies a year. However, critic comments on it varies, some people think it is a great unrivaled master pieces, others think it is but a popular novel. But I think it is biased to define it as the popular literature only from description and position. Why is this novel still attractive to the readers in half a century? Why is a selfish, full of cunning and philistine character still accepted and loved? I think the reason is not only because the writer has shaped the image of the Dixie chicks Scarlett O'Hara, from a beautiful and noble girl before the outbreak of the civil war to a bourgeois women who didn't yield to compromise to life after the war, but also because he has grasped the pulse of the southerners'sprit in the era of reform—the northern American spirit was penetrating for the southerners'.The civil war was broken out after the American had first accomplished the industrial revolution. North American capitalist economy developed rapidly. But the south still kept the backward growing economic. The American broke out the civil war due to an unbalanced economic development. The civil war not only destroyed the southern material world, but also brought new spirit—the American spirit. When the romantic and unrealistic values of the south are increasingly bind the economic development, the southern need a new spirit of capitalism and the new values which guided their actions.In order to understand internal causes of the popularity of Gone with the Wind, this article just uses"American spirit"as a breakthrough. And this article will analyze the influence of American's spirit on the south from analyzing the details and characters. When people's environment for survival changed, they were confronted with only two roads, adapt to it or run its course. It is better to change positively instead of being forced to choose. It is just because Scarlett, as a new southern bourgeois, saw the actual benefits changes would bring about that she consciously struggled with the tradition.All in all, the American spirit is not only a concept but also reflects deeply the bourgeois spirit world. If we want to get a real understand of the Gone with Wind, we must study it further.