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Gone with the wind essay introduction
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Introduction Gone with the Wind is a classic fictional love story that depicts life in the old south before, during and after the Civil war. The book was originally written in 1936 by Margret Mitchell, the movie adaptation was released in 1939, directed by Victor Fleming, and staring Clark Gable and Vivian Leigh. Ms. Mitchell grew up listening to Civil war stories from confederate veterans. It was reported that they told her everything; everything that is, except that they had lost the war, she found that out when she was 10 years old. Though the book was written 71 years after the Civil War ended, Ms. Mitchell did her research and appears to have drawn inspiration from those childhood stories that she was told. This is apparent in the detailed description of the clothing, houses, and everyday discussions and interactions of the characters throughout the book. Though not all historically correct most of what is in the book is accurate. During the time the movie was released, “damn” was considered to be vulgar and controversial and they used the term “darkies” to describe the slaves. Summary of the movie The movie revolves around the sometimes love hate relationship between Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara and how she will do whatever it takes to survive. It over romanticizes the old south and how the plantations were run and deals with topics such as slavery, reconstruction of the south and has a strong feminist survival theme to it. Scarlett “makes her uncontrollable self-centeredness seem like the most charming thing in the world.” She is a young southern belle and every man in the county is smitten with her. Though she could have any man she wanted, her eyes are set on the Mr. Ashley Wilkes who is engaged to marry his c... ... middle of paper ... ...e (Ashley’s wife) dying and a promise to take care of their son, Scarlett realizes her true love to Rhett though it is to late as Rhett walks away from the marriage. She will return back to Tara plantation to find a way to win him back. Mitchell, Margaret, Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind Letters, 1936-1949, Edited by Richard Harwell, New York: Macmillan, 1976. “Gone with the Wind Letters” is essentially a collection of letters written by Ms. Mitchell to those that wrote to her about Gone with the wind. One letter in particular is to Vivian Leigh who plays Scarlett in the movie. Thompson, C. Mildred. Reconstruction in Georgia: Economic, Social, Political, 1865-1872, Gloucester, Mass.: P. Smith, 19641915. This book contains the history of the Reconstruction of Georgia. It gives you an insight to the economic, social, and political aspects of Reconstruction
Gone with the Wind is a novel that is set during the civil war. During the second part, the protagonist Scarlett reads a letter that was sent by a confederate soldier named Ashley. The letter talks about his opinion on the war and the reason he fights. Ashley joined the war with the hopes of fighting for States’ Rights and preserving the old ways. However, once the fighting started he realized that the old ways are not going to come back, “And I belong in those old times. I do not belong in this mad present of killing and I fear I will not fit into any future, try though I may.” He is not happy about fighting in the war, and he does not have confidence
In the movie Gone With the Wind, Scarlett, the main character was a woman with many struggles in her life. She lived on a farm with her father, her mother, and her slaves but when she left to go help the wounded, the Yankees came to her house and used it as a base camp. The Yankees took all of Scarlett?s family?s food, crops, and animals. Also while Scarlett was gone her mother got sick. Once Scarlett came back to her farm (Terra) her mother was dead. When the war ended her family was too poor to pay the taxes so she married Frank, a rich businessman, so she could pay the taxes. After her husband died she remarried a richer man named Rhett and they had a child named Bonnie.
The Civil War was period of change in American history. Following the warfare, congress established a federal agency named the Freedmen’s Bureau to facilitate the freed people’s transition from slavery to freedom. Southern blacks encountered the worst chaos, displacement, illnesses, poverty and epidemics, which were limiting to the bureaus successes during reconstruction (Finley 2013, 82). During the war, lack of basic needs and medicine hindered the efforts of improving economic social and political freedom. As a result, the Freedmen’s Bureau was designed to help black southerners transition from slavery to freedom. The challenges faced during this transition were enormous, as the civil war had ruined the region completely. The farms faced destruction during the war and huge amounts of capital depleted in the war. When the civil war ended, the social order of the region was chaotic and slave owners as well as their former slaves were forced to interact socially in a different way than before (Finley 2012, 82). The Freedmen’s Bureau was a unique effort by the federal government to improve the social wellbeing of the American nation. Major General Oliver Howard headed the Free...
Shenton, James P. The Reconstruction: A Documentary History of the South after the War: 1865
The social history regarding reconstruction has been of great controversy for the last two decades in America. Several wars that occurred in America made reconstruction efforts to lag behind. Fundamental shortcomings of the reconstruction were based on racism, politics, capitalism and social relations. The philosophy was dominant by the people of South under the leadership of Lincoln. Lincoln plans were projected towards bringing the states from the South together as one nation. However, the efforts of the Activist were faded by the intrusion of the Republicans from the North. Northerners were capitalists and disapproved the ideas that Lincoln attempted to spread in the South (Foner Par 2).
He taught her all about how the Irish relatives and friends were at war with the English who had bought most of the land, and most were not good landlords. The landlords evicted people and burned their houses because they only wanted the land. Scarlett hired alot of these people to work in her Big House and raise crops for her. She also gave them places to live. Colum took Scarlett to a horse sale in another county one day and she was bidding on a horse that she didn't even want because she saw Rhett Butler and relized that he wanted that horse. She was the highest bidder and got the horse which resulted in her going to fox hunts with the English and spending alot of time with them.
Perman Michael, Amy Murrell Taylor. Major Problems in the Civil War and Reconstruction. Boston: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, 2011.
In Stephen Nissenbaum’s article, “ An Insurrection That Never Happened: ‘The Christmas Riots’,” he presents a somewhat convincing analysis of the social inequality, lack of government unison, and political movements to prove reconstruction was never completed. He does this by first explaining an example of the christmas riots, then continues to show its relevance and interpret it in the more general history of the time. Nissenbaum states, “The story of the ‘Christmas Riots’ of 1865 is a microcosm of the entire period that became known as reconstruction, the years between 1865 and 1877. It was a period of great hopes for the freedmen, hopes that were dashed, then raised, then dashed once again.”
3Robert Toombs, “Debating Secession in Georgia: Two Views.” Exploring American Histories: A Brief Survey of Sources. Volume I: 1877. ed. Nancy A.
Margaret Mitchell's romantic epic, Gone With the Wind, owes its remarkable popularity to the climate of sudden self-destruction and dreariness the Depression created. The Old South's grandeur, coupled with its Civil War-era decadence, provided much-needed escapism for readers, as well as paralleling the U.S.'s own plight in the 20s and 30s. In addition, Scarlett O'Hara's feminist role, her devotion to her land, and her indomitable optimism lent hope to those who had lost faith in the American Dream.
1.Perman, Michael, Major Problems in the Civil War and Reconstruction (New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1998), 31.
Margaret Mitchell’s novel Gone With the Wind, a classic that gives insight into the Confederate lifestyle before and after the Civil War, is known as one of the greatest American novels ever written. The story centers around a former Southern belle named Scarlett O’Hara who grows up in the heart of Georgia on her plantation named Tara. Scarlett doesn’t care about anything or anyone except for her lover, Ashley Wilkes, and finds herself heartbroken when he marries his plain Jane cousin, Melanie Hamilton. As the Yankees get closer and closer to her beloved home, destroying everything she’s ever known and forcing her to flee to Atlanta, Scarlett finds herself forced to fight for what she loves. Though
Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell was born in the year 1900 to an upper-middle class family of Georgia. She was a bit of a rebel, no doubt the result of a suffragist mother and an attorney father. This tomboyish behavior of her young self matches that of the main character of her novel, Scarlett O’Hara. As she grew up, she was surrounded by stories of the Civil War as told by her ancestors. This inspired her setting of the Civil War for Gone With the Wind. Her major interest began under the advisement of her beloved English teacher Eva Paisley. While in Paisley’s class, Mitchell wrote her first attempt at a novel titled The Big Four, which was about a group of four girls at a boarding school. Her main character, named Margaret, was an extremely brave and headstrong character that saved her friends from all kinds of things from fires to ruining of a girl’s father. While most who read young Mitchell’s work loved it, she
Medora Perkerson, Mitchell discusses her novel and her life. She says that it, “isn’t strictly a book about the war, nor is it a historical novel. It’s about the effect of the Civil War on a set of characters who lived in Atlanta at that time”(“American Rebel”). “Gone With the Wind” begins on a plantation “in the period when the old style Southern life was at its height”(“American Rebel”). Then the war arrives, and the main character, Scarlett O’Hara moves to Atlanta, which was a small obscure town until it became important in the war. Scarlett experiences “the thrills and excitement of the boom town that Atlanta became when the war changed it” the difficulties as the Confederacy began to fail, then the “alarm of Atlanta people as they saw General Sherman’s army advancing steadily on the town, and finally the terrifying days of the siege, the capture of Atlanta by Sherman and the burning of the town”(“American Rebel”). After the war is over, Scarlett comes back to Atlanta and helps rebuild the city. “She lives through the terrible days of Reconstruction...up to the time when the Carpetbaggers had been run out of Georgia and people could bean living their normal lives again”(“American
...rian society of the mid-1800s changed with the rise of a modern city culture. Simple life styles became more complicated and cultured as the economy focused on a continual increase in production and an ever-widening distribution of manufactured goods. Family life, social and political culture, agriculture and industry were dramatically transformed, guiding in a new era of change. This relates to chapter 17 in the textbook, “Reconstruction.” During reconstruction, the South was brought back into the union but Republican hopes of having the South follow northern lines of development were never realized. Race relations and the comeback of conservative Democrats extremely limited African-American opportunities. The northern industrial continued by economic advances were less by corruption and the depression of 1873. The Compromise of 1877 ended the Reconstruction era.