Literary Analysis of Gone with the Wind
Literary Analysis of Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell Gone With the Wind is the only novel written by Margaret Mitchell for which she won the Pulitzer Prize in 1937. The novel follows Scarlett O’Hara, a spoiled sixteen year old just before the start of the Civil War through the war and Reconstruction (1861-1870). Major themes throughout the novel are: The importance of land; love of money; survival; wanting what you cannot have; and the change of a culture (Mitchell, 1936).
Scarlett’s life revolved around the parties she would attend at neighboring plantations, flirting with the young men of the county and pursuing her childhood crush, Ashley Wilkes. Scarlett was a spoiled. In 1860 sixteen year old Scarlett O’Hara lived on Tara, her father’s plantation in Georgia. She is self-centered girl who seemed to care little for the feelings of others and who was used to getting everything she wanted. Her father, Gerald was an Irish immigrant who had prospered in his new land. Her mother, Ellen was from an aristocratic French family. Scarlett had two sisters, Suellen and Careen to whom she paid little mind. Mammy was Ellen’s house servant and the girl’s nanny. Mammy was always concerned that the girls be proper ladies like their mother. The O’Hara plantation had many slaves and was prosperous (Mitchell, 1936). In the spring of 1860 Scarlett was looking forward to the barbeque the Wilkes’s family would be having at Twin Oaks, when the Tarleton twins Brent and Stuart stopped by. It was from the Tarleton twins that Scarlett found out that Ashley Wilkes’s engagement to his saintly cousin; Melanie Hamilton would be announced at the barbeque. When Gerald rides up on his horse, Scarlett runs to him to find out if it is true that Ashley will be announcing his engagement. Gerald tries to convince Scarlett that she should not pursue Ashley and says “Have you running after a man who’s not in love with you, when you could have any one of the bucks in the County?”