Unfortunately, I've never attempted to read it. Perhaps one day.
Of the novels that I have read in my life, the best is Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell.
The film adaptation, directed by Victor Fleming, is also perhaps the best movie that I have ever seen.
The scale of this story is incredible. I often wonder how Mitchell's thought process worked in writing the book. Did she outline it all before she began writing, or did she just make it up as she went along, not knowing what turns the story would take?
I tend to believe it was the former, as I have heard that she worked backwards, writing the last chapter of the novel first, and the first chapter last.
It is unfortunate that she died after being stricken by a drunk driver in Atlanta at the age of 48. I would have liked to read other novels by her, and see if she would have attempted a sequel to Gone With The Wind.
There is so much to say about this movie. In this blog entry, I will just note the dynamism of some of the principal characters.
Most movies, good or bad, usually have only one or two dynamic characters. By dynamic, I mean a character who changes significantly in personality or attitude during the story. Static characters, on the other hand, remain the same.
Any easy example of a dynamic character is Ebeneezer Scrooge.
Perhaps I am wrong in my thinking, but I tend to believe that the Academy Award for Best Actor or Best Actress should go to an actor who portrayed a dynamic character, or at least a character that displays a wide range of thought or emotions.
The Best Supporting Actor Award can go to an actor who portrays a static character. Tommy Lee Jones won this award for his portrayal of Deputy U.S. Marshal Gerard in the movie, The Fugitive. Gerard, though he does eventually come to realize that the fugitive he hunts is innocent of the crime, is a static character.
In Gone With the Wind, almost every single one of the major characters are dynamic. The reason for this is the coming and going of the Civil War, which changed everything about the country and the people who lived during that time.
1) Gerald O'Hara (played by Thomas Mitchell) is fiery, bombastic Irishman and lord of the Tara Plantation in Georgia. He is the father of Scarlett, the protagonist of the story. The best thing to ever happen to Gerald is his marriage to Ellen. He is completely devoted to her and to the land. In truth, Ellen is the one who runs the plantation while Gerald spends much of his time horseback riding.
When the war comes, Sherman's army ravages the plantation and leaves it destitute. The house is allowed to remain standing only because it served as a headquarters for the Union army. The most devastating blow to Gerald, though, comes when Ellen dies from disease. This snaps his mind, and Scarlett has to take care of him and the plantation after the Yankees have come and gone.
2) Melanie Hamilton (played by Olivia de Havilland)is the most virtuous character in the entire story. She is the object of Scarlett's jealousy and contempt because of her marriage to Ashley Wilkes, whom Scarlett wants for herself. Scarlett attempts to hide her feelings from Melanie, and she is successful largely because Melanie refuses to believe that her friend Scarlett would ever betray her or act so dishonorably. If the war had not come, Melanie and Ashley would have lived happily on their own plantation, Twelve Oaks, in a sort of fairytale.
The war, and afterward reconstruction, make Melanie a much more worldly person. She is able to lie straight faced to a Yankee soldier when questioned on the whereabouts of her husband, and she hides her emotions and feelings even better than Scarlett in taking part in a masquerade to protect her husband and other men when they return from a raid that left Ashley wounded and Scarlett's own husband dead.
Though a tiny woman whose body and health are not strong, she shows incredible strength of character in supporting the Confederate cause, standing by her husband and her friend Scarlett when she hears rumors of an affair, and in bringing back Rhett Butler from the edge of insanity at the end of the story.
3) Ashley Wilkes (played by Leslie Howard) is the true Southern gentleman. Honor is the most important thing to him. He is also perhaps the most sentimental character in the story. At one point, he says that he would have freed the slaves at Twelve Oaks when his father died. However, I can not see how he would have been able to continue his lifestyle if he had freed his slaves. In this way, he reminds me of Thomas Jefferson, who also lived a bit of a hypocritical lifestyle in regard to his slaves. Ashley says that if the war had not come, he would have remained happily buried at Twelve Oaks.
But the war did come. "And now I find myself in a world which for me is worse than death," Ashley says. "A world in which there is no place for me." Indeed, in order to survive, he and his family move in with Scarlett at Tara plantation after the war. He also follows Scarlett into the lumber business after a flimsy plan to move to New York and become a banker is vetoed by his wife, Melanie.
Ashley's code of honor is a source of great frustration for Scarlett, and for that matter, Rhett Butler as well.
4) Rhett Butler (played by Clark Gable) is a handsome, strong and competent man who obtains success at just about anything he sets his mind to. His only interest is in himself, though. At the beginning of the movie, it is explained that he has a nasty reputation and is not "received" by any decent family in Charleston. By his own words he is not a "marrying man." He does not believe in the Southern cause and thinks it foolish to go to war, but he uses the war to amass a tremendous fortune through blockade running.
His mistake, or perhaps just something that happens to him which is out of his normal character, is when he falls in love with Scarlett. His feelings for Scarlett are what cause the real problems in his life and changes in his character, not the war.
He feels a pang of guilt once he sees that the South is finally going to lose the war, and he decides to join the army. However, his decision to join the Confederates really does not affect his world view or attitudes on life.
He convinces Scarlett to marry him, though they both know she is in love with Ashley. The marriage is not a happy one, despite all of the money they amass.
When Rhett and Scarlett have a child, Bonnie Blue Butler, that changes him. He becomes honorable and a pillar of the community for the sake of his daughter. When the daughter dies in a horse riding accident, it destroys him along with the affection that he felt for Scarlett, who still hopes to have Ashley. He locks himself in a room with his dead daughter, and it is Melanie Hamilton who goes in to talk to him, convince him to let his daughter be buried, and perhaps save him from suicide.
5) Scarlett O'Hara (played by Vivien Leigh) is one of the great characters in literary or film history. She has the combination of her father's feisty Irish personality, and the intelligence of her mother. As a young girl on the Tara plantation, her life consists of attending balls and parties. She is in love with Ashley Wilkes, who is going to marry Melanie Hamilton, and this is the only source of stress in her life.
When the war comes, though, all sorts of things happen that force Scarlett to adjust. She delivers Melanie's baby, a difficult childbirth, essentially by herself. She gets Melanie, the baby and her servant, Prissy, from Atlanta to her home at Tara, dodging the Union Army along the way. She begins to restore Tara after it has been all but completely destroyed by Sherman's Army. She takes care of her father, who has gone insane from the death of Ellen, his wife. She secretly kills and then buries a Union soldier. She marries a man whom she does not love to save Tara from being sold out for taxes. She becomes a businesswoman, to the shock of Southern society, and runs a profitable store and lumber business.
Scarlett is too vast a character to talk about in a few paragraphs. All of the characters above, along with ones I have not mentioned, are well developed and consistent throughout the story.
To write a novel with such characters, in the grand scale of the Civil War, is a spectacular accomplishment. To turn it into a film that stays true to the story is also an amazing feat.
Before I close, I should note one unfortunate thing about the Gone With the Wind saga.
It is not good that such a tremendous story has to come largely at the expense of African Americans. One of the best performances in the movie is from Hattie McDaniel, who plays Scarlett's "Mamie" or house servant. A favorite part of the movie for me is when Rhett Butler says that Mamie is one of the few people whose respect he would like to have. That is consistent with Rhett's character.
However, other blacks in the film are depicted as being simple minded and always in need of supervision from whites.
No matter how good the movie is, if I were an African American, I probably would not have much interest in studying this story or appreciating it. Life is just too short to spend time on art that degrades your people.
It is impossible to avoid the subject of blacks and slavery when writing a story of the South during the Civil War, though. Slavery was an evil that pervaded everything during that era.
Gone With the Wind is a movie that I enjoy, in spite of its depiction of blacks, for many reasons, including the dynamic quality of so many of the characters.
Nathan Marshburn
No comments:
Post a Comment