I read Gone With the Wind for the first time during the summer of 1995. I was sixteen that July and bored out of my mind, too young to drive, too lazy to work, and too broke to do anything much besides obsessively watch Cary Grant films on AMC and wear out my library card. I've always been a bit of a history nerd, so I spent that June reading random American history books. And romance novels. Lots and lots of romance novels.
By the time Independence Day rolled around, I'd exhausted our local supply of bodice rippers and was looking for something new. Something different. Something classic, but sexy. I considered Pride and Prejudice and a few other similar books crowding the assignment shelf, but then I found Gone With the Wind. GWTW is the most famous movie of all time, but I'd never sat through it. Consequently, I knew very little about Scarlett beyond a few "Fiddle-Dee-Dees" and I knew nothing about Rhett besides his mustache and the fact that he "didn't give a damn." I went into the book with an open mind, but it was long and I was sure it was antiquated. And I was sure I wouldn't enjoy it. In fact, as I glanced at the 1048 pages in my borrowed copy, I doubted that I would get much further than 200 or so pages.
But, of course, I was wrong.
I was hooked by the end of the first paragraph. Scarlett O'Hara and I have nothing in common on the surface, but we were both 16, both sassy and both smart, and out of all the books I'd read and the movies I'd seen she was the character who reminded me most of myself. Over the course of 1048 pages and 12 years of Civil War drama I gained a friend. A homegirl. An ally who I instantly knew would be my bfff(best female fictional friend) for life. I cheered with her, cried with her, celebrated her triumphs, and had my little teenaged heart broken into a million little pieces by the wild finish and great tragedy of her marriage to Rhett. I've read GWTW cover-to-cover at least 10 times over the past 16 years, but it never gets old for me. And since this is the 16th anniversary of a meeting that happened when I was 16, I've decided this is as good a time as ever to blog the book chapter by chapter. To do an in-depth analysis of Mitchell's style, to evaluate the characters, to figure out precisely how a book that shouldn't be any good at all wound up being the Great American Novel (yeah, I said it). So, without further ado, let's begin at the beginning and take a look at Chapter 1.
Action: Chapter 1 of GWTW begins with Scarlett O'Hara having a conversation. Now, if this had been a lesser book and a lesser author and a lesser character, Scarlett would have probably been talking to just one person. But she's not.
Instead, she's talking to the Tarleton Twins, two super hot idiots who've just been expelled from school (again), and are hiding from their angry mother at Tara. Brent and Stewart are the 19th century versions of Prince Harry: silly and stupid and brash and tall, quick to anger, charming and ginger. What girl wouldn't love them?
Oh yeah. Scarlett. Because she's in love with Ashley. But we don't even find out much about Scarlett and Ashely until Chapter 2, because Mitchell is too busy using the Tarleton Twins to tell us about the County. It's a splendid little device because the Twins are hilarious and crazy but solid and safe, and as such they're the perfect representations of Mitchell's Antebellum south. Even more than Ashley (who is not in this chapter), more than Ellen, and more than Scarlett herself. They're honest and hardy, wild and free, rich and totally, totally, totally fucking insane. They're so close they're both trying to date Scarlett at the same time. And so crazy they've been expelled from every southern university this side of Tuskegee (yeah, I said it). But that's okay, because book learnin' isn't really important for men in that part of the world. The only things southern gentlemen need to know are how to drink whiskey, how to shoot straight, how to play cards, and how to properly curse, and the Twins have those things all figured out, thank you very much.
So Brent and Stuart and Scarlett sit on the porch and gossip. And it's awesome because, despite the fact that it's a 1930's author essentially transcribing a conversation between young adults in 1861, it's vibrant. The characters bounce along, wonderfully ignorant of life beyond their own simple, beautiful world, convinced that Yankees are cowards, utterly sure that their lives will continue on just as it is, certain that nothing will ever change their world (jai guru deva om, etc). Interestingly enough, Mitchell doesn't use any foreshadowing in this chapter.
She doesn't have to. The reader knows the War is coming, and the reader knows it's going to destroy everything the three of them can see. We don't know precisely how Scarlett, Brent, and Stewart will experience the War of Northern Aggression (mmmm hmmmm), but we do know it will change them. Thusly, this entire first chapter challenges the reader emotionally because the characters are blissfully unaware of the freight train racing down the tracks, but the reader can already here the whistle and see the smoke and is just waiting patiently for the coming destruction. It's like that part in an 80's horror movie when the super cool, super rich, super beautiful high school seniors get in their car and head up to summer camp. You watch and shake your head, and wait on tenterhooks for the fallout you know is coming.
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