Chapter 20: Oh Gawd

According to my Kindle, chapter 20 of GWTW is the official 1/3 mark of the novel.  GWTW is so long and is so sweeping, I think it's easy to think of the novel as a meandering, almost random collection of events that almost seem to drag on the plot in places.  The story takes 12 years to unwind (1861 to 1873), but the majority of the INSANELY DRAMATIC events of the novel occur during the last 300 pages of the novel (i.e. the final 3rd). And the first time you read the book or watch the movie it's pretty easy to forget almost everything that happens before (Spoiler??) Scarlett and Rhett get married.  One of the main complaints critics have about GWTW is that they don't believe that it is as tightly/expertly plotted as a modern novel should be.  

But looking at the crafting of MM's story from the standpoint of proportion, I think she does a wonderful job of dividing up the events of Scarlett's life into different sections that drive the plot.  I'll come back to this idea in the future, but I thought this was a good point to drive home just how carefully MM must have planned out GWTW while she was writing, writing, and re-writing the events of the story.  I've never seen a first draft or an original outline of GWTW, but I'll bet she had to move entire plots and stories and strike out characters and events before GWTW became the sizzling story we know and love today. 

Anyway, Chapter 20 begins with almost the same sort of exposition and explanations of Civil War battles that has dotted the entire story ever since Sherman has officially "invaded" Georgia.  Initially, MM gives absolutely no indication that this chapter is going to be any different from those we've just read--yes the battles are closer, and yes we now know the Confederates are losing men at an alarming pace, but they've been doing that for quite a while, haven't they? However, while MM leads off by describing the events of the war and other "manly" issues, she brings things into a tight focus almost immediately in this chapter by emphasizing--first of all--that the latest battle is being fought at Jonesboro, right around the corner from Tara.  Jonesboro is a familiar location for us now--we know it's the location of the nearest train station to Scarlett's home neighborhood, we know it's where the court and tax collectors are, etc.  And now they're fighting right there up the street from her house! 

So now there's an amazingly tense extra layer to the novel that we didn't experience before, because the reader is almost as concerned about the folks at Tara as Scarlett.  And then MM also drops the added stress of a courier materializing out of nowhere to give Scarlett a note informing her that her mother and and everybody else at Tara is sick with typhoid fever and that Gerald doesn't want her to try to come home because he believes she will get sick, too! 

I don't know much about typhoid fever now, and I knew even less about it the first time I read GWTW.  I think I knew that Anne Frank (and countless others, of course) died from it by the time I picked up this novel, but other than that...I certainly didn't really connect that there had been an outbreak of the disease in America during the final stages of the Civil War.  Apparently typhoid fever is different from typhus, although I guess the main difference between the two is in the cause and the severity of the symptoms I suppose.  I don't know, really.  

But I knew it was bad.  Marvelously, deliciously bad for the purposes of drama since it's an unknown disease that comes and goes for what seems to be no reason, and which can either kill people outright or leave them alive (albeit in a weakened state).  A lesser novelist might have gotten silly and gone full bore and given Ellen O'Hara something like cancer or whatever, but typhoid was excellent because it could also almost kill off Suellen and Carreen, too--and then leave them alive but totally annoying.  

Alright, so everybody at Tara is sick, they're fighting at Jonesboro, Atlanta is hot and horrible and filled with wounded people and all of Scarlett's friends are gone and...what was the other thing we were supposed to be worried about? 

Oh yeah: 

Melanie is about to have her baby.  

Gawd almighty.  

Interestingly enough, when Scarlett wakes up on September 1st there's a lull in all the chaos and confusion of the battles.  There's nothing but blue sky, and red dust, and "the road outside lay silent." The frenzied excitement of the past few chapters has gone.  All the explosions are over.  She's clearly in the calm of the storm, but the first time I read this I assumed that Scarlett had gotten a lucky break somehow. I started running through scenarios in my head: maybe her father would come save her? Or perhaps the war had passed Atlanta by and maybe Dr. Meade would come help Melanie through the delivery? Or....something? Maybe Prissy would turn out to be competent and efficient and Scarlett would just be a bystander to the birth?  

But then the cannons begin again, coming from the south (Jonesboro and Tara) and Scarlett gets heartsick.  As does the reader.  Because it is now clear that Scarlett isn't going to be able to get home without going straight through the armies, and that seems like an impossible task at this point considering she's going to be attempting to flee with Prissy, pregnant Melly, and Wade Hampton who can't be older than three at this point.  

So what is she going to do? 

What. Is. She. Going. To. Do?

Scarlett breaks into Melly's bedroom, essentially terrified, and then she runs into an even more terrifying sight: Melly is all sunken and waxy and deathly ill, and she's been having labor pains since dawn.  I know almost as little about childbirth as I know about typhoid, but even as a teenager I realized this wasn't going to be an easy birth.