Chapter 24 (again): "Doan holler, Miss Scarlett....dey ain' no tellin' whut mout answer!"/ The Fool's Errand

Well, well, well!

I've been pretty busy over the past month.  As a matter of fact, my summer has been incredibly busy with none of the usual dead-spots. I haven't had very much free time between my full-time job, my part-time job, and my "vacations" to various and sundry spots around the country, which means that I haven't had much time to keep up with my GWTW blog.  But today marks the official end of summer here in the U.S. of A., so it's likely I'll be able to post here on a more regular basis. Yay!

Anyway, it's September 2nd today, isn't it? The first week of September is always pretty darn notable if you're in school or planning a BBQ or what have you, but Civil War buffs and GWTW fans know very well that September 1st/2nd are important for other reasons.  Namely, it's the date that Atlanta finally fell to Sherman's troops.

Which means that, somewhat miraculously, today's date (September 2nd) is actually exactly 149 years after the events of Chapter 24 of GWTW.  So you see, even though it might have looked like I've been slagging off this summer and neglecting my writing, I planned it this way! I did!

And so here we are, with Scarlett making her way through the remnants of the countryside on September 2, 1864.  MM could have opened up this section of the novel with Scarlett and her gang arriving at Tara, but she delays the inevitable by first having Scarlett maneuver past the homes of all her lifelong friends.  They come first to the empty, dark, Mcintosh plantation home ("two tall chimneys, like gigantic tombstones towering above the ruined second floor, and broken unlit windows blotching the walls like still, blind eyes."). Scarlett calls out "hello" in the hopes that a friend will answer, but Prissy stops her quickly:

"Doan holler, Miss Scarlett....dey ain' no tellin' whut mout answer!" 

And...see? This is what I mean when I say that GWTW is not really a book about wild racist stereotypes and cringe-worthy dialect dialogue.  Prissy has been painted as nothing but a foolish girl throughout much of GWTW, but her assessment of their surroundings and of the possibility of danger is dead-on and she's quicker with her evaluation than Scarlett in this scene.  I suppose I could take this all a step further and say that the two young women react to the deserted plantation house in different ways because they come from such different backgrounds and stations in life.  After all, despite Scarlett's frenemy situation with most of the women and girls living around Tara, she can never even consider the notion that there might be something waiting for her inside a plantation house besides loving arms, good food, and safety.  On the other hand, Prissy is a slave.  She was raised in the same county as Scarlett, but her experience has been quite different, hasn't it? Scarlett immediately assumes that only friends will answer her call, but Prissy perhaps knows that not every plantation house contains help and security.  Just a thought.

Anyway, because I'm an amateur author, I would have rushed the girls and little Beau straight to the doors of Tara and gotten on with the rest of the drama.  But MM has already committed herself to delivering a lengthy book and her editors were evidently behind her, so she milks the drama for all it's worth--without making it seem like she's milking the drama at all.  They do a pretty good job of relating the tension in these scenes in the movie, what with the technicolor dark skies, the burnt out staircase at Twelve Oaks, and the gloomy darkness and mud and dirt, but MM really plays up the Southern Gothic hear, doesn't she? These parts of the book aren't memorable simply because these houses are deserted, but because they are now potentially dangerous. And the burned out remnants of the plantations also stand-in for the graves of Scarlett's old friends--the Tarleton boys, the Meades, etc--a notion she reinforces by blanketing the entire countryside in a "hideous stillness," that makes my heart ache even though this is my thousandth time reading GWTW.

As a matter of fact, even our heroine begins to doubt herself on the road back to Tara.  And here MM has Scarlett deliver one of the funnier (because it's true!) internal dialogues in the entire book:

"Why had she come on this fool's errand, against all common sense, dragging Melanie and her child? Better that they had died in Atlanta than, tortured by this day of burning sun and jolting wagon, to die in the silent ruins of Tara." 

There are times when my entire life feels like a fool's errand, and it's sometimes nice to read that even Scarlett O'Hare felt the same way along her journey.  Yes, I'll freely admit that our situations are quite different since my day-to-day irritations involve mostly arguing with judges and other lawyers and dead-beat clients and therefore don't come close to Scarlett's challenges at this point in the novel, but still.  This is a universal feeling, and it's nice to know that Scarlett and MM and Yours Truly have at least that in common.  It's good to see self-doubt and frustration put so patly on the page, isn't it?

MM now takes a little pause to remind us about how much Scarlett hates Melly and loves Ashley, a totally necessary digression that reminds us of the central conflict of the novel at a time when she could have easily had Scarlett forget all about Ashley and her devotion to the idea of their pure love until a more convenient time.  But MM throws it back up at us to remind us that Scarlett's motives are not nearly as selfless as her actions read on these pages of the book.

The girls find a cow, and MM breaks some of the tension by having Scarlett and Prissy argue about who's going to capture the cow and if they need a cow at all and whether or not the cow needs to be milked. Scarlett gets sassy with Prissy and even uses the N-word at one point (although it's her first time using it in the novel and she tells us that her "Mother wouldn't like that at all." And if the N-word is just a little bit too harsh for the story world of GWTW, why are folks still tossing it around in 2013? Makes you wonder.), but Prissy ain't budging.  Scarlett eventually relents and uses her petticoat to tie up the cow so they can take it to Tara.

And then, they're home.

They've made it to Tara!

Yay....right?

But--oh no.  The raggedy-ass horse Rhett stole for her and the ratchet wagon aren't going to be able to make it up the hill to Tara. So MM delays the action by having Scarlett and Prissy go back and forth about who should ride in the wagon and why, and eventually Scarlett convinces/berates Prissy and Wade into walking while they use the last energy of the horse to pull Melly and little Beau and the wagon up the hill.

And then they're walking again, despite their blistered feet and hunger and the darkness that surrounds them on all sides.  Scarlett tells Wade to "be a little man...and stop crying or I will come over there and slap you," which isn't exactly how you're supposed to talk to children on the scariest night of their life, is it? I can understand Scarlett's frustration in this chapter, but it's not as though Wade's fright is childish. Everybody's scared at this point, and you'd think Scarlett would be a little more understanding, but she isn't.

But they continue on anyway.

Scarlett sees the white walls of Tara and the reader is glad. Extremely glad.  But--

"Tara stood intact, yet shrouded with the same eerie quiet that hung over the whole stricken countryside." 

Uh oh.

And to make matters worse, a shadowy figure starts coming down the steps.  A man!

Double uh-oh!

But then Scarlett realizes that the man is her father.  And we are happy and glad because all her troubles are over, aren't they? Her father is at Tara! Which means our poor girls and their little babies are going to have a male protector in the house! And something to eat! And shelter!

Gerald is acting kind of stiff and strange, but Scarlett is so excited to be home and with her family she doesn't take much time to assess her father's mental health.  Instead she takes charge and she starts directing Pork and Prissy and Wade and bossing people around, and Pa tells her that her sisters are recovering and...that's good, isn't it? We're not supposed to like Suellen and Careen much, but I'm glad they got well. And Tara is still standing, so the worst of it has to be over now, right?

But no.

"Silence fell and in the silence an idea too monstrous for words took form..." 

And then Gerald drops the bomb and all of Scarlett's buried fears and anxieties erupt all at once because:

"Your mother died yesterday." 

And then MM just leaves that statement there on it's own.  She doesn't dress it in dialogue or reaction paragraphs, and she doesn't swaddle it with Scarlett's feelings.  Ellen's death is such a heavy burden for Scarlett, and such a shocking development that MM just simply lays it there on the page without adornment.  The weight of Ellen's death brings the first half of GWTW to a close with a hard, jarring clang. Everything Scarlett knew and loved is gone now, locked away forever in a dark coffin that can never be opened no matter how she jimmies the lock.  Scarlett is home now, but her mother is dead and she can never, ever truly go home again.

A scary thought.