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katie_belle 's review for:
Gone with the Wind
by Margaret Mitchell
dark
emotional
sad
medium-paced
I finally got around to reading this enormous novel after growing up watching the film with my mom. I’ve always been told that the book was better than the film, so I was expecting good things to a certain extent but it went beyond any expectations I could have had.
In the film Scarlett is more or less just a basic bitch who gave 0 craps about most of her counterparts, especially poor sweet Melanie Wilkes. The director really did her character a disservice by portraying her in this way. She is basic and selfish compared to most everyone else but not to the extent in the film. She actually comes to respect Melanie after the siege of Atlanta and they eventually become comrades if not friends in Scarlet’s eyes. We do witness her becoming a hard, calculating person due to her desperation to provide for herself and her people but she doesn’t begin that way and the transformation is gradual. We miss out on what’s going through her mind as she makes the choices she makes in the film and so we miss a large part of who she was supposed to be as a person.
I was surprised by how greatly I disliked Ashley in the novel as compared to the movie. Simply because we get the backstory of him kind of leading Scarlett on (let’s not forget she starts out at 17 in this story), not to mention how he pretty much admits he wanted to hit that when Scarlett offers to run away with him to Mexico after the war ended.
We leave out both of Scarlett’s older children which takes away both from her character as well as Rhett’s. We also miss out on a large part of the friendship that Rhett and Scarlett had before the fall of Atlanta, and after the war when he loans her money to buy her first mill, and drives her to and from her mills when he’s in town to ensure her safety. At times she finds herself missing Rhett’s company and she says time and again how she loves being able to confide in Rhett because he understands her way of thinking.
Rhett’s character seems much more sinister in the novel and yet at the same time has times of real decency and fragility that we don’t see in the film. His caring treatment of Scarlett’s other children from her first two marriages and his intense concern for her well being is touching. However, as a woman coming from a different time I have a hard time taking his controlling nature, dictating what Scarlett wears or even how she styles her hair, the relationship is often verbally abusive on both sides and at times extremely physical. Even so I can’t help feeling heart broken for the novel Rhett. We see him fall apart mentally and physically in the novel and there isn’t the dashing exit scene of a handsome Rhett leaving Scarlett after delivering his iconic final line. An alcoholic, middle-aged, worn out Captain Butler delivers it; not with the suave nonchalance and crooked smile of Clark Gable but with the apathy of a human being who has nothing more to give. The film couldn’t quite capture how horrible it is to watch them poison each other.
In the film Scarlett is more or less just a basic bitch who gave 0 craps about most of her counterparts, especially poor sweet Melanie Wilkes. The director really did her character a disservice by portraying her in this way. She is basic and selfish compared to most everyone else but not to the extent in the film. She actually comes to respect Melanie after the siege of Atlanta and they eventually become comrades if not friends in Scarlet’s eyes. We do witness her becoming a hard, calculating person due to her desperation to provide for herself and her people but she doesn’t begin that way and the transformation is gradual. We miss out on what’s going through her mind as she makes the choices she makes in the film and so we miss a large part of who she was supposed to be as a person.
I was surprised by how greatly I disliked Ashley in the novel as compared to the movie. Simply because we get the backstory of him kind of leading Scarlett on (let’s not forget she starts out at 17 in this story), not to mention how he pretty much admits he wanted to hit that when Scarlett offers to run away with him to Mexico after the war ended.
We leave out both of Scarlett’s older children which takes away both from her character as well as Rhett’s. We also miss out on a large part of the friendship that Rhett and Scarlett had before the fall of Atlanta, and after the war when he loans her money to buy her first mill, and drives her to and from her mills when he’s in town to ensure her safety. At times she finds herself missing Rhett’s company and she says time and again how she loves being able to confide in Rhett because he understands her way of thinking.
Rhett’s character seems much more sinister in the novel and yet at the same time has times of real decency and fragility that we don’t see in the film. His caring treatment of Scarlett’s other children from her first two marriages and his intense concern for her well being is touching. However, as a woman coming from a different time I have a hard time taking his controlling nature, dictating what Scarlett wears or even how she styles her hair, the relationship is often verbally abusive on both sides and at times extremely physical. Even so I can’t help feeling heart broken for the novel Rhett. We see him fall apart mentally and physically in the novel and there isn’t the dashing exit scene of a handsome Rhett leaving Scarlett after delivering his iconic final line. An alcoholic, middle-aged, worn out Captain Butler delivers it; not with the suave nonchalance and crooked smile of Clark Gable but with the apathy of a human being who has nothing more to give. The film couldn’t quite capture how horrible it is to watch them poison each other.