The Dangerous Book That Made Me Human

Rethinking Morality, History, and Empathy Through Gone With the Wind

We all have that book that stays with us forever. Catcher in the Rye got me through my tumultuous teenage years. Lolita convinced me that bad things could still be graced with beautiful language. Daniel Deronda gave me hope that Victorian society was not entirely antisemitic. But if there is one book in particular that profoundly and irrevocably changed my life, it is Gone With the Wind.

You’re probably thinking, Really? Gone With the Wind?

Yes. Really.

Gone With the Wind is a 1936 novel by Margaret Mitchell that chronicles the life of Scarlett O’Hara—a headstrong and somewhat manipulative Southern belle—as she endures the plight of the American Civil War and its aftermath. Scarlett is first driven by her obsession with her neighbor, Ashley Wilkes, and later with the mysterious Don Juan–like Rhett Butler. While the novel somewhat romanticizes the antebellum South, it paints a shockingly humane portrait of plantation owners as it stands behind the wildly controversial Confederate States of America. The book was an instant hit upon its publication and skyrocketed in popularity with the release of the famous 1939 film with Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable. In fact, I was first introduced to the novel through a film clip that my 8th grade history teacher showed us during a unit on General Sherman's March to the Sea. My Goodreads tells me that it was another several years before I got around to reading the book itself, but that allusion must have stuck with me for the next several years.

I was fifteen years old when I completed Margaret Mitchell’s haunting retelling of Civil War history. At that point in my educational career, I thought I knew everything about this fraught period in our history—it must have been the most-taught unit in my history classes throughout the years, and by that time, I had learned about this peculiar war from about ten different history teachers—all ten of whom had given us the same version of events: the Civil War was fought over slavery because everyone in the North was good and everyone in the South was evil. America was inherently racist, and General Sherman’s march through Georgia was one of the best things that had ever happened to this country because it led to the eventual abolition of slavery.

In principle, I don’t disagree with this version of events. Many members of the Confederacy were racist to the bone. General Sherman’s March led to the end of the Civil War, which culminated in the ratification of The Thirteenth Amendment. The Union stood for freedom, and the Confederacy stood for enslavement. The version of events I learned in school was true. But it was not the only story of the Civil War.

I was so used to reading about the Civil War from the perspective of the North, in fact, that when I first started reading Gone With the Wind, I don’t think I understood exactly what I was reading. I distinctly remember being downright puzzled. Here was a book where we were asked to sympathize with a group of racist slaveowners—where General Sherman was the bad guy and where a plantation with a human name took on a life of its own. I had never read anything like it—at first, I was angry at Margaret Mitchell for blurring the distinction between good and evil—for giving a voice to the very slaveowners who had given America its racist backbone. But as I read on, I could not help but sympathize with the audacious Scarlett O’Hara. She was not perfect—she was, in fact, deeply flawed as a character. But like the rest of us, she had ambitions. She cared deeply for her family and stayed loyal to her origins. She raised a daughter and grieved for her after her death. She fell in love. About halfway through the book, I was no longer disgusted. I was awed and shaken.

These were people, too.

But no school system would have ever dared to show me the sorrows of American Southerners during the Civil War. No school system would have ever dared to humanize those who, like Scarlett, simply loved their land and only wanted what was best for their families. No school system would have shown me the deep flaws of adherence to tradition and the simultaneous nostalgia that came with preserving the ways of the past. These were lessons I learned from Margaret Mitchell—and would not have gotten anywhere else. But this was not a political book that left me with an umpteenth history lesson either. This was a book about the soul of humanity.

Today, I vehemently oppose treating literature as a political vehicle perhaps because of what I learned from this very book: Margaret Mitchell did not set out to make a case in favor of the Confederacy by any means, but she sure as hell humanized the people I had always been taught to treat as scum. Therefore, I do not believe that the great works of the Western humanistic tradition serve a political agenda—they simply provide a window into what it means to be human. Gone With the Wind is, indeed, a book that tackles controversial political themes. But Gone With the Wind is not a political book. Coming away from this great work, I was not convinced that the South was good or that the North was bad—or vice versa. Coming away from Gone With the Wind, I learned that there were two sides to every story—and that those we may disagree with, no matter how evil they may be, are human beings, too. And we have more in common with them than we might think.

Gone With the Wind changed my life not because it was a book about a girl who fell in love during a difficult time—it changed my life because it taught me to question everything that I was hearing—or at least to try to understand the alternate perspective. Gone With the Wind helped me see through some of the reductionist worldviews that I learned as a student in the Columbia English department, causing me to always be wary of the narratives that were being thrust upon me. Gone With the Wind helped me to always keep an open mind and to draw my own conclusions about both world history and the world around us. And today, when our education system likes to push a single narrative and shut all others out, Gone With the Wind is more relevant than ever.

I’ll always remember Margaret Mitchell for crafting me into a stronger critical thinker—one who often rides against the tide—and I will always remember Scarlett O’Hara for reminding me that all human beings—somewhere deep inside—are capable of love and redemption.

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