Gone with the Wind

Over the past few weeks I've been reading Margaret Mitchell's famous Southern novel Gone with the Wind. I grew up on the movie; it was given to me as a birthday gift when I was too young to watch it, and I'm sure that the first time I actually did, half of the story went over my head. But I have not read the book before. Last year I began it and then put it down, not being in the mood. This year I picked it up again, determined for one reason or another to plow through.

I'm nearly done with it now with about a hundred pages left - and in the 1000+ page copy that I own, that's not much. I have not enjoyed it unreservedly, nor can I recommend it unreservedly: Scarlett's morals are pitiful, to say the least, and Rhett's are nonexistent. Yet at the same time, there is something more than engaging about the story. Though she shows the world through the cold eyes of Scarlet O'Hara, yet Margaret Mitchell portrays the effects on the South of the Civil War and Reconstruction with a potency that cannot help but stir the reader. I have always been glad that the Union won the war (another bad-Southerner trait!), but still the Confederates engage my sympathies - especially during the horrors of Reconstruction. And, being Southern myself (although not Georgian), Mitchell's descriptions of the South leave me with a sense of pride. Here are a few of the quotes from the book that have left me with respect for the author's powers of description...plus a quote or two for sheer amusement.

"Land is the only thing in the world that amounts to anything...for 'tis the only thing in this world that lasts, and don't you be forgetting it! 'Tis the only thing in the world worth working for, worth fighting for - worth dying for."

- chapter ii

Spring had come early that year, with warm quick rains and sudden frothing of pink peach blossoms and dogwood dappling with white stars the dark river swamp and far-off hills. Already the plowing was nearly finished, and the bloody glory of the sunset colored the fresh-cut furrows of red Georgia clay to even redder hues. The moist hungry earth, waiting upturned for the cotton seeds, showed pinkish on the sandy tops of the furrows, vermilion and scarlet and maroon where shadows lay along the sides of the trenches. The whitewashed brick plantation house seemed an island set in a wild red sea, a sea of spiraling, curving, crescent billows petrified suddenly at the moment when the pink-tipped waves were breaking into surf...

It was a savagely red land, blood-colored after rains, brick dust in droughts, the best cotton land in the world. It was a pleasant land of white houses, peaceful plowed fields and sluggish yellow rivers, but a land of contrasts, of brightest sun glare and densest shade. The plantation clearings and miles of cotton fields smiled up to a warm sun, placid, complacent. At their edges rose the virgin forests, dark and cool even in the hottest noons, mysterious, a little sinister, the soughing pines seeming to wait with an age-old patience, to threaten with soft sighs: "Be careful! Be careful! We had you once. We can take you back again."

- chapter i

[Melanie's] heavy earbobs with their long gold fringe hung down from loops of tidily netted hair, swinging close to her brown eyes, eyes that had the still gleam of a forest pool in winter when brown leaves shine up through quiet water.

- chapter vi

Already summer was in the air, the first hint of Georgia summer when the high tide of spring gives way reluctantly before a fiercer heat. A balmy, soft warmth poured into the room, heavy with velvety smells, redolent of many blossoms, of newly fledged trees and of the moist, freshly turned red earth. Through the window Scarlett could see the bright riot of the twin lines of daffodils bordering the graveled driveway and the golden masses of yellow jessamine spreading flowery sprangles modestly to the earth like crinolines. The mockingbirds and the jays, engaged in their old feud for possession of the magnolia tree beneath her window, were bickering, the jays strident, acrimonious, the mockers sweet voiced and plaintive.

- chapter v

What a few short weeks it had been since she was safe and secure! What a little while since she and everyone else had thought that Atlanta could never fall, that Georgia could never be invaded. But the small cloud which appeared in the northwest four months ago had blown up into a mighty storm and then into a screaming tornado, sweeping away her world, whirling her out of her sheltered life, and dropping her down in the midst of this still, haunted desolation.

Was Tara still standing? Or was Tara also gone with the wind that had swept through Georgia?

- chapter xxiv

"...I've lived with Melly long enough to know she's sickly and scared and hasn't the gumption to say Boo to a goose."

"Now why on earth should anyone want to say Boo to a goose? It always sounded like a waste of time to me."

- chapter xl

For instance when she decided to change the name of "Kennedy's General Store" to something more edifying, she asked [Rhett] to think of a title that would include the word "emporium." Rhett suggested "Caveat Emptorium," assuring her that it would be a title most in keeping with the type of goods sold in the store. She thought it had an imposing sound and even went so far as to have the sign painted, when Ashley Wilkes, embarrassed, translated the real meaning. And Rhett had roared at her rage.

- chapter xlix

A Discussion of Dialogue

Last week Joy of Fullness of Joy very kindly invited me to do a guest post on her blog. This is my first time writing one, so naturally I am quite excited about it. Here is a snippet:

I am not much of one for dissecting story structure. I never enjoyed Literature classes for that reason; it seems too bad to pick apart an author's writing until it is hardly recognizable for the story it once was. I don't deny that there is some help to be gained from such dissection; as in the biological world, it is crucial for knowing the interworkings of those living words. But I was never fond of dissections in biology, and I think that has carried over into my reading style as well.

Despite that, however, I do tend to look at stories in two great parts: dialogue and narration. Dialogue is anything inside quotation marks (I lump the protagonist's thoughts into this category, too, since they tend to be in monologue form); narration is, well, everything outside. Both can be hard to write, but the area of dialogue is the one in which writers tend to have the most difficulty. How closely should characters' speech resemble "real life" dialogues? How casual is too casual, how formal too formal? How do we get to the point of a conversation without it sounding abrupt? How do we differentiate between characters' ways of speaking? There are a dozen questions that come up and conflicting answers to meet them.

to read the full post, "the discussion of dialogue," drop by Joy's blog!