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Author: Margaret Mitchell
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-01-01
Features: It is said that love is always concrete; the more specific and unique, the more people love it. However, if this specificity and uniqueness has no connection with any individual or reader, it certainly goes beyond the range allowed by uniqueness. What makes Scarlett’s story so well-balanced within this degree? It is not simply the quality of the "historical canvas" of the war between the South and the North, in fact, Gone with the Wind generally depicts the war in a vague manner, focusing on the impact of the war on the human psyche. It is also not simply the vivid portrayal of American life in the last century or the historical exploration of the relationship between the South and the North; the key seems to be Scarlett’s spirit—the exploration of human life is completed through several vivid characters like Scarlett. Under that specific context, Scarlett’s distinctive personality and Rhett Butler’s unconventional, boundary-breaking approach to judging right and wrong and behavior, which follows the choices of the economic and social environment and human needs, clearly embody the American spirit. The entanglement and feud between Scarlett, Ashley Wilkes, and Rhett Butler have already become a new folk love story passed down through generations. How many young girls and grieving women, housewives and working professionals, have been captivated by the twists and vitality of this story? Since the author’s tragic death in a car accident, tens of thousands of people spontaneously attended the funeral, and the fact that the book has been repeatedly translated and achieved success in China since the 1930s, in an environment vastly different from the author’s own, reveals the immense, profound, and widespread influence of her work. What is at play in this magical effect? Could it be the fondness for books in an era when people’s spiritual lives were relatively impoverished before the advent of the multimedia age? Clearly, this does not hold up. First, in today’s multimedia era, characters like "this one" still maintain a strong "reading appeal" in films, television, and even the internet. Second, books carry countless contents, but only some of them are popular and enjoyable for a wide range of readers. Gone with the Wind is clearly one of the top works in readers’ minds.