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A GUIDE TO THE SCREEN VERSION OF
GONE WITH THE WIND
Prepared by Virginia Ballard and Adelaide L. Cunningham Commercial High School, Atlanta, Georgia
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FOREWORD
Two Books
Near the middle of the last century there appeared a book that set aflame smoldering passions of hate, a book that rent a nation in twain, Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe. In our own day we see another book, also by a woman, Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind, a book so powerful in the sheer strength of its narrative, so true in its presentation of historical fact, that its millions of readers are brought face to face with a civilization which in a sense is not "gone with the wind," but which is woven into the web and woof of American life. This book is, in its fine way, acting as a unifying force. And now the story has been made into a movie.
David 0. Selznick's screen version of Gone With the Wind, honored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as the best film of 1939, is not only spreading the already-wide influence of the book, it is intensifying, with the skill and science of modern industry, the appeal of a story which makes its hearers relive the days when cavaliers in top hats escorted their ladies in hoop skirts to the dance, and the "darkies" sang in the cotton fields. . . . That slavery as an institution was contrary to the democratic principles upon which our nation was founded is recognized by the South today; but this same Southland of 1940 rejoices in the fact that the civilization that was hers — with its gentleness, its courage, its beauty —
is at last understood because of a great book and a great picture. Uncle Tom's Cabin showed how strong is the force of literature in influencing men's actions. Gone With the Wind proves that literature is even more powerful now with its ally, the motion-picture, and can bring to millions a story, an era, a way of life which is the heritage not alone of the South, but, through the understanding of the human heart, the heritage of all America.
TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION AND SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES
The Author
1. Who is Margaret Mitchell? Using The Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature, report on the life of the author of Gone With the Wind. The Macmillan Company, 60 Fifth Ave., New York City, has additional data.
2. Where is her home, in which she has lived most of her life? Margaret Mitchell succeeded because she used three sources : information gained from people in her own home town, about which she wrote ; information from libraries, to keep her story accurate ; and her own imagination to create an original romance. Following her method, see if you can write a short story about the section of the country in which you live, employing historical events perhaps.
3. Compare Margaret Mitchell with another Pulitzer Prize winner, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. Show how the purpose of the one was to tell a story which could have had no other setting
Discuss Scarlett's relations with each of these people.
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