“Gone with the Wind” Isn’t Going Anywhere

“What is a classic? What is an epic? These two questions loom over any reader of Gone with the Wind (and great literature, more generally).”

No work of art has recently come under such intense scrutiny as Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind. The tyrannical thought police, right out of George Orwell’s 1984, have deemed the work a well of hate and denialism. That, no doubt, comes from people who have not read the book (and deliberately misunderstand the film and fill it, ironically, with their own psychological prejudices). Only the Bible is a better-selling book in America; it is not surprising why: Gone with the Wind is an enthralling tale that is at once classic, epic, and tragedy—not to mention, filled with a resplendent prose that puts modern novels to shame. Gone with the Wind will endure because it is a true work of art, one that penetrates the human condition and reassembles it for us in an unforgettable tale that transcends the pettiness of contemporary politics. It is precisely among these reasons that it stands as a classic.

Before we can begin with Mitchell’s epic novel, a more tragic American War and Peace if there ever was one, we must first begin with why the work endures after all these years and will endure—like Homer and Tolstoy—for many more years to come.

What is a classic? What is an epic? These two questions loom over any reader of Gone with the Wind (and great literature, more generally). Mitchell may not invoke the muses like the poetic epicists of antiquity or the Renaissance, but there is no denying that the work feels like an epic. And an epic rightly deserving its reputation as a classic.