Gone with the Wind《飘》或,乱世佳人英语简介

Gone with the Wind

Gone with the Wind, an American novel by Margaret Mitchell, waspublished in 1936 and won the Pulitzer Prize in

1937. The novel is one of themost popular of all time, and an American film adaptation of the same namereleased in 1939 became the highest-grossing film in the history of Hollywoodand received a record-breaking number of Academy Awards.

Mitchell's work relates the story of a rebellious Georgia woman named ScarlettO'Hara and her travails with friends, family and lovers in the midst of theantebellum South, the American Civil War, and the Reconstruction period. Italso tells the story of the love that blossoms between Scarlett O'Hara andRhett Butler.

The title is taken from the first line of the third stanza of the poem Non sumqualís eram bonae sub regno Cynarae by Ernest Dowson:

"I have forgot much,Cynara! gone with the wind." Alternatively, the line also appears in the novel.When Scarlett escapes Atlanta's bombing by the forces of the north, she fleesback to her family's plantation, Tara. At one point, she wonders "Was Tara stillstanding? Or was Tara also gone with the wind which had swept throughGeorgia?"

a metaphor for the South's viewpoint on the statehood ofKansas.

Nevertheless, the book includes a vid description of the fall of Atlanta in

1864and the devastation of war (some of it absent from the 1939 film), and shows aconsiderable amount of historical research. Mitchell's sweeping narrative ofwar and loss helped the book win the Pulitzer Prize on May 3,

1937.An episode in the book suggests the early Ku Klux Klan, though without givingthe name:

in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, Scarlett is assualted byrecently-emancipated Blacks, whereupon her male friends make a retaliatorynight-time raid on the Blacks' encampment. This raid is presented

sympathetically as being necessary and justified, while the law-enforcementofficers trying to catch the perpetrators are depicted as opressive Northernoccupiers. Although the Klan is not mentioned in that scene, Scarlett laterlearns that Ashley Wilkes and others who were involved in the raid arembers of the Klan. Many such local anti-Black vigilante groups dideventually join the Klan in the late 1860's, as Mitchell must have been awarefrom her historical reasearch.

Alexandra Ripley wrote the novel Scarlett, in 1991, as the authorized sequel toMitchell's novel.

In 2000, the copyright holders attempted to suppress publication of AliceRandall's The Wind Done Gone, a book that retold the story from the point ofview of the slaves. A federal appeals court denied the plaintiffs an injunctionagainst publication in Suntrust v. Houghton Mifflin

(2001), on the basis that thebook was parody protected by the First Amendment. The parties subsequentlysettled out of court to allow the book to be published

Historical Sources for the Characters

While Margaret Mitchell used to say that her Gone with the Wind characterswere not based on real people, modern researchers have found similarities tosome of the people in Mitchell's own life as well as to individuals she knew orshe heard of. Rhett Butler is thought to be based on Mitchell's first husband,Red Upshaw, who she married in 1922, but divorced after it was revealed thathe was a bootlegger.

Another at least pàrtial character source for Scarlett O'Hara mighthave been Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, the mother of US president

TheodoreRoosevelt.Rooseveltbiographer,DavidMcCullough,discoveredthatMitchellco nductedaninterviewwithoneofMartha'sclosestfriendsandbridesmaid, Evelyn King Williams, at age 87, while a reporter for

TheAtlantaJournal.Inthatinterview,Martha'sphysicalappearance,beauty,grace and intelligence were described in great detail. The similaritiesbetween Martha, who was also called Mittie, and Sc