Now, you may be saying, 'Well, sure, the characters are racist, of course former Confederates are going to be racist.' And that's true, I wouldn't have a problem with the characters being racist and flinging the n-word about. Reconstruction (in which the South learns that yes, you really aren't allowed to own slaves anymore and yes, you really did actually lose the war) is a horror beyond enduring, but we're meant to mourn the lost world of balls and barbecues attended by rich white plantation owners and their loyal, happy slaves. Indeed, throughout the book, Mitchell compares African-Americans to monkeys, apes, and children, describes slavery as a generally benevolent institution in which kind slave owners took care of their 'darkies,' and when the slaves are freed, society crumbles because black people are destructive children who can't function without white people telling them what to do. And this is described in approbatory terms by the narrative viewpoint. The vote must be given to them but it must be denied to most of their former owners.' There are a few things that Hollywood rather prudently left out in the cinematic version, and one of them is the fact that every white male character joins the Klan to oppose Yankees and freedmen in the period of Reconstruction following the war. there is a really big 'but' here: 'Here was the astonishing spectacle of half a nation attempting, at the point of bayonet, to force upon the other half the rule of negroes, many of them scarcely one generation out of the African jungles. Gone With the Wind is deservedly one of the greatest Civil War novels ever written. If you've seen the movie and thought it was gorgeous and epic, Hollywood only barely did justice to the source material. Her characters are wonderfully vivid and complicated and conflicted, larger than life archetypes symbolizing the different elements of society each one represents. She captures the feel of a generation that is lost and a bygone world and makes it real, pulsing with life and bittersweet memory and pride. Seriously, it's a really, really good read and Margaret Mitchell is a really, really good writer. I kind of don't want to give this book 5 stars. Epic, timeless, wonderful, also really racist

Gone with the wind by margaret mitchell