读书报告 gone with the wind

读书报告 gone with the wind Gone With the Wind There is an everlasting topic among human beings called love. It is not limited by national boundaries and not clarified by races; it steps across a variety of temporal barriers and makes our life hopeful. There is a willpower known as fortitude which eases our pain, weakens our suffering and sadness. Gone With The Wind is such a piece of work, when people talk about love, they would recall it. Old-fashioned and irresistible, Gone With The Wind，a novel written by Margaret Mitchell and published in 1936 ,is considered by many to be the greatest love story in American history. However, Gone With The Wind covers much wider besides love. This is why it doesn’t wither away. It is a great epic. It shows the deep thinking of the peoples, reflects the North-South confrontation of a nation during the American Civil War of 1861-65, and the dignity and humanity through telling the story .When reading this book, we are taken into the burning fields and cities of the South America. It creates haunting scenes and thrilling portraits of characters so vivid that we can’t help remembering their words and feel their fear and hunger. Through reading it, we can clearly be aware of its cultural enchantment and deeply attracted by its fascination. Some people say it is a must for Chinese women to know this book. Maybe it is because that after knowing Scarlett’s experience, they can be more confident to struggle for their own life they want. Being under the pressure of turning into someone others want them to be for such a long time, people need an exemplar to encourage themselves fighting to fulfill their own dreams and being themselves. After all, sticking to the things deep in heart and not be effected by the outer factors is too hard a thing. Many people lost themselves in various petty things without even recognize it. Gone with the Wind can give them inspirations of how to live a more satisfactory life. Scarlett O' Hara, a protagonist in Gone With The Wind, was such a girl since she was young. She inherited the open mind and generosity as well as strength from her father, a southern planter. And it seemed as if she didn’t share much from here mother---a typical reserved woman who toiled and moiled for her family all her life. However, in the United States of that era, a woman who lacks of these traits would be considered as an unqualified person, a rebellious people, a person can not be accepted by the decencies. But Scarlett seemed a person just like this. The words taken from the book as follows can convey it: "All you've done is to be different from other women and you've made a little success at it. As I've told you before, that is the one unforgivable sin in any society. Be different and be damned! Scarlett, the mere fact that you've made a success of your mill is an insult to every man who hasn't succeeded. Remember, a well-bred female's place is in the home and she should know nothing about this busy, brutal world." - Rhett. pg. 678, Rhett trying to explain to Scarlett why the other women disapprove of her Scarlett O' Hara is a character who breaks the conventions of a romance novel from the first line of the book—"Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it." Spoiled, high-tempered, and strong-willed, Scarlett’ character determined that she wouldn’t live her life quietly and ordinary like others. So she didn’t keep on depressed for a long time after a moment’s hopeless when she lost her family. Instead, she vowed to be strong enough to overcome the difficulties. As the eldest daughter of O’Haras’, Scarlett lives an idyllic life on a north Georgia plantation called Tara. She concerns herself only with her numerous suitors and her desire to marry Ashley Wilkes. At a barbecue at the Wilkes plantation, Scarlett confesses her feelings to Ashley .But her love was refused. Scarlett slaps Ashley and he leaves the room. While Rhett Butler, a scandalous but dashing adventurer, has been watching the whole scene, and he compliments Scarlett on being unladylike. The Civil War begins. Charles Hamilton, Melanie's timid, dull brother, proposes to Scarlett. She spitefully agrees to marry him, hoping to hurt Ashley. Over the course of two months, Scarlett and Charles marry, Charles joins the army and dies of the measles, and Scarlett learns that she is pregnant. After Scarlett gives birth to a son, Wade, she becomes bored and unhappy. She makes a long trip to Atlanta to stay with Melanie and Melanie's aunt, Pittypat. The busy city agrees with Scarlett's temperament, and she begins to see a great deal of Rhett. Rhett infuriates Scarlett with his bluntness and mockery, but he also encourages her to flout the severely restrictive social requirements for mourning Southern widows. As the war progresses, food and clothing run scarce in Atlanta. Scarlett and Melanie fear for Ashley's safety. After the bloody battle of Gettysburg, Ashley is captured and sent to prison, and the Yankee army begins bearing down on Atlanta. Scarlett desperately wants to return home to Tara, but she has promised Ashley she will stay with the pregnant Melanie, who could give birth at any time. On the night the Yankees capture Atlanta and set it afire, Melanie gives birth to her son, Beau. Rhett helps Scarlett and Melanie escape the Yankees, escorting them through the burning streets of the city, but he abandons them outside Atlanta so he can join the Confederate Army. Scarlett drives the cart all night and day through a dangerous forest full of deserters and soldiers, at last reaching Tara. She arrives to find that her mother, Ellen, is dead; her father, Gerald, has lost his mind; and the Yankee army has looted the plantation, leaving no food or cotton. Scavenging for subsistence, a furious Scarlett vows never to go hungry again. Scarlett takes charge of rebuilding Tara. She murders a Yankee thief and puts out a fire set by a spiteful Yankee soldier. At last the war ends, word comes that Ashley is free and on his way home, and a stream of returning soldiers begins pouring through Tara. One such soldier, a one-legged homeless Confederate named Will Benteen, stays on and helps Scarlett with the plantation. One day, Will brings terrible news: Jonas Wilkerson, a former employee at Tara and current government official, has raised the taxes on Tara, hoping to drive the O'Haras out so that he might buy the plantation. Distraught, Scarlett hurries to Atlanta to seduce Rhett Butler so that he will give her the three hundred dollars she needs for taxes. Rhett has emerged from the war a fabulously wealthy man, dripping with earnings from his blockade-running operation and from food speculation. However, Rhett is in a Yankee jail and cannot help Scarlett. Scarlett sees her sister's beau, Frank Kennedy, who now owns a general store, and forges a plan. Determined to save Tara, she betrays her sister and marries Frank, pays the taxes on Tara, and devotes herself to making Frank's business more profitable. After Rhett blackmails his way out of prison, he lends Scarlett enough money to buy a sawmill. To the displeasure of Atlanta society, Scarlett becomes a shrewd businesswoman. Gerald dies, and Scarlett returns to Tara for the funeral. There, she persuades Ashley and Melanie to move to Atlanta and accept a share in her lumber business. Shortly thereafter, Scarlett gives birth to Frank's child, Ella Lorena. A free black man and his white male companion attack Scarlett on her way home from the sawmill one day. That night, the Ku Klux Klan avenges the attack on Scarlett, and Frank ends up dead. Rhett proposes to Scarlett and she quickly accepts. After a long, luxurious honeymoon in New Orleans, Scarlett and Rhett return to Atlanta, where Scarlett builds a garish mansion and socializes with wealthy Yankees. Scarlett becomes pregnant again and has another child, Bonnie Blue Butler. Rhett dotes on the girl and begins a successful campaign to win back the good graces of the prominent Atlanta citizens in order to keep Bonnie from being an outcast like Scarlett. Scarlett and Rhett's marriage begins happily, but Rhett becomes increasingly bitter and indifferent toward her. Scarlett's feelings for Ashley have diminished into a warm, sympathetic friendship, but Ashley's jealous sister, India, finds them in a friendly embrace and spreads the rumor that they are having an affair. To Scarlett's surprise, Melanie takes Scarlett's side and refuses to believe the rumors. After Bonnie is killed in a horse-riding accident, Rhett nearly loses his mind, and his marriage with Scarlett worsens. Not long after the funeral, Melanie has a miscarriage and falls very ill. Distraught, Scarlett hurries to see her. Melanie makes Scarlett promise to look after Ashley and Beau. Scarlett realizes that she loves and depends on Melanie and that Ashley has been only a fantasy for her. She concludes that she truly loves Rhett. After Melanie dies, Scarlett hurries to tell Rhett of her revelation. Rhett, however, says that he has lost his love for Scarlett, and he leaves her. Grief-stricken and alone, Scarlett makes up her mind to go back to Tara to recover her strength in the comforting arms of her childhood nurse and slave, Mammy, and to think of a way to win Rhett back. Having read Gone with the Wind for several tomes, it gave me different kinds of feeling each time I looked through it. After experiencing so many unfortunate things, what enabled Scarlett to stick to it until she got what she wanted? Having lost her parents, her slaves, having experienced starvation, Scarlett vows to survive and live a good life. Scarlett never gives in and keeps on fighting until she steps into the upper class and gets the initial money and status. In several years, she turns from a spoiled little girl into a tough woman. Just as is said in the book: "Somewhere, on the long road that wound through those four years, the girl with her sachet and dancing slippers, had slipped away, and there was left a woman with sharp green eyes, who counted pennies and turned her hands to many menial tasks, a woman to whom nothing was left from the wreckage, except the indestructible red earth on which she stood." In other’s perspective, Scarlett’ character is to some extent too aggressive at that time. And because of her character, the degree of difficulty in her way to success is much higher than people can imagine: either of her career or her love. There are two basic points we cannot miss in the novel. And the first one of them is survival. As what Mitchell said when Gone With the Wind was published, "If the novel has a theme, it is that of survival. What makes some people able to come through catastrophes and others, apparently just as able, strong and brave, go under? It happens in every upheaval. Some people survive; others don't. What qualities are in those who fight their way through triumphantly that are lacking in those who go under...? I only know that the survivors used to call that quality 'gumption.' So I wrote about the people who had gumption and the people who didn't." Scarlett and Rhett are survivors because they adapt to the changes brought about by the war and Reconstruction. While the Old Southern society sees the war as a disaster that is tearing their world apart, Rhett sees it as an opportunity to make money: "There's just as much money to be made in the wreck of a civilization as in the up building of one." He becomes a blockade-runner and a speculator, taking advantage of the shortages caused by the war. By the war's end, he is one of the few rich people left in Atlanta. Scarlett too seizes the opportunity to make money out of the hardships of the war when she goes into the lumber trade after the Yankees have burnt Atlanta and people are beginning to rebuild. Melanie and Ashley struggle to survive the war because they fail to adapt. They embody the Old Southern way of life, centering on family, honor and tradition. After the war, Ashley spends much time dreaming about the gracious old days of plantation life. He makes a poor farmer at Tara - as Will Benteen says, "he won’t cut out for farming' " - and when Scarlett installs him as manager of one of her mills, he proves a failure at that too. Ashley is clear-minded enough to see what is happening: "In the end what will happen will be what has happened whenever a civilization breaks up. The people who have brains and courage come through and the ones who haven't are winnowed out." He knows that he belongs to the latter sort. The second point that impressed me deeply is love. Scarlett fails to understand what love is until the novel's end. Scarlett couldn’t tolerate any disguise of his true ideas, because that would mean great pain for her. And it was because of this that when she made sure she had fallen love with Ashley, however far she was from Ashley ,no matter how many difficulties came to prevent her from getting together with Ashley, even when Ashley had married another woman, Scarlett had not even thought of compromise and giving up. For the rest of the time, she is in love with the gentlemanly Ashley, who is both very different from her and unattainable, since he has married Melanie. But Scarlett fails to appreciate how similar she and Rhett are, as she is blinded by her prejudice that Rhett is "not a gentleman." She also hates the fact that Rhett reads her every thought and action, making him immune to her bullying and manipulation. The reader is likely to become frustrated by the fact that only Scarlett fails to see that Ashley is utterly unsuited to her and that Rhett is a perfect match for her. Finally, Scarlett realizes that she has only loved an imaginary version of Ashley and that she loves Rhett, but it is too late: Rhett's love for her has worn out. Because of her unwilling to compromise and the stubborn insistence, the rift between them has been irreparable. Rhett, in contrast, sees from the beginning how similar he and Scarlett are, and falls in love with her. He does not admit his feelings, however, because, as he later tells her, "You're so brutal to those who love you, Scarlett. You take their love and hold it over their heads like a whip." Even Rhett marries Scarlett, he still cannot make sure that Scarlett falls in love with him. The only thing he can do is to look after Scarlett with more attention, hoping that Scarlett may change her view. But finally he is disappointed and leaves Scarlett. They have so much in common. Having married the person he love ,but can’t capture Scarlett’s heart, instead of bearing such kind of suffering , maybe it’s a better choice for Rhett to leave. Scarlett and Rhett could have lived with each other, but they eventually get apart. People always look forward to fairy-tale like ending, and are more saddened by tragedies. However, tragedy always enables us to think more about what the author wants to express. The book was almost titled quoting the end line in the book, "Tomorrow is another day"; but the publisher at the time noted there were several books close to the same title, so Margaret Mitchell was asked to find another title, and "Gone with the Wind" was chosen. About the title ‘Gone with the Wind’, different people have made different explanations. It is taken from the first line of the third stanza of the poem Non Sum Qualis eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae by Ernest Dowson: "I have forgot much, Cynara! Gone with the wind." I think there is two meaning in it. One intimates that the love between Scarlett and Rhett has gone with the wind because of too much hurt. While the other one has much to do with the background of the novel. As Gone with the Wind concerns much about the ups and downs of the American South, it shows people some apparent facts in another perspective. The fact that the gradual unity of the South and the North America is destined. It means great changes in their life styles, means the confliction or even absorption between two different cultures. In the process of changing, many things people used to ‘Gone With The Wind’. It refers to the entire way of life of the antebellum South as having "Gone with the Wind". The author, Margaret Mitchell was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1900 to an established Georgia family. She grew up with tales of the Lost Cause and a romantic ideal of the Civil War. Well-educated and witty, she wrote for newspapers and magazines. She married twice but had no children. As a delightful storyteller, she was a gracious presence on the Atlanta social scene. With the novel's great success, Mitchell was thereafter known as the author of Gone With the Wind. Biographers and critics have discovered striking similarities between real people in Mitchell's life and characters in the novel, though whether Mitchell intentionally modeled her characters after people she knew is unclear. What remains certain, however, is that her powerful, enduring story of love and survival set in the prewar and postwar South has made Gone with the Wind one of the most popular novels in American history. As the ancients said: ‘Reading history will inspire wisdom.’ Love and war, back and forward, adhering to and giving up, integration and resistance, we experience and benefit so much when wandering in the book. And we can have a better understanding towards love and life after reading it. We get a lesson that when something goes wrong in our life, we should not forget to cheer up ourselves. Anyway, tomorrow is another day!