Perelandra by CS Lewis

This book is the second in the space trilogy series, the sequel to Out of the Silent Planet.  Perelandra is the name of Venus.  In this book, Ransom goes again to space, though this time he goes there.  On Venus there is a new garden of Eden forming, complete with the first man and woman, though they have been separated at the time that Ransom lands.  The book is, to some extent, a remake of the attempt told in Genesis: though Ransom has been summoned to Venus in order to thwart the devil/his subject, who is using Weston's body as a host.  So, Ransom is a Christ-like figure.  He's sacrificing himself to defeat evil, but he's stopping it before it starts so he only gets injured and doesn't have to die.  This book is also told after the fact, as was the last one.  Let's go.

First of all, I think that I figured out what the Oyarsa are.  If you'll recall, I had some trouble getting the eldil and Oyarsa and all together.  The Oyarsa is the name of the 'patron saint' (if you will) of each planet--so the planet Mars's patron saint would be the Greco-Roman god Mars/Ares, but a pure version, having almost nothing to do with what humans made up for them.  From here, they act as archangels, I would imagine.

I got straight-up excited when Ransom refers to the partial-narrator who is recording this story for us as 'Lewis'.  Hmm, wonder who that could be?  And I wonder who Ransom is supposed to be?  CS Lewis does make a point of reminding the audience that Ransom is a philologist.  (Even though he denied that Ransom what supposed to be a caricature of Tolkien, I'm one hundred percent certain that that's who he's supposed to be.  You "borrowed characteristics"?  Yeah, all of them.  Ooh, buuuuurn.)

Oh, and apparently a common figure of speech was being 'knocked up' in the thirties-forties-sometime before today.  I've deduced that it meant looking haggard or something like that, but it's still kind of funny when someone exclaims it.  No, Tolkien, I don't think Clive is... knocked up.  ("You slut! How long has this been going on!?")  In fact, I'm going to go ahead and say that he lacks the necessary parts for that.

When Tolkien Ransom first sees the 'Eve' of Venus, she is nude and green.  In fact, she remains nude and green for the whole novel, except for a brief scene, where 'Weston' tricks her into wearing a robe.  Anyways, he panics--after he meets her he says he is too in awe to feel sexual desire, and never actually does.  (Later, when he sees her in the robe he comes to the conclusion that clothes are what created desire and perversion, because they hide something, and like children, a person tends to desire what they cannot reach, and thus... I cannot remember if I marked that page or not.  But again, he didn't actually feel sexual desire for her at that time, he was horrified, because if you'll recall, that's the first thing Adam and Eve did after they ate the apple--make clothes because they realized they were naked and felt ashamed.)  Anyyyyywaaaays... When he first sees her he gets scared, and wonders if she is not a "Circe or Alcina" (54).  Circe transformed men into creatures (most notably Odysseus's crew after they gorged themselves on the feast she set up for them) and enjoyed sleeping with men and then stealing their "manhood".  Alcina is the one I didn't know--she is apparently a sorceress from an opera by Handel (named Alcina).  Alcina seduces men and has sex with them for a while, but then gets bored and will turn them into animals or rocks.

Now, naivety is often considered cute or pure.  And although it can be beneficial, it often does more harm than good--unknowing and naive (a fool, to say harshly), the green lady would never think of wearing clothes or admiring her own reflection or murder or gluttony on her own.  When 'Weston' appears and starts entreating her to disobey orders set by God/Venus, she at first objects, but 'Weston' is a smooth talker, and she doesn't know any better.  In a few ways her naivety does protect, because she doesn't really get the point of clothing and what mirrors are, but other times it is grating.
One thing that does bother me is when 'Weston' introduces the green lady to stories and poems--descriptions of things that aren't real, but could be, or would be nice.  The lady has never heard of such a thing.  CS Lewis's point is probably that life in her Eden is so great she doesn't need any stories or diversions like that--but that paints a rather frightening picture of heaven, for me at least.  Very Brave New World-ish, if you ask me (though I'm sure Lewis didn't intend it that way at all, and probably would be disgusted if he heard that take on things...  And now I'm wondering what CS Lewis's thoughts on Aldous Huxley were.  Also, I'm starting to really like the name Aldous.)

Of course, 'Weston' and Ransom interact.  In attempting to discredit 'Weston', Ransom looks rather bad himself, and more often than not, do more harm than good.  They are rather like two siblings who are constantly trying to get the other in trouble.  This goes on until an explosive final chase and wrestle (and because this is a trilogy, I think you can figure out for yourself who wins the final fight)... But!  Eventually Ransom comes upon 'Weston' strangling a bird so that he may pluck its feathers.  ('Weston' is never seen eating, and it would be more evil just to kill for the sake of killing--plus earlier in the book 'Weston' would just rip frogs apart for the heck of it.)  'Weston' attempts to shake Ransom's faith by telling him that God will not aid Weston, and lists all the others who waited too long for God to help them and ended up dying because of it--victims of the Holocaust, madmen, Jesus--"'Could He help Himself?'" (153).  This is obviously a reference to the crucifixion, though it is twisted--it was necessary for Jesus to sacrifice himself so everyone else would be saved.  God could have helped himself/his son/however that works, but in doing so he would have abandoned his people.  He goes on to quote Jesus's wailing at the cross (in Aramic): "God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"  As you can see from what I've just said (and if you actually read the book, Ransom tells you) that he's used something for his own means, twisting it perfectly.  What is chilling about is that Ransom has the idea that when 'Weston' is quoting the words perfectly--he's not just quoting because he saw them written by some scribe.  He is remembering.
Also, back to "'Could He help Himself?'" (153).  In the Stephen King book Desperation, a monster-demon named Tak attempts to mock David, an eleven-year-old boy whose overwhelming and practically unbelievable faith in God is the only thing that can save him and the people he's with.  Tak tries to make David lose his faith by saying, "'Your God isn't here, any more than he was with Jesus when Jesus hung dying on the cross with flies in his eyes'" (pages aren't listed in this online edition, but the full text appears to be online here, so I guess they aren't really needed.  I urge you to read it.  It is actually a very good book).  It's a tad grislier than Lewis's statement, but essentially the same.

Ransom and 'Weston', like I said, eventually do have a standoff, deep inside the caves of the 'fixed land' (every other piece of land is basically a literal seafoam island)... Ransom and the fake Weston beat the hell out of each other, and eventually they both collapse from exhaustion.  This makes me the maddest--not because they beat each other, although that was very unexpected and disturbing from CS Lewis, it was necessary--but because what had possessed Weston let him go so it wouldn't have to suffer.  All of a sudden Weston is in the middle of nowhere, memories from any time after Mars nonexistent, beaten to a pulp, with a broken leg.  He's crying, whimpering--he begs Ransom not to leave him, and finally explains why he is the way he is: as a child, he saw his large, strong grandmother dead and it frightened him, and he became obsessed with living, for as long as possible, no matter the cost.  During this, his speech gets twisted, and one is able to follow the same pattern that led Weston to be so open for possession.  The thing in Weston slowly returns again and attempts to drown Weston but fails and instead drowns himself.
What Ransom realizes is that fear and evil make you completely one with the devil/evil--he can work through you as if he is you and there is little to no difference, because it came on so gradually and naturally.  "What Pantheists falsely hoped of Heaven bad men really received in Hell.  They were melted down into their Master, as a lead soldier slips down and loses his shape in the ladle held over the gas ring.  The question whether Satan, or one whom Satan has digested, is acting on any given occasion, has in the long run no clear significance.  In the meantime, the great thing was not to be tricked again" (173).  This would be a reference to the ultimate goal of Hinduism, where your goal would be to attain a complete oneness with the rest of the universe.

My last note is towards the end of the book--Ransom recovers in the caves, finds food and a way out... Finalizing Ransom's position as a Christ-like figure is what he sees when he finally gets out of the cave and starts walking around: "There was something white near the water's edge.  An altar?  A patch of white lilies among the red?  A tomb?  But whose tomb?   No, it was not a tomb but a coffin, open and empty, and its lid lying beside it" (193).  What this actually is is the ship he is to return home in--it alternately represents the opened tomb left when Christ was resurrected (because Ransom was basically raised from the dead) and the tomb open yet waiting, because Ransom has yet to go back to earth and be reborn, so to speak.

The book ends with everyone reunited (including the green lady's mate), the true Venus and Mars greet everyone, and Ransom is sent back home, and we're back to the beginning.  I really hope I find the third book soon.  Although this series isn't stellar, it's pretty good.


MLA Citation Information: Lewis, CS.  Perelandra.  Collier Books: New York, 1962.

After Many A Summer Dies the Swan by Aldous Huxley

What.  The bloody hell.  Is this book?  I thought that because it made a little cameo in A Single Man it would be good.  That whole class lecture scene is incredibly intriguing.  Amazing!  But noooo.  This book couldn't hold my attention for five minutes.  I'd read twenty pages and be like... "What the hell is this?"  Not because it was terribly difficult or anything--it just wasn't interesting or amazing.  I mean, it pretty much was exactly about and representing what Isherwood had the students and George say (this may help).  It was helpful to read A Single Man first, actually, despite the fact that it gave me far too high expectations... I mean, it was like a pseudo-sparknotes deal.
So.  What the book is actually about--I trust you've peeked at the post linked above, so I need not explain what the title is referring to--though I think Huxley got his mythology confused.  Endymion, if I remember my mythology, was a sheepherder who was given immortality--but he was eternally sleeping.  This preserved his youth... On the other hand, there is another more unfortunate mortal who had won a goddess's affections.  His loving goddess, unfortunately, forgot to ask Zeus to grant her beloved eternal youth along with his eternal life. So--the man lived forever, but withered and eventually turned into a cricket.  There's a subplot--which becomes the main plot--involving a diary of a man who lived in the seventeen-hundreds.  The 'mainest' character of the book is a millionaire named Stoyte.  He is terrified of dying and has his personal physician working on the secret to immortality (apparently).  So yes, the doctor has a man's journal--an earl's, actually--who basically feared the same thing.  Noticing that the carps in the estate's pond are supposedly over one hundred years old, he decides to start eating the guts of the oldest carp to see what it will do for him.  What it does for him, is make him very, very... hmm... Long lived and fertile.  At the very end of the book, they find this man--he's holed up and locked away in a basement because he's devolved.  (He also gave a bit of the mixture to a housekeeper who was ill, and she too is locked away with him.)  So--like the cricket--he was given eternity but he withered on it--to something far more disgusting and pathetic than a cricket.  He's filthy, only wearing a shirt--a group consisting of Stoyte, the doctor, and a young woman who I will get to later watch him, stunned, for a few minutes... In that time he and the woman chatter to each other like apes. The man has blemishes and sores on him from living in such poor conditions (which aren't entirely his fault, admittedly...) But what is repulsive is that he just pees. Right where he's sitting.  Doesn't even get up, doesn't get up right away after he's sitting--and beyond being gross, it's disturbing.  The woman is just kind of there (the ex-Earl slaps her once or twice), but the man still has habits that he did so often while coherent that he just kind of does them.  He is wearing a ribbon and a medal, and he gets up and polishes them while humming a particular favourite tune of his--and every time he and his ex-housekeeper chatter at each other, their noises are described as on the verge of being understandable, echoes of coherence--and so on.  So yes, he withered like the cricket, but in a far worse way.
And--I realize I've been spoiling the ends in the very beginning of these posts quite often as of late--but now I feel that I absolutely have to tell you Stoyte's reaction to this gruesome spectacle.  Stoyte appears to be grossed out for a moment, but he can't seem to quite understand the situation: "Mr. Stoyte broke his silence.  'How long do you figure it would take before a person went like that?' he said in a slow hesitating voice.  'I mean, it wouldn't happen at once... there'd be a long time while a person... well, you know; while he wouldn't change any.  And once you get over the first shock--well, they look like they were having a pretty good time. I mean in their own way, of course.  Don't you think so...?' he insisted" (356).  The doctor just laughs at how pathetic he is.  Actually, the more I think about it, the more that this Doctor seems almost like a god figure of the novel... Beyond everyone's personal hangups and--he just seems a lot more intelligent and more powerful than everybody else.  The doctor may even be seen as a devilish figure--he is holding out powerful temptations (he seduces the young woman who saw the devolved people, and makes her feel pleasure during sex, eek), and has the key to immortality in his palms--and he's messing with everybody with utter glee.  He likes watching everybody floundering for nothing more than his own amusement.

So, the story starts out when a middleaged man named Jeremy goes to America to do some bookkeeping for Mr Stoyte.  From here we meet the doctor, Obispo, Pete (O's assistant, who falls for Virginia), Virginia, Stoyte's mistress, Stoyte himself, and a few others.
My first note has to do with Jeremy--seven pages in he writes a letter to his mother, "Oscar Wilde's old friend, the witty and cultured Mrs. Pordage" (7).  Of course I would mark that--as for the name, she is entirely fictional.  I suppose that shouldn't be a surprise, but you never know.

I also want to mention that this is Jeremy's first time in the country--and he's in California first!  He's hit with a barrage of neon marketing and superficiality, the likes of which he's never seen before.  He's very overwhelmed, he starts trying out lingo and promising himself he'll try the things advertised, like certain types of burgers or milkshakes.   It's overwhelming and strange, because he's never seen this sort of mass advertising and everything.  It all seems as it is: absurd, alien, disgusting, rotten, pointless, a mockery--because it's being looked at by a foreigner (he is not necessarily seeing things as rotten or disgusting, but through his eyes, things look that way--like the neon-lit cemetery.  He's in awe of it and I was disgusted)--it's essentially the same way Thompson and his Attorney see Las Vegas in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, except without the lizards and bats and overwhelming fear--but those few moments when Thompson is sober and disgusted, basically the same.  And even when he's tripping, all the lights and signs and flashes and all overwhelm him and seem terrifying in their own right.

Stoyte has a terrible temper--his doctor has warned him that if he gets too riled, he's likely to give himself a second stroke.  So: "'God is love,' he said again, and reflected that, if people would only stop being so exasperating, he would never have to lose his temper.  'God is love.'  It was all their fault" (37).  This cracked me up.  I hope I don't need need to point out the humour... Do I?

The grossest thing I learned from the book was, unsurprisingly, explained by Obispo.  He talks about theories of prolonging life, and untrue rumours--that sour milk will lengthen your life or what have you.  One popular surgery in the days before the first World War it was apparently popular to have sections of your colon removed--that was thought to prolong health, I guess.  Huxley is not making this up, I just looked it up.  It killed 50% of people who tried it within two years, and even if it didn't, with a quarter of a colon you have to, um, "evacuate" as the doctor puts it, quite often.  Yeah, so my point is, ew ew ew, gross gross gross, Jesus why, ew gross, vomitrocious.

As for George of A Single Man talking about what Huxley has cited as the "stupidest text in the Bible"--it is, to remind you, "They hated me without a cause".  I guess this disturbs George's students, though Huxley in his own book basically says what George says, except in a more concise manner without examples and not as expansively (though I suppose concise would imply that?).  And it's weird to think... A student raises the Holocaust in response to George's agreement with Huxley on this being the stupidest scripture.  This book was written in 1939--when the very first Jews were being taken into ghettos and camps.
"For what hope, he asked himself, what faintest glimmer of hope is there for a man who really believes that 'they hated me without a cause' and that he had no part in his own disasters?  Obviously, no hope whatever... In some measure they are directly or indirectly responsible.  Directly, by the commission of stupid or malicious acts.  Indirectly, by the omission to be as intelligent and compassionate as they might be" (107).
Later Huxley adds that the most sensible text of the Bible is "'God is not mocked; as a man sows, so shall he reap'" (256).  I agree--and if the God bit makes you uncomfortable, add 'fate' or 'destiny'--or even cutting it out altogether works.
"'As a man sows, so shall he reap.  God is not mocked.  Not mocked,' he repeated.  'but people simply refuse to believe it.  They go on thinking they can cock a snook at the nature of things and get away with it.  I've sometimes thought of writing a little treatise, like a cook-book.  "One Hundred Ways of Mocking God," I'd call it.  And I'd take a hundred examples from history and contemporary life, illustrating what happens when people undertake to do things without paying regard to the nature of reality.  And the book would be divided into sections, such as "Mocking God in Agriculture", "Mocking God in Politics", "Mocking God in Education", "Mocking God in Philosophy", "Mocking God in Economics".  It would be an instructive little book.  But a bit depressing,' Mr. Propter added" (282-283).  "'Cock a snook'"?

"'Bad art can't do so much harm as ill-considered political action'" (172).  Originally I marked this because again, Huxley mentioned Oscar Wilde, but then I realized that there was a good point--he's playing off of Wilde's "art for art's sake".  Even if the art you make is mediocre, it's not as bad as a terrible political move--et cetera.

So far as i know, the earl whose diary is found and read is not based on any real earl.  Again, I guess that probably goes without saying, but that's not the point--the point is that the earl 'wrote' a pretty bit of poetry and I was just checking if it was thieved... Anyways, the results, other than one passage, are pretty bad--"'If only the rest were silence!'" (213).  Hehe.

The doctor, although he plays as a sort of God character, he is a smug fool too--he's just stupid in different ways--he's one of the sort who would have caused Brave New World.  The doctor vaguely mentions several authors--the one he says specifically is Shelley--that he could have fixed, thanks to his modern medicines and therapies.  Because many great pieces of art and literature are created out of suffering, I believe what he (Huxley, not the doctor) is essentially saying is that modern amenities can basically end art--beauty--and so on.  Which again is exactly what is illustrated in Brave New World.  There's a scene where Jonathan asks the man who suppresses all old literature and art if he has any use for old things, and the man says no, and then Jonathan asks even if they are beautiful, and the man says "'Particularly when they're beautiful'".  (No source, but I promise that that is the exact line.)


My last note that directly corresponds to a page is the quote attached to the spiel about the silliest/most important quotes from the Bible.  My last comment is again on the earl and his immortality secret: raw carp guts.  It doesn't specify if it's just one dose or several that keeps up youth indefinitely (which bothers me greatly, the housekeeper lady is recorded to have taken it once when she was ill, but no other records of her taking it are there... Which doesn't really make sense...)
My second note is that a popular Roman condiment/dish was fermented fish paste--the exact recipe for making this... thing is unknown, though apparently historians have sought after the dish for quite some time.  My point is that Romans, judging from statues, aged really, really well.  And it's been proven that having a diet that's high in fish is about as healthy as you can get--well, it was at one point.  Now that all fish are supposedly up to their gills in mercury... So, Huxley has something!  We've found the key to immortality!  HAHAHAHA--no, that's stupid.  The reason why Huxley chose carp is because they live so incredibly long.  But yeah, a diet with fish as a staple bis very healthy, but probably won't lengthen your life to two hundred years/turn you into an ape person.  That is all, good night.


MLA Citation Information: Huxley, Aldous.  After Many a Summer Dies the Swan.  Ivan R Dee, Inc: Chicago, 1993.

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Well!  You've heard of this.  You know you've heard of this.  Don't even try to tell me that you haven't heard of this.  Even if you somehow aren't aware of this movie's (everyone knows this movie; I have a feeling many people are surprised when they find out that this is a book) existence, you know these faces.  This is a book set before, during, and after the Civil war.  What makes it most interesting is that it's set in the South, and if you're not from the South at least, you don't really hear about that perspective of the war.  Then again, Mitchell could have been a Southerner and may have exemplified things--though I've no doubt Northerners looted, robbed, and burned down property.  Most of them were probably fighting just because there was fighting going on.  Actually, the book does a good job of proving that not all Northerners were saints.
The main character, Scarlett O'Hara, is your basic Southern belle.  Basically every boy her age (or of marrying age) wants to marry her.  Her world, just before the war, is shattered because she learns that one ex-beau of hers is getting married.  She is pretty convinced that she loves him, but it's actually a stupid crush that screws up a good portion of her life--even when she realizes that she never actually truly loved Ashley (about four pages from the book's end), it bites her in the butt.  And she doesn't change at all.  She almost matures and grows and learns at the end, but she ruins it all.*
Rhett Butler is a suave, smooth-talking ladies' (is that right?) man.  He's a scam artist, and he gets around.  He's a slippery, slimy thing--unfortunately, even though I hated him at the end of the book, he was the only main character I could like.

The first sentence of the novel is this: "Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charms as the Tarleton twins were" (1).  This is interesting--her eyes are sort of the hypnotizers (yes, I know that's not a word.  Roll with it), and her charm draws men in.  As the hardships of the war and its aftermath continue, her charm disappears, and her face becomes narrow and even harsher.  Her lack of beauty becomes painfully clear, and her face begins to look like her cold mind.  (To be fair, it was necessary to become that way to survive the war and all, but while she grew up mentally to survive, she never really matured, if you understand what I mean.*)
So the book starts on the day Scarlett learns Ashley is to be married.  She becomes horrified, but somewhat comforted--because she will see him at the barbecue the next day and she becomes sure that she will be able to talk Ashley out of it, or have him admit that it was just a joke, or something.  Surprise, surprise, this was not the case.  And I've lasted almost three paragraphs without complaining, and now it has to happen: Ashley 'loved' Scarlett (by the end Scarlett realizes it was just infatuation, or lust)--but at the beginning he cannot tell the difference.  He didn't propose to Scarlett even though he thought he loved her because he was cowardly.  When he reappears after the war it is excruciating, watching their "drama" unfold.  They have their dramatic soap opera "I love you and I must kiss you" moments, and I just want to keel haul them both.  They need sassy gay friends.  Scarlett, he turned you down because he wasn't man enough to make a good decision--and Ashley, you missed your chance.  You both need to write sad poems in your diaries and move on.  I practically cheered when they realized that they were just being teenagers about each other.

Anywayyys.  Scarlett gets livid, and in desperation she accepts a proposal from a certain Charles.  Of course Ashley tells Scarlett he loves her that night... Ugh.  I didn't find this dramatic or touching or anything, and as you can tell, I never found it particular touching or moving or dramatic.  If you can't man up then don't make the rest of us suffer, jeez.
Scarlett's dramatic bit is that Ashley turns the corner and walks away, Scarlett realizes that she is now stuck to Charlie when in reality her and Ashley share stupidity love, and the section reads something like "and in that moment Scarlett realized how much she loved Ashley".  (Note the "something like".)  Ughhh, cry me a river.  And in the book this failed "romance" didn't even bother me yet.  I figured it would fade.  Sure, she's living with Ashley's wife, but come on.  Five years pass!  Six!  Come on.  Ugh... They just... they just make me want to drink.  Let's just please move on, okay?

"'The man is too clever with cards to be a gentleman'" (137).  Scarlett's father on Rhett, who got him, in a word, wasted, and wrecked him in cards.

"'Once he's made up his mind to something, no one could be braver or more determined but--He lives inside his head instead of outside and he hates to come out into the world'" (142).  This is Scarlett's major revelation about Ashley.  It comes while she is secretly reading a letter from him to his wife--she realizes that he was too cowardly to marry her for fear it would "'upset his way of thinking and living'" (142).  Of course, she doesn't think of it as cowardice.  She just gets frustrated that she doesn't quite understand her revelation--what it means to be in your head and to fear coming "out into the world" and thinks that if she could figure it out she would figure out how she could have gotten him to marry her instead of Melanie.

 "'All wars are sacred,' he said. 'To those who have to fight them. If the people who started wars didn't make them sacred, who would be foolish enough to fight? But, no matter what rallying cries the orators give to the idiots who fight, no matter what noble purposes they assign to wars, there is never but one reason for a war. And that is money. All wars are in reality money squabbles. But so few people ever realize it. Their ears are too full of bugles and drums and fine words from stay-at-home orators. Sometimes the rallying cry is "Save the Tomb of Christ from the Heathen!" Sometimes it's "Down with Popery!" and sometimes "Liberty!" and sometimes "Cotton, Slavery and States' Rights!"'" (153).  First of all, Rhett is referencing the crusades, any sect of Christianity that's not Roman Catholicism (probably the Protestant Reformation?), liberty could be anything, but my first thought was of the Revolutionary war (remember the stamp act, the sugar act, and the other unfair taxes?), and the last one is, of course, the Civil war, which is currently going on (in the story), and which Rhett clearly doesn't support or believe in.  Scarlett, idiot as she is, doesn't understand the references and gets annoyed that he is bringing up seemingly unrelated topics.
Second of all, Rhett has a very good point.  I still kind of have trouble with trying to figure out how the Crusades were more money related than trying to gain back the holy lands from 'heathens', but I'm not very familiar with the Crusades.  And it makes sense with an overwhelming amount of battles and wars that can be skimmed off the top of the head.
3.  This book certainly proves that noble reasons don't mean squat.  The Northerners are portrayed as being more racist than Southerners--after the war, one Northern lady is horrified at the suggestion to get a black nursemaid for her children.  The Northern ladies, who have all read Uncle Tom's Cabin, are also grossly interested in hearing about servants being whipped and tortured.  Now, as I said, Mitchell may be a Southerner, so she may be trying to make Northerners look stupid--though I've no doubt that there was a good percentage of Northerners that were like this.  They didn't give two pence for their noble cause--they might not even have been aware of that.  Now, let me go in another direction entirely: Scarlett and Melanie are both shocked at the idea of whipping slaves, and it's true, that only once we see a slave beaten (and that slave is beaten by her own mother) in the book, but remember--we basically are only seeing "house slaves", or "house n-----s".  Though life was still rough, their lives were considerably more posh, and probably wouldn't have been treated as harshly as field hands.  (Go read the Meet Addy American Girl Doll book for an example of how field hands were treated.)  Scarlett thinks of Mammy and Pork and the other house slaves as family, or just below family, so beatings and other harsh actions were probably rare.  (Hence why the field hands ran away and Mammy and Pork and company did not.)  I can't remember what I was trying to prove, but I hope that this off-kilter rant/long statement was at least somewhat interesting/enlightening.  Now then--I guess on to more coherent things...

So, my next note is just a quote from during the siege--when Northerners went through plantations and towns and all and burned whatever they couldn't eat or loot--they burn thousands of dollars worth of cotton at Tara (the O'Hara plantation), for example.  "It was as though, the worst having happened, they had nothing more to fear.  They had feared a siege and now they had a siege and, after all, it wasn't so bad.  Life could and did go on as usual.  They knew they were sitting on a volcano, but until that volcano erupted there was nothing they could do, so why worry now?" (218).  Or: Gone With the Wind summarizes my basic take on life entirely.

Rhett Butler, right before he took Scarlett, Melanie, and Scarlett's son by Charlie back to Tara during the siege: "'[Yankees] are pretty much like Southerners--except with worse manners, of course, and terrible accents'" (223).  This cracked me up.  At first I got annoyed (accents?  We don't have accents!)--but then I remembered Rhode Islanders, and Bostoners, and... Are New Jersey folks 'Yankees'?  And, of course, it's ironic, because Southern accents are simply awful.  They grate on my nerves (well, still not as bad as Rhode Island accents, I'll give Southerners that, but...)

Ah, my next note is on a reference to the book of Job--Scarlett manages to grab hold of a mangy horse at Tara.  It's been kicked about and is a pretty sad sight, but it's better than having no horse.  She says that if the horse was dead, she would just curse God and die--"Somebody in the Bible had done just that thing.  Cursed God and died" (261).  Of course, no-one had actually done that--while Job is suffering from boils and destroyed crops and his sons becoming ill and dying, his wife suggests that he curse God and die.  (What about her?  Seems suspicious to me.)

Oh, and of course Melanie was pregnant, and fared badly.  Actually, they thought she would die after she had the child--the second there was a worry of her death I was like, "SHE IS GOING TO DIE AND ASHLEY WILL BE ALIVE AND ASHLEY AND SCARLETT WILL GET TOGETHER!"  Eventually Melanie does die due to complications--but this is because of a second child, nearly 400 pages and five or six years later.  Of course, this is when Scarlett realizes she and Ashley didn't really love each other, but still.  I called it this early on, and at that point when she actually died, I rolled my eyes.  It's like when the girl conveniently dies in David Copperfield, except it didn't seem so stupid and overwrought then, although I did predict it.  Anyways, times are tough, there are infirm, house slaves who are useless because they aren't field hands, there is Scarlett's kid, Melanie's new baby, and Pork's wife just had a baby.  Scarlett isn't exactly rejoicing at all the mouths to feed, and to hear that there's another baby about nearly drives her mad.  "Babies, babies, babies.  Why did God make so many babies?  But no, God didn't make them.  Stupid people made them" (270).  I pretty much died laughing.

"But she could not feel.  She could only think and her thoughts were very practical" (358).

As a little bit of a summary of what has gone on--I'm sorry--the war has ended, and Scarlett took a visit back to Atlanta, Georgia.  Desperate to make some income for Tara, Scarlett married her younger sister's old beau, Frank Kennedy, and manages his store and two lumber mills.  Obviously, this is a scandal to everyone, and Frank is embarrassed, and Scarlett's younger sister hates everything that has ever lived.  I believe I've mentioned already about how all the Northern officers' wives were curious about whipping and slave mistreatment because they had all read Uncle Tom's Cabin.  Mitchell refers to this as bigotry!  Scarlett expresses disbelief at the thought of whipping slaves--but again, Scarlett has only ever been in contact with house slaves--slaves who very rarely would have been whipped.  Not only that, Mitchell, I have found out since last writing on here, was a terrible racist.  In fact, that's what she's known for more than being the author of this book.  Mitchell might not have believed whipping and such occurred.  The house slaves she portrays are "like family" (according to Scarlett), but are more often than not portrayed as being very stupid or doglike--like Dilcey.  Even if a slave is being portrayed as being intelligent, or at least smarter and cleverer than an animal, they are always brought down, for Mitchell will describe them in broad stereotypical ways.  EG, "she had that negro-like way of...", she had X look that was common to negroes such as herself", "she had the powerful glare of a...", et cetera.  Mitchell actually even presents the slave system as being necessary. Unbound field slaves being drunken degenerates and a group of them almost gang-rapes Scarlett.  Although this probably occurred now and again (just as white men will rape women, it happens), the knowledge of the author makes everything untrustworthy and suspicious.  (If the topic of the book itself didn't make the reader wary already...)  So--Mitchell was probably trying to say that the slave system was necessary, or else all hell would break loose and no-one would be safe, et cetera.

Mitchell also puts women who believe that they have the right to vote (and men who believe that women should have that right) on the same level as lunatics, alcoholic (women) and divorced women (which was quite a scandal in those days).

Frank is killed after the incident where Scarlett is almost raped--he was a member of the KKK, and upon hearing her recounting of what happened, he rallied the troops, so to speak, and killed the men who did it and lost some of their own.  Scarlett feels guilty about his death, especially since she was so nasty to him while they were married.  Anyways--Rhett goes to comfort her, and there's a funny scene: "'It's all Frank's fault for not beating you with a buggy whip... I'm surprised at you, Scarlett, for sprouting a conscience this late in life.  Opportunists like you shouldn't have them.'  'What is an oppor--what did you call it?'  'A person who takes advantages of opportunities.'  'Is that wrong?'  'It has always been held in disrepute--especially by those who had the same opportunities and didn't take them'" (552).
Rhett then immediately proposes to Scarlett.  Scarlett accepts.
"He made her play and she had almost forgotten how.  Life had been so serious and so bitter.  He knew how to play and swept her along with him" (569).

Again, another reference--really a paraphrase--to the Bible: "'It's harder for speculators' money to get into the best parlors than for the camel to go through the needle's eye" (572).  Jesus, in Matthew, says that "It is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven... It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God" (Luke, Mark, Matthew--various phraseries of this).

As things usually go, Rhett and Scarlett have a child together.  The daughter began to suffer from night terrors.  After Bonnie was born, Scarlett absolutely refused to have another child and would not even let Rhett share a bed with her.  So their daughter slept in her crib in her father's room with the lights on.  Scarlett once overhears Bonnie relating one of her horrible nightmares to her father--she explains that a big "it" sat on her chest and had claws.  The claws are different, but often incubi are characterized as sitting on their victims' chests or stomachs.  (See "The Nightmare", a painting by Henry Fuseli--the 1790 version is pretty nightmare-inducing in its own right, too.)  I just thought that that was a rather curious reference, if Mitchell even intended that... (The kid is only four or five!)

Ashley is terrible and depresses the world--it kills him that Scarlett has turned so hard and money hungry, but she's had to become that way.  Though she's hard and cruel now, she has adapted, and he's become weak because he can't handle a hard life of work and money garnering.
"'I shouldn't have let him make me look back,' she thought despairingly.  'I was right when I said I'd never look back.  It hurts too much, it drags at your heart till you can't ever do anything but look back'" (615).

"'Burdens are for shoulders strong enough to carry them'" (675).  Scarlett, after seeing Melanie in her deathbed, when she realizes that she would have gotten nowhere if Melanie hadn't been at her side.  As she realizes this, she realizes that she never needed Ashley at all.  Her love for him wasn't really love at all, it was hardly anything: "Out of the dullness, one thought arose.  Ashley did not love her and had never really loved her and the knowledge did not hurt.  It should hurt.  She should be desolate, broken hearted, ready to scream at fate.  She had relied upon his love for so long.  It had upheld her through so many dark places.  Yet, there the truth was.  He did not love her and she did not care.  She did not care because she did not love him.  She did not love him and so nothing he could do or say could hurt her" (675).
*So--as Scarlett has her revelation, Rhett has his own.  He was sick of playing second banana to Ashley for so long, and now that Melanie is out of the picture, he sees no point in staying on.  When Scarlett attempts to explain that she truly loved him all along and only just realized it, he explains that he fell out of love with her as easily as she did with Ashley.  Now--this disappointed me, though I understood it.  It made sense.  Now, as a backtrack, Scarlett's little anthem was "I'll think about it tomorrow, tomorrow is another day", etc--and that's how the book ends: "'I'll think of it all tomorrow, at Tara.  I can stand it then.  Tomorrow, I'll think of some way to get him back.  After all, tomorrow is another day'" (689).  The last line is inspiring.  As last sentences go?  Very nearly one of the best.  But--"some way to get him back"?  Oh no.  Oh hell no.  You spent four hundred and fifty pages attempting to do this with Ashley.  You are not doing this again.  You are still an idiot.  Though she grew up--she became money-minded, could manage food and all--managed a store, two mills and Tara--but she didn't mature any.  Ughhh.


Oh, and the last time I saw the movie, I was about eleven.  Basically the only scene I remember was when Rhett and Scarlett's daughter dies--she falls off a pony while riding sidesaddle when it jumps a hedge.  The second Rhett bought her the pony I was basically like, IT IS ALL OVER, YOU HAVE SEALED YOUR DAUGHTER'S FATE.  The only other scenes I remember clearly are these two: the iconic "frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" scene, and an added scene where Scarlett gets mad that her waist is nineteen inches (because of her two children) instead of sixteen as it used to be.  I remember it because I couldn't figure out what the big deal was.


Well, there's that.  The book was rather gripping--I was completely sucked in during the war years.  Unfortunately, when Ashley showed up again and their pathetic romance played out I lost interest.  But still--if you're interested in this period, definitely read it.  Like I said, it was pretty interesting to see the war and its aftermath from a Southern perspective.  It was even more interesting because I took a history class first semester that was something like America 1650-1870, so I actually knew what the battle of Vicksburg met, who Carpetbaggers were, and so on.  I wouldn't read it if you haven't got a lot of free time, though--my edition clocks in at nearly seven hundred pages, and it's columned like a Bible.

MLA Citation Information: Mitchell, Margaret.  Gone With the Wind.  The Macmillan Company: New York, 1936.  (Is it possible that I have a first edition of this book!?  Or a close to first!?  It's in awful condition, but still, that's pretty cool...)



Unrelated Revelation Time: I was thinking about sunflowers the other day and realized something about the film adaptation of Everything is Illuminated--in The Sunflower, Wiesenthal observes that every grave of a soldier has a sunflower growing on it.  In Everything is Illuminated; however, those flowers are probably meant to represent the dead residents of Trachimbrod.  Or maybe soldiers too.  There were an awful lot of flowers.