War torn lands, families torn apart, the fight to survive — these are appropriate subjects for any age. But rarely are pieces as evocative as the American Civil War masterpiece Gone with the Wind, which just celebrated its 70th anniversary of publishing in 2006. Atlanta author Margaret Mitchell was driven to powerfully and vividly explore the human drive to survive through the characters, events and places depicted in the book. As Mitchell so eloquently said, "I wrote about the people who had gumption and the people who didn't."

The name "Scarlett O’Hara" typically evokes images of 1930s film icon Vivien Leigh swooning in the arms of Byronic hero Clark Gable in the 1939 film version, but a larger than life literary character exists as well — a heroine whose ivory white skin does not reflect the intriguing baseness of her character. Mitchell immerses the reader in the throes of the Civil War through the trials and tribulations of Scarlett and the O’Hara family.
She centers the O’Hara clan on their plantation, Tara, which stands in as a microcosmic representation of the Southern plantation lifestyle of slaves, cotton and whiskey.

Scarlett fights and works for Tara as if it is a living, breathing entity that is more constant than any human character: "She thought of Tara and it was as if a gentle cool hand were stealing over her heart." In fact, I was more intrigued by Mitchell’s descriptions of the red Georgia earth and its overpowering magnetism for blacks and whites alike than by Scarlett’s retinue of men, who include stalwart Ashley Wilkes, ordinary Frank Kennedy and dashing Rhett Butler.

Mitchell’s lifelong love affair with Atlanta and the surrounding area comes across in her exquisite rendering of historical events, character histories, and her evocation of classical Southern discourse from the antebellum years, the war itself, and the tumultuous events of the Reconstruction era. Rhett conveys the overriding Southern mentality of the late 1860s with his statement: "What is broken is broken — and I’d rather remember it was it was at its best than mend it and see the broken places as long as I lived."

Published in 1936, Gone with the Wind’s continued popularity marks it as a classic. However, the book is marred by its reflections of an early 20th century racial rhetoric that many would today find offensive, though 1930s readers presumably did not. In this way, Gone with the Wind reflects a truly alien and bygone era, one that most are not eager to return to, despite the entreating longings of each character to find the broken remnants of their lost "Southernness." In the end, Scarlett expresses the only hope for each character — to continue seeking another day, summed up in the famous line "after all, tomorrow is another day." And what this day looks like is up to them.