Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Published 1936 · 1,172 pages · 423,874 words · about 27 hours at an average pace · Historical Fiction, Romance

How hard is Gone with the Wind to read?

Gone with the Wind scores 45 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.

Vocabulary: 45 out of 100
Mitchell writes in accessible period prose with Southern dialect for enslaved characters. The vocabulary is straightforward, with the challenges residing in the novel's ideology.
Sentence structure: 42 out of 100
Sentences are clear and propulsive, driving the sweeping narrative forward. Mitchell writes for readability, and the prose moves briskly despite the length.
Abstraction: 45 out of 100
The novel stays grounded in physical drama—war, survival, romance. Abstract themes about the Old South emerge through action rather than reflection.
Information density: 55 out of 100
The epic scope covers years of war and reconstruction. Mitchell provides considerable historical detail integrated into her romantic narrative.
Narrative indirection: 40 out of 100
Scarlett's self-understanding lags behind readers' perceptions. What she wants and why become clear through action rather than self-analysis.
Symbolic density: 50 out of 100
Tara, the land, the Old South itself—Mitchell builds symbolic weight around loss and survival. The symbols are obvious but effective.
Ironic distance: 40 out of 100
Mitchell's relationship to Lost Cause mythology complicates the irony. The novel celebrates what it sometimes critiques.
Resolution withholding: 45 out of 100
The famous ending refuses resolution. Scarlett's future remains open, a matter of her famous determination.
Structural complexity: 45 out of 100
The long novel follows Scarlett chronologically through dramatic events. The structure is clear despite the epic scope.

How Gone with the Wind is regarded

Gone with the Wind holds a literary regard score of 68 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.

Prizes

Where Gone with the Wind sits in Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism

Placed by a full reading of the text (773 passages), not from reputation. Each verdict quotes the passage that earned it. On the axis from myth to irony, Gone with the Wind scores 60 out of 100. A second mythos, romance, pulls at it with a weight of 0.25. About the map of stories.

Mode: Low Mimetic
SCARLETT O’HARA was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were.
Symbol: Formal
Her new green flowered-muslin dress spread its twelve yards of billowing material over her hoops and exactly matched the flat-heeled green morocco slippers
Mythos: Tragic Pathos (Irony iv) (irony iv)
My dear, I don’t give a damn.
Genre: Novel + Romance
Her manners had been imposed upon her by her mother’s gentle admonitions and the sterner discipline of her mammy; her eyes were her own.

Where the story of Gone with the Wind takes place

  • The American Civil War and Reconstruction, Georgia, 1861-1873 (1861 to 1873), the main setting
  • Georgia: Tara and Atlanta, 1861-1873 (1861 to 1873)

5 things that are true of Gone with the Wind, with the passage for each

  1. The novel opens with Scarlett's waist measured at seventeen inches, called the smallest in three counties.

    The dress set off to perfection the seventeen-inch waist, the smallest in three counties

  2. Scarlett shoots a Yankee deserter in the face from the stairs of Tara.

    Like lightning, she shoved her weapon over the banisters and into the startled bearded face.

  3. Gerald O'Hara dies when his horse refuses a fence and throws him.

    your pa went right over his head. He didn’t suffer none. He was dead time we got to him.

  4. Rhett proposes marriage to Scarlett on the day of Frank Kennedy's funeral.

    “I am asking you to marry me. Would you be convinced if I knelt down?”

  5. The last line of the book reaches back to Scarlett's habit of postponing pain.

    After all, tomorrow is another day.

Scenes in Gone with the Wind that Frye would name

51 sightings of Frye's terms in the text. The strongest:

Pathos, untitled
“Your mother died yesterday.” The sacrificial death of Ellen, the source of strength, is revealed at the homecoming.
Agon, untitled
Like lightning, she shoved her weapon over the banisters and into the startled bearded face. Scarlett's first direct combat, defending Tara against a looter.
Pathos, untitled
Even as she leaned from the window there was a fearful sound of splintering wood, a hoarse cry from Rhett, a melee of blue velvet and flying hooves on the ground. The death of Bonnie, the child who held the marriage together.
Anagnorisis, untitled
Ashley did not love her and had never really loved her and the knowledge did not hurt. Scarlett recognizes that her love for Ashley was an invention.
Anagnorisis, untitled
Home! That was where she wanted to go. That was where she was running. Home to Rhett! The pivotal recognition of what her nightmare was seeking.
Sparagmos, untitled
The world became an inferno of noise and flame and trembling earth as one explosion followed another in ear-splitting succession. The ammunition trains blowing up are a tearing apart of the whole city and the old order.

Books that share these scenes with Gone with the Wind

About the author

Margaret Mitchell