Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Gone with the Wind, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Civil War and Reconstruction
Looking Forward vs. Looking Back
Classism and Racism
Practicality, Tenacity, and Selfishness
Women and Power
Summary
Analysis
One rainy night, Tony Fontaine knocks on Miss Pitty’s door in the middle of the night. Scarlett and Frank wake up in fright. Tony has come all the way from Jonesboro, riding his horse as fast as he could, and his news forces Scarlett to face the horrors of Reconstruction again. Tony shares that the Yankees are after him and says he’s only alive thanks to Ashley. When Scarlett asks what happened, Tony says he cut Jonas Wilkerson “to ribbons.” Frank nods approvingly. There seemed to be some understanding between him and Tony. Scarlett asks how Ashley is involved. Tony says the Yankees aren’t after Ashley because Ashley didn’t kill Jonas. While Frank saddles the horse, Tony tells Scarlett that Jonas had been stirring up free Blacks and promising them they could vote and marry white women. Tony cries that this can’t be tolerated.
Although the war is over, the tensions between North and South are getting worse rather than better. Scarlett’s first encounter with the “horrors of Reconstruction” was when Jonas Wilkerson raised the taxes on Tara, hoping to displace the old wealthy plantation owners. Now, she encounters another supposed horror: that Jonas and other Yankees and Scallawags want to allow Black people to vote and marry white women. Southerners are in outrage that people they’ve viewed as lesser for generations are not only free, but might also be integrated into society as equals.
Themes
Tony continues his story: one day, Eustis, the Fontaines’ old enslaved foreman, came into the Fontaine’s kitchen drunk and said something insulting to Sally Fontaine. Tony heard her scream and ran in and shot Eustis. Then Tony went to Jonesboro to hunt down Jonas. Since Tony forgot his pistol, he killed Jonas with his knife. Then Ashley told him to go. Tony plans to settle in Texas and hopes the Yankees won’t find him. He says goodbye, goes out into the rain, and mounts the horse Frank has ready for him.
Before hearing what Eustis said to Sally, Tony shoots him. What Tony despises is that Black people have been given the freedom to say whatever they want to white people. Tony’s violent reaction in which he kills two people—Eustis and Jonas, the man who emboldened Eustis to feel powerful—reveals that the South is far from accepting Black people as equals.
Themes
The full meaning of Reconstruction hits Scarlett over the head. She knows now why Frank doesn’t like her driving around alone with all the “free issue niggers” about. The Yankees will hang anyone who avenges a white woman for being raped or killed by a Black man. All the white men in the South are eager to defend their white women. Men who had been defeated after the war are becoming reckless and angry again, and Scarlett sympathizes. The South is too beautiful to be “ruined” by Yankees and Black people.
The “full meaning of Reconstruction” is that the North wants to integrate Black people into society so that they have the same rights as white people. This hits home when Southerners realize that Black men could then marry and have sex with white women. Southerners like Frank and Scarlett see this as “ruining” the South—that is, they see the South as a place where only white people should have power.
Themes
When Frank comes in, Scarlett runs to him and asks how long the South will be like this. Frank soothes her and tells her not to worry about men’s business. He assures her that when Southerners have the vote again, everything will be okay. Scarlett doesn’t want her children raised in this state of uncertainty and violence. But she doesn’t think voting will help anything; she thinks only money will restore the South. As they go back to bed, Scarlett tells Frank she is pregnant.
Frank thinks that once native Southerners have the vote, they will be able to reinstate their racist beliefs. Scarlett, on the other hand, sees money as a faster route to becoming powerful. Note that being female, Scarlett can’t vote, so this may influence her thinking. She can amass money and power in other ways, but since she’s a woman, government is inaccessible to her.
Themes
Get the entire Gone with the Wind LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Yankees hear that Tony left Miss Pitty’s, so they repeatedly search her house. Pitty didn’t know about Tony’s visit, so she truthfully says she hasn’t seen him. Scarlett hates and fears the Yankee soldiers. There’s been talk of the North confiscating Rebel property, and she fears the loss not only of Tara and Pitty’s house, but of the sawmill and store. She’s mad at Tony for putting her in danger. And why did Ashley send Tony to them? She swears not to help anyone again, unless it’s Ashley. Finally, the Yankees give up and leave Miss Pitty’s house alone.
As much as Scarlett hates the Yankees and supports Tony’s murder of Jonas Wilkerson and Eustice, she doesn’t want to lose her property. She implies she’d rather tolerate the Yankee laws so she can safely grow her fortune. So while Scarlett continues to see money as the way to gain power in the new South, other Southerners—like Tony and Ashley—stand up aggressively for their beliefs instead.
Themes
Scarlett now sees how uncertain life is. She shares the South’s belief that Reconstruction is making Southerners powerless against forces that want to take everything that belongs to them. As they see it, only Black people have rights now. The Yankees stationed in Georgia regulate how white Southerners run their businesses, what songs they sing, and what oaths they marry under. They take over all the newspapers so no one can publicly protest. All protesters are jailed without trial and suspected of affiliation with the Ku Klux Klan. Black people can make accusations, encouraged by the North’s promise that they’ll soon have the right to vote.
The North reconstructs the South by extensively monitoring Southerners’ activities. Although limiting of the South’s freedom of speech seems extreme and oppressive to the Southerners, the Ku Klux Klan is also an extreme manifestation of the South’s violent racism towards Black people. The KKK emerges as an extrajudicial group that allows the South to hold onto some power by terrorizing Black people and sympathetic whites.
Themes
In the South’s opinion, it’s awful that the lowest class of formerly enslaved Black people are now the “lords of creation.” Now, the highest-class ex-enslaved persons scorn freedom, but the low fieldhand class embraces it and are at the top of the social order. The free Blacks act like the “creatures of low intelligence” the South thought they were. They live in squalor because the Freedmen’s Bureau, only focused on the politics, neglects them. They send them back to their white former enslavers with instructions that they be paid wages. White women who live alone are attacked by these ex-enslaved persons. The Ku Klux Klan is created out of a perceived “tragic necessity” to avenge these atrocities. Scarlett is scared of the “lawless negroes” and the Yankees. She kept thinking of what Tony Fontaine said: it can’t be tolerated!
The word choice in this passage illustrates the novel’s attitude toward Black people. By referring to them sarcastically as “the lords of creation” and also as “creatures of low intelligence,” the novel dehumanizes Black people (by calling them “creatures,” not people), and suggests that they’re way overstepping to try and take power for themselves. This is how the South justifies creating the KKK. The KKK is a “tragic necessity,” subtly suggesting Southerners don’t actually want to murder Black people. But still, they see violence as the only way to hold onto power.
Themes
Despite Reconstruction, Atlanta is a booming town again. However, money and rights are in the “wrong” hands. The town bustles with a lascivious, Yankee energy, but underneath, Southerners live in fear. The Yankees make Atlanta their headquarters, and Carpetbaggers and refugees come from everywhere. The red-light district and saloons attract more business, and pistol fights break out all night.
The “Yankee energy” that dominates Atlanta is seen as low-class and aggressive. The New South is loose, free, and money-loving, whereas the Old South was structured, luxurious, and ruled by people with generational wealth. The South is in a precarious battle between these two lifestyles.
Themes
Belle Watling is the most famous “madam” in Atlanta. She owns a new house that is furnished opulently. Everyone knows Belle couldn’t have afforded the house herself and suspects that Rhett Butler bought it for her. The Yankees build fine homes beside the Southerners’ half-burned homes. They splurge on fine furniture and dine on fine food while in the old houses, Southerners starve. The conquerors are arrogant and the conquered are bitter. Dr. Meade thinks no one should have babies in these awful times.
As new homes rise up alongside the Southerners’ burned houses, Atlantan society modernizes. For generations, the South’s wealth remained in the same hands. Now, the possibility is open for anyone to make money if they can. The Old Southerners, unused to this way of life, sink deeper into their old ways and endure their poverty bitterly. Insisting nobody should have babies is also a veiled way of saying people should cling to the past, rather than create future generations who will necessarily change things.
Themes
