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
Scarlett’s baby—Ella Lorena—is an ugly girl who looks like Frank. She’s born around the time the KKK lynches a Black man arrested for rape in his jail cell. The townspeople are pleased, but the Yankee soldiers are furious. They threaten to arrest every white man in town if the KKK strikes again. Scarlett is thankful that Ashley and Frank aren’t in the KKK.
The KKK murders a Black man imprisoned for rape, showing that racism in the South at the time was such that the Southerners don’t think Black people are entitled to human rights: they felt Black criminals should be punished with murder rather than with justice and the law.
Themes
Three weeks after giving birth, Scarlett is ready to go back to work. But Frank puts his foot down. He forbids her to leave the house while things are so dangerous and locks the horse and buggy in the stable. Mammy and Frank also find the money Scarlett hid in the house and deposit it in the bank. Scarlett is furious. She runs to Melanie’s and rages about this injustice. Melanie comforts Scarlett and says she’ll think of a solution.
Scarlett has ignored everyone who tells her that it’s too dangerous to go out and about during this time. Since she is not overly loyal to the Confederate Cause and doesn’t support involvement in the KKK because she thinks it’s too dangerous, she is not aware of how politically and socially tense Atlanta is.
Themes
That afternoon, a strange man walks over from Melanie’s and finds Scarlett in Pitty’s backyard. He is one of the homeless “riffraff” that Melanie charitably houses and feeds in her basement. He’s over 60 with a wooden leg and a long, grey beard. When he speaks, Scarlett knows he is from the mountains by the way he rolls his r’s. He carries a heavy pistol. The man introduces himself as Archie; Melanie sent him to drive Scarlett around and protect her from Blacks and Yankees. Scarlett doesn’t like this tobacco-chewing “desperado,” but she wants to get back to the mills and accepts his offer. Reluctantly, Frank agrees. Archie becomes Scarlett’s bodyguard while she does business. He inspires fear in everyone, so Scarlett is safe.
Scarlett looks down on Archie because he looks like a ruffian and a criminal and is from the mountains. However, she is so desperate to keep working that she’s willing to associate with someone she doesn’t like. Her experiences haven’t made her more accepting or sympathetic. By contrast, Melanie’s charitableness and generosity extend to all kinds of people from any class or place. She doesn’t care if a person was wealthy before the war; she only cares that they need her help.
Themes
Most of the time, Archie is silent, although once he tells Scarlett he hates “niggers” as much as he hates talkative women. These kinds of comments make Scarlett hate him, but he serves her purpose so well that she doesn’t want to fire him. Since the KKK lynching, ladies in Atlanta have been too nervous to go out on their own. Seeing Scarlett driving safely with Archie, all the Atlanta ladies hire him, too. He effectively protects them against Reconstruction. After Archie starts working for her, Scarlett notices that Frank is gone most nights. He says he’s busy with the books at the store and with helping Democrats plan to win elections. Ashley also attends these meetings, so everyone at Pitty’s usually spent nights at Melanie’s.
Archie is the perfect protector against Reconstruction because he hates Black people and talkative (that is, forward-thinking) women. He is sensitive both to the Atlanta ladies’ fear that Black men will rape them, and also to the criticisms against Scarlett that her outgoing behavior will tempt Black rapists and robbers. Archie’s opinions are old-fashioned in that he thinks Black people are lesser and women should be silent. For this reason, the Atlantan ladies like him and see him as a bulwark against modernity.
Themes
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One morning, Archie drives Scarlett to Hugh’s mill and she finds that the free Black workers have deserted it. She’s just gotten a big lumber order that needs to be processed. Scarlett tells Archie to take her to Ashley’s mill, saying that she’s going to hire Johnnie Gallegher and lease convicts. Archie refuses to work for Scarlett if she leases convicts. He explains that he was a convict for 40 years. He murdered his wife because he’d found her sleeping with his brother and was sentenced to life, but he was released on the condition that he fight in the war. The convicts were great soldiers. He lost his leg and his eye, but now he’s free.
Archie offers Scarlett some perspective on her desire to lease convicts at her mill. The story of his own arrest and release makes the point that convicts are often people with just causes (he thinks he was justified in murdering his cheating wife), and that they are valiant soldiers despite a criminal record. For this reason, Archie believes it is wrong for Scarlett to lease convicts because they are human beings and shouldn’t be rented like property.
Themes
Scarlett doesn’t understand why Archie would fight for a state that took away 40 years of his life. She remembers how Rhett had joined at the last minute and decides that all Southern men are “sentimental fools.” Looking at Archie and his pistols, Scarlett is scared. Scarlett says that if Melanie knew Archie was a murderer, she’d be shocked. Archie says Melanie does know, but she believes Archie redeemed himself in the war. Scarlett doesn’t care if Archie stops working for her when she leases the convicts; she doesn’t want to be protected by a murderer.
Scarlett is still bewildered by the sentimentality that made all men join the war. She thinks this points to Archie’s foolishness rather than his nobility. She also considers him a murderer instead of a man who served his time. By contrast, Melanie believes Archie atoned for his crimes by fighting in the war. Scarlett doesn’t view patriotism as a noble quality like everyone else does.
Themes
As Archie and Scarlett drive home, they see a crowd outside of the Girl of the Period Saloon. Scarlett tells Archie to pull up. She hopes there hadn’t been another KKK incident. She asks what’s wrong, and Grandpa Merriwether explains that the Democratic legislature refused to ratify the amendment that would allow Black people to vote. Ashley says the Yankees will force it on them, and they might have a “dark legislature,” and a “darky governor.”
Although the Yankees have won the war, the South is resisting the structural changes the Yankees are trying to make. Having lost the war and seen enslaved people freed is one thing, but it's something else entirely to think of those freed Black people in powerful government positions, where they’d be more powerful than their former enslavers.
Themes
Ashley wonders whether it would be best to fight or swallow their pride and submit to the Yankees. Grandpa Merriwether accuses him of disloyalty. Tension rises, and Archie’s hand goes to his gun. Angry, Ashley says he didn’t believe in the war, but he still fought it. Uncle Henry tells Archie to drive Scarlett home before things get violent. Scarlett doesn’t admire the legislature for standing up to the Yankees. She might lose her mills over this! She wishes everyone would sit down without a fight.
Some Southerners, like Uncle Henry, believe that the Yankees’ policies should be resisted without question. In Scarlett’s opinion (and maybe Ashley’s too), resisting the Yankees will only prevent everyone from moving on and getting back on their feet. In this way, some of the South wants to move forward by fighting for the past while the other half (like Scarlett) want to move forward by accepting change.
Themes
The next day, Scarlett leases ten convicts to work at her mills and Archie refuses to drive her. Everyone says it’s wrong of Scarlett to take advantage of the miseries of others. Scarlett points out that no one objected to slavery. People insist that was different, and that Black people were better off when they were enslaved. Scarlett replaces Hugh with Johnnie Gallegher, since he’s the only person she knows who approves of the convicts. He asks Scarlett not to come to the mill because it’s inappropriate for a lady to be around a convict gang. Meanwhile, Ashley is doing worse than ever managing the other mill. He’s ashamed to manage convicts. Scarlett worries about him because he looks like he’s in unendurable pain. She wants to comfort him, but he keeps his distance from her.
People’s discomfort over Scarlett leasing the convicts reveals their racism towards Black people. They detest wielding their power over white convicts but are happy to wield it over Black enslaved persons. They claim that Black people are better off enslaved, implying that they see Black people as less intelligent than white people and as unable to take care of themselves. The novel suggests that what Scarlett is doing is bad just because she’s subjugating and taking advantage of white people in much the same way plantation owners took advantage of Black labor.
Themes
