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
On a cold afternoon in March, Scarlett drives out to Johnnie Gallegher’s mill. Driving alone has been dangerous ever since the legislature refused to ratify the amendment. The North has declared Georgia to be in a state of rebellion, and military regulations are tighter. Scarlett drives with Frank’s pistol in the buggy. She hurries past Shantytown, the camp of outcast Blacks and low-class whites. Horrible crimes happen there, but the Yankees don’t prevent them. Scarlett sees no one today but smells campfires and dirty privies.
Scarlett thinks Shantytown is the result of the lower classes being given freedom to behave badly, which she believes is what lower-class people will naturally do. She also continues to mentally support the old Southern hierarchies by blaming the Yankees for things like Shantytown and lower-class people’s supposed bad behavior, the implication being that a place like Shantytown wouldn’t have existed prior to the Civil War.
Themes
Suddenly, a Black man appears from behind a tree. Scarlett grabs the pistol, but the frightened man calls out that he’s Big Sam. He comes out from behind the tree, leaps forward, and shakes her hand. She asks what he’s doing in a nasty place like Shantytown. Sam says he doesn’t live in Shantytown but has been hiding out there a while. Ever since she saw him building trenches during the siege, he’s been traveling. After the war, a Yankee colonel hired him to tend his horse. Sam says this colonel was too ignorant to know that Sam was only a field hand!
Big Sam was one of Tara’s former enslaved persons who was freed and hired for pay after the war. Though he’s experienced freedom, Big Sam assures Scarlett that he isn’t like the Black people who live in Shantytown. Rather, he assures Scarlett that he is still loyal to her vision of him as the respectable enslaved field hand who is happy with his status.
Themes
Sam says he’d tried out freedom. The Yankee colonel took him North and paid him good wages, but New York and Boston were so busy Sam had been scared. The colonel’s wife called him Mister O’Hara and treated him like an equal. She asked him about the cruelty of Southern enslavers, but Sam told her how kind Ellen was to him. He’d eventually gotten tired of freedom, and he missed being told what to do by Gerald and Ellen. Scarlett says Gerald and Ellen are dead. Sam starts to cry, and Scarlett tells him not to, or she’ll cry too.
Having Big Sam himself say that he doesn’t like freedom shows how white Southerners have essentially made being enslaved the safest path for Black people (Black people who still work for their former enslavers, for instance, aren’t being killed by the KKK). This helps white Southerners hold onto their power, and keeps Black people subjugated despite being legally free.
Themes
Scarlett asks Sam if he’ll be her driver. Sam agrees that it isn’t safe these days but declines her offer, saying he must escape to Tara because he’s wanted for killing a man. A drunk Yankee soldier had insulted him, so Sam strangled him. He’s been hiding out ever since. Scarlett decides she must get Sam to Tara. She doesn’t care that he’s free; he’s family and she thinks he belongs to her still. She says she’ll get him to Tara that night and gives him money to buy a hat so he can hide his face. Scarlett promises she’ll be back at sundown and goes on her way.
Scarlett and other white Georgians fear the free Black people in Atlanta, and always support the white men who lash out at them. However, these same white Southerners nevertheless trust the Black people who are loyal to them and who are still effectively enslaved by them. That Sam kills a white Yankee puts him in danger, as he still has almost no rights and the Yankees are, in many ways, just as racist as the native Georgians.
Themes
Get the entire Gone with the Wind LitChart as a printable PDF.
The sun is setting when Scarlett reaches the mill. Johnnie Gallegher stands outside with the convict crew. The convicts were energetic when they came, but now they look hungry and desperate. She tells Johnnie she doesn’t like the look of the men and asks where the fifth one is. When Johnnie says he’s sick, Scarlett notices one of the crew give Johnnie a hateful look. She asks if he’s been whipping the men. Johnnie reminds her that he’s making her lots of money. Scarlett feels there is something sinister about the mill, with its shack for the convicts. Johnnie might be whipping the men and she’d never know.
Scarlett decided to lease the convicts even though no one—not even Rhett Butler—approved of this decision. Many people had also insinuated that Johnnie Gallegher—who’d asked Scarlett to leave him alone at the mill—is a bully and would work the convicts to death. When the sight at the mill seems to confirm that things have played out exactly as people thought they would, Scarlett must face the consequences of her selfish desire to make money at all costs. Essentially, she must decide if the money is worth it when the convicts are being treated so cruelly.
Themes
Scarlett looks inside the shack. A “mulatto” woman that Scarlett knows lives with Johnnie is stirring a pot of black-eyed peas. When Scarlett asks her, the woman says there’s nothing else for the men and no meat in the beans. Scarlett looks in the pantry and finds none of the provisions she’d paid for. She shouts at Johnnie, accusing him of selling the provisions. She interrogates one of the prisoners about what Johnnie feeds them, but the man is too afraid to speak. Scarlett orders one of the hams from the pantry given to the men, ignoring the woman when she says it’s Johnnie’s private store of food. Scarlett tells Johnnie to come to the buggy with her while the convicts devour the ham.
Scarlett’s anger shows that Scarlett herself is averse to mistreating the convicts so badly—at least when the evidence is right in front of her. Though she tries to remedy the situation by getting the convicts food immediately, the fact that the one prisoner is too afraid to talk to her suggests that Scarlett might not have as much power as she’d like to think.
Themes
At the buggy, Scarlett shouts at Johnnie, calling him a scoundrel and a cheat. Johnnie tells Scarlett to mind her own business or he’ll quit. Scarlett wants to say good riddance but hesitates; Johnnie is making her so much money at the mill. He realizes she’s on the fence and smooths it over. She knows he’s a brutal man and that it is awful to leave people to his mercy, but she can’t part with him. As she drives away, she can’t get the miserable faces of the convicts out of her mind.
Although Scarlett believes leasing the convicts and leaving Johnnie in charge of them is morally wrong, she is willing to go against her better judgement for money. In choosing to walk away without firing Johnnie, Scarlett decides that the convicts are expendable, and that her own desires matter more than their lives.
Themes
By the time Scarlett passes Shantytown, the sun has set. She’s never been out this late by herself. Suddenly, a ragged white man and a Black man approach her. The white man asks her for money. Scarlett points the pistol at them. The white man tells the Black man to grab her, saying the money is probably in her bodice. She shoots at the Black man as he approaches her, but he grabs the pistol, tears open her bodice, and gropes between her breasts. Scarlett screams. The white man shouts at her to be quiet, and the Black man covers her mouth.
Scarlett has been warned about being attacked by the free Blacks that Southerners fear. In this incident, however, the white man is in charge of the assault. Although the Black man rips open Scarlett’s dress, he does so on the white man’s orders. Therefore, Scarlett’s assault is evidence not of a Black person’s cruelty but of the white man’s continual abuse of power over Black people.
Themes
Then Big Sam charges the Black man, shouting for Scarlett to run. She whips the horse, and the cart’s wheels roll over the white man’s body. In her mad terror, she hears Big Sam shouting for her. She slows and he climbs in, his face covered in blood. He asks if they hurt her, noticing her exposed breasts. She covers herself and sobs. He takes the reins, saying he’ll kill that “black baboon.”
Big Sam is contrasted against the Black man who assaults Scarlett. Note that Big Sam also takes issue not with the white man who led the assault, but with the Black man who assaulted Scarlett—showing that Sam feels superior because he places himself above Black people he sees as lesser.
Themes
