Member Review Gone With The Wind, mistakes

[davepi2]

I just finished reading Gone With The Wind. I will stay away from the politics involved with most discussions these days on the novel and stick to what members might think of historical mistakes in the novel and/or movie. The one that jumps out to me is when Rhett talks about his service in the Confederate army after he joined following the burning of Atlanta. He states he fought at Franklin and was with the artillery. The Confederates had very little artillery used in that battle so that seems like a mistake. Has anyone noticed any other possible errors in the story? Obviously there are several differences from the novel to the movie but that is another discussion for another time.

 

[Lampasas Bill]

Just because there was little Confederate artillery at Franklin doesn't mean that there was no C.S. artillery there. I would hardly call that a historical mistake. It's been ages since I've read the book, so I don't know how much detail Rhett supplies about his service. But if all he says is that he was an artilleryman at Franklin, I would rate that as a nitpick at best and search for bigger game. Good luck with the hunt.

 

[Library Lady]

Thanks to Ashley Wilkes being sent to Rock Island as a POW, GWTW helped to give people the idea that it was the Andersonville of the North (which it wasn't).

 

[Rhea Cole]

I just finished reading Gone With The Wind. I will stay away from the politics involved with most discussions these days on the novel and stick to what members might think of historical mistakes in the novel and/or movie. The one that jumps out to me is when Rhett talks about his service in the Confederate army after he joined following the burning of Atlanta. He states he fought at Franklin and was with the artillery. The Confederates had very little artillery used in that battle so that seems like a mistake. Has anyone noticed any other possible errors in the story? Obviously there are several differences from the novel to the movie but that is another discussion for another time.

There was confederate artillery at at Franklin… only not until the massacre was over.

Hood's artillery was still marching toward the sound of the battle as the sun set. At that point there was no practical way for the artillery to deploy.

I suppose that was a good thing. Hard to tell where the next 600 pages of the book would have gone without Rhett's character.

Gone with the Wind is a work of fiction. The historical errors are numerous. For example, in the society that Margaret Mitchell grew up in, a Mammy character could have existed.

Gipen-Faust states that in 2,200 plantation records she read, no such character existed during slaveholding times. There simply wasn't a place for a nonproductive person to go around taking care of grown women.

Scholars have documented the fact that Gone With the Wind is an allegory for the ruinous disaster that was the Great Depression, something Mitchell knew all too much about.

Mark Twain said, "The difference between fiction & history is that fiction has the make sense."

 

[Piedone]

Gipen-Faust states that in 2,200 plantation records she read, no such character existed during slaveholding times. There simply wasn't a place for a nonproductive person to go around taking care of grown women.

well…there is the case of Selina Norris Gray….

 

[davepi2]

I need to correct something I said in my original post. Although Rhett describes fighting at Franklin it is one of the other characters in the book (I can't remember exactly which one) who stated he was in the artillery.

 

[7thWisconsin]

I wouldn't necessarily take anything Rhett says about his Confederate service, or is said about Rhett's Confederate service, at face value. Rhett is a scoundrel. A good looking, successful and socially upwardly mobile scoundrel, but a scoundrel none the less. If he needs people to think he was at Franklin, he can charm them into believing that. The genius of GWTW is that the reader/viewer is invested in main characters who are not particularly likeable and do not change through the course of the narrative.

 

[DixieRifles]

Thanks to Ashley Wilkes being sent to Rock Island as a POW, GWTW helped to give people the idea that it was the Andersonville of the North (which it wasn't)

I have heard Rock Island had a higher death rate over a period. It is said the green lumber used to build the camp shrunk that left gaps in the wall.

I saw a post on a FB group that was discussing Point Lookout as having the highest death rate. They posted this table but I am still not sure about these totals.
They have Rock Island at the bottom of the list but it has tge 2nd highest percent of deaths.

 

[Josh The Lighthouse Guy]

The genius of GWTW is that the reader/viewer is invested in main characters who are not particularly likeable and do not change through the course of the narrative.

One of the reasons I don't read fiction is I can't get invested in people I don't like.

I enjoyed experiencing the cinematic spectacle of Gone With The Wind on a modern movie theater screen, once. But the characters are so unlikeable I never want to see it again.

 

[Library Lady]

I have heard Rock Island had a higher death rate over a period. It is said the green lumber used to build the camp shrunk that left gaps in the wall.

I saw a post on a FB group that was discussing Point Lookout as having the highest death rate. They posted this table but I am still not sure about these totals.
They have Rock Island at the bottom of the list but it has tge 2nd highest percent of deaths.

View attachment 585658

The Rock Island Arsenal has some videos on YouTube about the POW camp. Their figures are roughly 12,000 prisoners in total with roughly 2000 deaths in total for 16% (if I did the math right).

Iowa PBS also presented a very good documentary on the Rock Island POW camp.

Iowa PBS Presents | The Rock Island Civil War Prison

The Rock Island Civil War Prison: Andersonville of the North?

www.pbs.org

 

[DixieRifles]

The Rock Island Arsenal has some videos on YouTube about the POW camp. Their figures are roughly 12,000 prisoners in total with roughly 2000 deaths in total for 16% (if I did the math right).

That is the same total deaths as in the table but the total number of prisoners is off by a lot.
The post where I got that did not reference the source for those numbers.

 

[7thWisconsin]

One of the reasons I don't read fiction is I can't get invested in people I don't like.

I enjoyed experiencing the cinematic spectacle of Gone With The Wind on a modern movie theater screen, once. But the characters are so unlikeable I never want to see it again.

You definitely understood the point! I can't count the number of times either the book or the movie made me say "Oh Katy Scarlett! " under my breath. Although I distinctly remember that red dress making my voice change.

 

[JeffBrooks]

When we talk about historical fiction, we need to understand that sometimes the "mistakes" are simply things the novelist wrote to keep things simple and which they did not see as especially important. It was important to the development of Rhett's character that he had fought in the last days of the war, after victory was no longer possible, and I think that Mitchell choose to put him in the artillery because that was seen as requiring a higher intelligence than that of a lowly infantryman. Surely we wouldn't want our precious Rhett shouldering a musket next to all the other grunts, would we? Whether or not Mitchell was aware of the tactical details of Franklin, and the fact that Confederate artillery were not present, or whether she was aware and simply didn't think it was important enough to dwell on, is beside the point.

One of the fellows who kindly edited So Unexpected a Moment, my novel about the Ten Crucial Days in the Revolutionary War, pointed out a "mistake" to me. Just before the Battle of Princeton, a particular British force crossed a bridge before they were ordered to turn around, whereas in my novel there is no mention of their crossing of a bridge. I was actually aware of this, but it just seemed like a rather unimportant detail and not worth writing into the narrative, so I left it out. Same kind of thing.

 

[uaskme]

Let me see. You have a novel. Then it is the basics for a Hollywood Movie. And you are whining about inaccuracy.

I took my Grandson to see Young George Washington. They tuned Washington into a spec ops hero. Told my Grandson that most Hollywood movies were mostly movies with a little bit of History in them.

Some not liking anything southern but for a great place to live, shocking!

 

[Piedone]

When we talk about historical fiction, we need to understand that sometimes the "mistakes" are simply things the novelist wrote to keep things simple and which they did not see as especially important. It was important to the development of Rhett's character that he had fought in the last days of the war, after victory was no longer possible, and I think that Mitchell choose to put him in the artillery because that was seen as requiring a higher intelligence than that of a lowly infantryman. Surely we wouldn't want our precious Rhett shouldering a musket next to all the other grunts, would we? Whether or not Mitchell was aware of the tactical details of Franklin, and the fact that Confederate artillery were not present, or whether she was aware and simply didn't think it was important enough to dwell on, is beside the point.

Maybe she made a very clever move -
that way she left the reader in a state of uncertainty if Rhett was lying (there was no confederate artillery at Franklin)
or told the truth (maybe Mitchell didn't know about the tactical details).
I must admit I like this particular point the most in the novel:
you get to know quite much of the characters - but you will never be sure if you do understand their motives correctly (just like in real life…) or if you are falling to believe their self-deceivements…

 

[Josh The Lighthouse Guy]

The burning of Atlanta in the movie seemed exaggerated. Like Rhett and Scarlett were fleeing through an inferno. Then again, maybe it only seems exaggerated because we live in established cities with building codes designed to accommodate automobiles.

The scene depicts the Confederate burning of Atlanta, but is often misunderstood or misremembeted as depicting the Union burning.

 

[Joe Whitworth]

Artistic license is allowed in works of fiction.

 

[gary]

Artistic license is allowed in works of fiction.

Concur. Let's not forget that the screenwriter is another "contributor" as is the director. Then there's the studio heads who put in their two cents. To the studio, it's all about $$$.

 

[wausaubob]

In the cinematic version, Scarlett O'Hara, represents the Confederate south. Rhett Butler is the 20th century character, placed in the Civil War and Reconstruction past. Ashley Wilkes looks the romantic world of the 19th century cotton boom, based on slavery, which the rest of the world was rejecting. Scarlett cannot keep her hold on the future because she is love with an imaginary past.