Gone with the wind - civilisations epic journey...

Last night I got to watch again 'Gone with the Wind' (1939) which was based on a book by Margaret Mitchell published a few years earlier which I read many years ago before I watched the movie. There was never a sequel written after this one by the author as she finished the book on a 'cliff hanger' but there was an attempt by another author to write the ending many years later, however, it didn't quite live up to it's predecessor which makes this story quite unique.

What was interesting about the movie was that although it was an epic story set around the civil years in the American Southern states that it still has universal themes about love and betrayal, envy etc. particularly by the main character Scarlett O'hara. The two leading actors of Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable played their parts so well that there are some lines in the film that are quite iconic.

It also depicted the Southern States in their 'glory days' of thinking that it was quite alright to have slavery as a part of their society. Things have changed so much since those times and it was interesting to watch how people saw that period of time as being so glorious when in actual fact it was at the cost of other peoples happiness and lives.

The story was set around the 1860s which would be around the time that my great, great grandparents were alive. What is also interesting about that period of time was that as well as the US going through birthing pains as a nation, there were many people travelling to different parts of the world and an explosion in the information that was available outside of the slave/master relationships in travelling to other civilisations such as the Pacific Islands, the Americas etc. that were so much a part of the 1800s.

So glad that that past has been erased to history and now we live with different values, in societies that don't believe that slavery is acceptable although we still have so much still to learn...