Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell, follows the life of a sixteen-year-old girl, Scarlett O'Hara, from 1861, who lives on Tara, a plantation in Georgia, south of 'Atlanta. His father, Gerald O'Hara, an Irish immigrant, won the plantation in an all-night poker game. Scarlett is in love with the beautiful and chivalrous Ashley Wilkes, a native of the Twelve Oaks plantation near Tara. Ashley, who thinks he and Scarlett are too different from each other, proposes to her cousin Melanie Wilkes at her family's barbecue. Scarlett, outraged, accepts the proposal of Charles Hamilton, Melanie's brother, in the hope of hurting Ashley. In 1861, the Civil War broke out when President Lincoln called for troops to be sent. Charles, Scarlett's new husband after two months, volunteers for the Confederate Army and dies of measles early in training. After Charles's death, Scarlett learns that she is pregnant with his son, who is later named Wade. Scarlett then decides that she will move to Atlanta and stay with Melanie and Melanie's Aunt Pitypat. It's there that she finds Rhett Butler, a scandalous adventurer, whom she had already met at the Wilkes barbecue. Rhett convinces her to disregard the restrictive social demands placed on grieving Southern widows. In Atlanta, Scarlett begins to see more of Rhett as the war continues and Union forces begin to gain a foothold. The Battle of Gettysburg rages and Melanie's husband, Ashley, is captured and sent to a Yankee prison. As Union forces begin to take control of Atlanta, Scarlett is desperate to return to Tara, but she promised Ashley that she would take care of Melanie, who is pregnant. Melanie gives birth to a son, Beau, on ...... middle of paper ...... and how this showed the symbolism of Scarlett representing the New and Old South. Scarlett went from being in love with Ashley, who symbolized the lost world of chivalry and good manners, to being in love with Rhett, who is dangerous and symbolizes the old and the new. As mentioned above, Gone With the Wind showed a bias toward the South, unlike many other historical Civil War novels. This made it seem like the Southern Confederates were defenseless and the Northern Yankees were coming to the South and destroying everything. Gone With the Wind definitely made me feel like I was by Scarlet's side throughout the war and the difficulties she faced. I learned about the struggles that locals had to overcome during this horrible time in history. Reading this, I finally got a different perspective than what we usually hear. Gone with the Wind was amazing!