Gone with the Wind

I'm currently about 220 pages into Gone with the Wind and I cannot stop hating Scarlett O'Hara. She falls completely below my expectations. She's so boring and conceited and just largely unlikeable. Her only redeeming quality is that she doesn't really like acting "ladylike," so she has some appeal to the unconventional female, but then, she doesn't care about anything important. She just wants to live in a fairy tale where she lives happily ever after with the man of her dreams, and doesn't have to acknowledge the exterior world around her.

Then she stupidly marries Charles just because she's a pouty little girl who didn't get what she wanted. She didn't think at all about how it was actually going to affect her life until it was too late. Now she has a baby that she doesn't want and seemingly doesn't care about. I find it disappointing that she's the main character of this 1000+ page book because obviously this is a "great love story," so Scarlett has to get the guy in the end, or at least a guy, which means she somehow gets rewarded for being a selfish brat.

Honestly, now that I really think about it, I don't particularly like most of the characters. Gerald O'Hara serves some sort of comedic value, since I thought it was pretty funny when he basically told Scarlett, "Ashley doesn't love you, get over it." But then, he's equally as conceited as Scarlett. Ellen is okay, but she seems lifeless. Her whole life just revolves around solving other people's problems and she has no spark. I suppose this can partially be attributed to the culture of the south at the time. The north and south basically were two different countries in terms of their lifestyles and customs, but I also blame Ellen for marrying O'Hara when she knew she wouldn't be happy.

The only characters I've really come to like are Ashley and the Wilkses in general. They remind me of the Hickses from Edith Wharton's, Glimpses of the Moon. They care about things like education, reading, the arts, etc... which just makes them so much more likeable in my opinion.

I find the Tarleton twins most annoying; however, I do like Mrs. Tarleton, but she caved so badly with the horses. I guess she felt like if they were seriously at war than she might as well give them up to protect the south.

Anyway, I'm currently at the point in the novel where Scarlett has gone to Atlanta and realizes that since the war began Atlanta has become completely industrialized. I'm hoping Scarlett will redeem herself in part two, so we'll see.

In other news, I've recently been trying to not listen to the Grateful Dead every single second of my life and infuse some new, and old, music back into my life. For some reason, today I chose to listen to Incubus's A Crow Left of the Murder and it's amazing! I love this album because it reminds me of driving eight hours to Maine and listening to it on my Sony Walkman over and over and over. In fact, I'm already on my second time playing it through now lol.

My endorsement for the day: Now this is the best stuff on earth.