Setting

Set m the tumultuous years between 1861 and 1873, Gone with the Wind shifts between two main locales: the O'Hara family plantation called Tara, located in the rolling foothills of northern Georgia; and the bustling, young city of Atlanta. The lush, fertile beauty of Tara and its importance to the O'Hara family is explained early in the novel by Scarlett's Irish-born father, Gerald, "Land is the only thing in the world that amounts to anything... for 'tis the only thing in this world that lasts, and don't you be forgetting It! 'Tis the only thing worth working for, worth fighting for-worth dying for." His words prove true as Southern sons march off to fight in the war a few chapters later to defend the land they love. Tara becomes a symbol of the old South and the lifestyle of the planter gentility, which is destroyed permanently as a result of...