Gone with the Wind

This is the title of a 1936 American novel by Margaret Mitchell set in the Old South during the American Civil War and Reconstruction. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1937 and was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film of the same name in 1939. It the only novel by Margaret Mitchell's published during her lifetime.
Mitchell's work relates the story of a rebellious Georgia Southern belle named Scarlett O'Hara and her experiences with friends, family, lovers, and enemies before, during, and after the Civil War. Using Scarlett's life, Mitchell examined the effect of the War on the old order of the South, and the aftermath of the war on what was left of the southern planter class.
If you haven’t read the novel and you’re willing to, don’t read further (spoiler alert!).


- PLOT OVERVIEW -

It's the spring of 1861. Scarlett O’Hara, a pretty Southern belle, lives on Tara, a large plantation in Georgia. She concerns herself only with her numerous suitors and her desire to marry Ashley Wilkes. One day she hears that Ashley is engaged to Melanie Hamilton, his frail, plain cousin from Atlanta. At a barbecue at the Wilkes plantation the next day, Scarlett confesses her feelings to Ashley. He tells her that he does love her but that he is marrying Melanie because she is similar to him, whereas he and Scarlett are very different. Scarlett slaps Ashley and he leaves the room. Suddenly Scarlett realizes that she is not alone. Rhett Butler, a scandalous but dashing adventurer, has been watching the whole scene, and he compliments Scarlett on being unladylike.
The Civil War begins. Charles Hamilton, Melanie’s timid, dull brother, proposes to Scarlett. She spitefully agrees to marry him, hoping to hurt Ashley. Over the course of two months, Scarlett and Charles marry, Charles joins the army and dies of the measles, and Scarlett learns that she is pregnant. After Scarlett gives birth to a son, Wade, she becomes bored and unhappy. She makes a long trip to Atlanta to stay with Melanie and Melanie’s aunt, Pittypat. The busy city agrees with Scarlett’s temperament, and she begins to see a great deal of Rhett. Rhett infuriates Scarlett with his bluntness and mockery, but he also encourages her to flout the severely restrictive social requirements for mourning Southern widows. As the war progresses, food and clothing run scarce in Atlanta. Scarlett and Melanie fear for Ashley’s safety. After the bloody battle of Gettysburg, Ashley is captured and sent to prison, and the Yankee army begins bearing down on Atlanta. Scarlett desperately wants to return home to Tara, but she has promised Ashley she will stay with the pregnant Melanie, who could give birth at any time.
On the night the Yankees capture Atlanta and set it afire, Melanie gives birth to her son, Beau. Rhett helps Scarlett and Melanie escape the Yankees, escorting them through the burning streets of the city, but he abandons them outside Atlanta so he can join the Confederate Army. Scarlett drives the cart all night and day through a dangerous forest full of deserters and soldiers, at last reaching Tara. She arrives to find that her mother, Ellen, is dead; her father, Gerald, has lost his mind; and the Yankee army has looted the plantation, leaving no food or cotton. Scavenging for subsistence, a furious Scarlett vows never to go hungry again, and takes charge of rebuilding Tara.
At last the war ends, word comes that Ashley is free and on his way home, and a stream of returning soldiers begins pouring through Tara. One such soldier, a one-legged homeless Confederate named Will Benteen, stays on and helps Scarlett with the plantation. One day, Will brings terrible news: Jonas Wilkerson, a former employee at Tara and current government official, has raised the taxes on Tara, hoping to drive the O’Haras out so that he might buy the plantation. Distraught, Scarlett hurries to Atlanta to seduce Rhett Butler so that he will give her the three hundred dollars she needs for taxes. Rhett has emerged from the war a fabulously wealthy man, dripping with earnings from his blockade-running operation and from food speculation. However, Rhett is in a Yankee jail and cannot help Scarlett. Scarlett sees her sister’s beau, Frank Kennedy, who now owns a general store, and forges a plan. Determined to save Tara, she betrays her sister and marries Frank, pays the taxes on Tara, and devotes herself to making Frank’s business more profitable.
After Rhett blackmails his way out of prison, he lends Scarlett enough money to buy a sawmill. To the displeasure of Atlanta society, Scarlett becomes a shrewd businesswoman.
Gerald dies, and Scarlett returns to Tara for the funeral. There, she persuades Ashley and Melanie to move to Atlanta and accept a share in her lumber business. Shortly thereafter, Scarlett gives birth to Frank’s child, Ella Lorena.
A free black man and his white male companion attack Scarlett on her way home from the sawmill one day. That night, the Ku Klux Klan avenges the attack on Scarlett, and Frank ends up dead.
Rhett proposes to Scarlett and she quickly accepts. After a long, luxurious honeymoon in New Orleans, Scarlett and Rhett return to Atlanta, where Scarlett builds a garish mansion and socializes with wealthy Yankees. Scarlett becomes pregnant again and has another child, Bonnie Blue Butler. Rhett dotes on the girl and begins a successful campaign to win back the good graces of the prominent Atlanta citizens in order to keep Bonnie from being an outcast like Scarlett.
Scarlett and Rhett’s marriage begins happily, but Rhett becomes increasingly bitter and indifferent toward her, because even though Scarlett’s feelings for Ashley have diminished into a friendship, Ashley’s jealous sister, India, finds them in an embrace and spreads the rumor that they are having an affair. To Scarlett’s surprise, Melanie takes Scarlett’s side and refuses to believe the rumors.
After Bonnie is killed in a horse-riding accident, Rhett nearly loses his mind, and his marriage with Scarlett worsens. Not long after the funeral, Melanie has a miscarriage and falls very ill. Distraught, Scarlett hurries to see her. Melanie makes Scarlett promise to look after Ashley and Beau. Scarlett realizes that she loves and depends on Melanie and that Ashley has been only a fantasy for her. She concludes that she truly loves Rhett . After Melanie dies, Scarlett hurries to tell Rhett of her revelation. Rhett, however, says that he has lost his love for Scarlett, and he leaves her. Grief-stricken and alone, Scarlett makes up her mind to go back to Tara to recover her strength in the comforting arms of her childhood nurse and slave, Mammy, and to think of a way to win Rhett back.
She still believes that she has the charm to get any man she sets designs upon. The book ends with Scarlett's proclamation: "After all, tomorrow is another day!".

- SEQUELS -

Alexandra Ripley wrote the novel Scarlett, in 1991, as the authorized sequel to Mitchell's novel.
A second sequel has been released this month. The story covers the same time period as Gone with the Wind and is told from Rhett Butler's perspective. Written by Donald McCaig, this novel is titled Rhett Butler's People.

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Suiciding Bunnies

A friend of mine just sent me an email with drawings of bunnies trying to commit suicide.
Personally, I thought it was hilarious, even if some workmates called me crazy :P Each cartoon shows one or more white rabbits in their creative attempts to end their lives using a variety of items. Revolving doors, a toaster, a cricket ball, a boomerang, a hand-grenade, the shining sun, a magnifying glass, lots of smoking cigarettes and bowling balls are all featured as suicidal tools. Those cartoons are taken from a book, The Book of Bunny Suicides: Little Fluffy Rabbits Who Just Don't Want To Live Any More (2003) is a collection of mostly one-image black comedy cartoons drawn by author Andy Riley.

There are many cultural references, like for example a drawing in which some bunnies commit suicide using Darth Vader's sword. Here you can see some of them, but there are more waiting for you!Keep tuned!^^

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Ender's Game

Let’s talk about books. Everybody has a favorite book, or at least, one that would read once and once again. I’ve always loved to read, and one of my favorite books since I first read it is “Ender’s game”, by Orson Scott Card. Do you know it? It’s set in a future where mankind has barely survived two invasions by the "buggers", an insectoid alien race, the world's most talented children, including the extraordinary Ender Wiggin, are taken into "Battle School" at a very young age to supply commanders for the expected Third Invasion. If you want to know more about it, read the text in italics, if not, skip it!!!

**SPOILER**

Andrew Wiggin (Ender) is a brilliant six-year-old boy, born as a third child into a United States that only permits families of two children each, thus his very existence required permission from the government. Ender is the youngest in a family of 5, both his older brother and sister (Peter and Valentine) are very intelligent, but Peter is evidently cruel and sadistic, while Valentine's temperament is nurturing and sweet. He has been closely watched for years through a monitor on the back of his neck. As a Third, and as an exceptionally smart student, he invites scorn from the children surrounding him. At the end of the first school day after the removal of his monitor, the bullies of the school begin teasing and mildly attacking him for it. In response and to defend himself, Ender beats the ringleader, Stilson, until he could no longer get up, to end not just that fight, but all future fights with the bully and his gang.
The next morning, members of the International Fleet, or IF, arrive at Ender's home to offer him a place at the Battle School, a space station where children are trained for military command. Colonel Hyrum Graff, the leader of the Battle School, believes that Ender is the last hope for the survival of mankind against the alien Buggers. He reluctantly accepts.
Life at the Battle School isn’t easy for Ender. His caretaker, Colonel Graff, isolates him from the others, which forces him to face his problems alone and to become stronger from it, rather than relying on others for his strength. It also makes him work hard to make friends and stay ahead of his enemies.
Due to his extremely high aptitude for tactics and leadership and to the teachers' deadline to ready him for the coming war, Ender is advanced through his training much faster than the other students, and becoming the best of all of them.
Ender is promoted to command of his own army, years earlier than usual, setting him up for resentment from his peers and pushing his abilities to the limit (intentionally). Despite having only 3 weeks to train instead of the standard 3 months before their first battle, his army completely annihilates their first opponent with almost no casualties. After that, he never loses a battle, despite engagements that are (deliberately) weighted against them.
After some time, he is allowed to go home on a short leave. Not wanting to see his family, he is kept isolated from everyone at a small lake in the woods. The IF, worried that he is no longer motivated to continue his studies, employs his sister Valentine to motivate him.
After these three months, Ender returns and is promoted to Command School, almost six years early, to learn to combat the Buggers in space instead of being restricted to the more abstract training games. He is taught by Mazer Rackham, the genius behind the previous human success against the buggers. He will be augmented by a cadre of his best friends (and the best commanders) from Battle School; Ender assigns them to individual flights or squadrons of ships while he remains in overall charge.
Ender and his "dream team" begin to fight ever-more-challenging battles, in which his team must frequently fight with outmoded hardware, and the enemy frequently outnumbers them and quickly learns to adapt to Ender's tactics—even the ones that won yesterday's battle. Fatigued in mind and body, his team slowly succumbing to exhaustion, Ender begins to lose hope.
In Ender's final exam before graduating from Command School, he and his team find themselves in possession of a small fleet, approaching a planet that is literally swarming with Bugger ships, outnumbering his own force a thousand to one. Ender duplicates his final battle at Battle School and destroys the planet around which the Bugger fleet is orbiting (taking the surrounding fleet with it), demonstrating that he is far too ruthless to be trusted with command of an actual battle fleet.
When the simulation ends, Rackham and Graff tell Ender that he has not been playing a game, and had never played against Rackham, but instead has been commanding real ships across interstellar distances; this task was made possible via the ansible, a form of instantaneous communication making use of Philotic Energy. He has just commanded the fleet attacking the Buggers' home planet, and destroyed the entire race once and for all.
When Ender learns that he has been playing a game with real peoples' lives, he lapses into four days of exhausted depression, completely void of reality, dozing in and out. Feeling the full weight of the deaths he has caused, made heavier by his apparent love and respect of the Buggers, developed over his interaction with them, he refuses to respond to anyone for a time, until conflict breaks out at the command center. Immediately after the end of the Bugger War, war breaks out on Earth in a dispute about who gains control of Ender. The impact is clear: Ender cannot return to Earth because he would simply be used as a tool of the dominant government on Earth, eventually led by Ender's older brother, Peter Wiggin. Fearing for Ender, his sister blackmails Peter into leaving Ender in peace, allowing him to be sent out on one of the first colonization ships as the governor of the new colony on a former bugger planet.

**END OF THE SPOILER**

Orson Scott Card wrote it in 1985. The novel Ender's Game and its sequel Speaker for the Dead were both awarded the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award, making Card the only author (as of 2007) winner of both of science fiction's top prizes in consecutive years. Card continued the series with Xenocide, Children of the Mind, but they’re nothing comparable to Ender’s Game. Many generations have enjoyed the novel, and if you haven’t read it yet, try to find some free time to do it, because its really worth it! keep tuned!

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