THE END OF GONE WITH THE WIND (SPOILER ALERT).

THE END OF GONE WITH THE WIND (SPOILER ALERT). When we were at the Margaret Mitchell Museum, we were told that Margaret Mitchell began GONE WITH THE WIND by writing the last chapter and working backwards. Her biographer, Darden Asbury Pyron, confirms that although Margaret Mitchell “circulated the most various tales about the chronologies and origins of [GWTW], she never varied her testimony of having begun her epic with the composition of the last chapter.” I know astute readers who are dissatisfied with the ending of GWTW, but I have always thought it was the right ending. It makes sense to me that Margaret Mitchell constructed the book to build toward that ending. The ending accomplishes several things. One message is that the course of events, the incidents that make up a plot–and a life– can divide people as well as unite them, that what happens in a book or a life matters. The break with the convention of the happy ending is very powerful. And, because, after all, there is always a chance that they will get together again, the ending is not final–again, like life.