My author is Margaret Mitchell.

Margaret Mitchell was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1900. At a young age, Mitchell enjoyed making stories. She met her first fiancée and they were about to get married when he tragically died. Mitchell met her second fiancé and married him, then he left after 4 months of marriage and their marriage was annulled. Margaret then got a job at Atlanta Journal Sunday Magazine, where she used the name “Peggy Mitchell.” She worked there for 4 years, then she met her third fiancé. This time it worked out and they were married.

Mitchell broke her ankle and to cope with sitting around the house all day, she started Gone With the Wind. Almost 10 years after starting, her novel was published. Margaret’s novel was a success when it was published and eventually they made a film of it too. After the success, Margaret never wrote another book. She struggled to keep the copyright of her book, which was one of the reason she did not write and publish more.

Margaret Mitchell’s most famous novel is Gone With the Wind, and is her only novel. Gone With the Wind is a story set in Civil War time which follows around the main character Scarlett O’Hara. Scarlett has lost her husband, who died in battle serving the Confederate Army. The rest of the story follows around Scarlett and those close to her as she navigates her new life.

Mitchell has many similarities to the character Scarlett O’Hara. They both were married multiple times, some of the marriages ending in tragedy. They both experienced tragedy in their lives and had to learn how to survive with the changes. Both wondering `if they choices they had made could’ve changed the outcome.

“Perhaps--I want the old days back again and they’ll never come back, and I am haunted by the memory of them and of the world falling about my ears.”
The character wants what his world used to be. He wished it never changed, but that is not even possible. He wonders if maybe he could’ve rewritten the ending.

“Life’s under no obligation to give us what we expect. We take what we get and are thankful it’s no worse than it is.”
Saying that life is unpredictable and you never know what could happen. The best thing to do is not wish you could change the past, but rather accept it.

This author, Margaret Mitchell, is significant because she took a new perspective when writing her book. Instead of focusing on the normal tragedies brought about by war, Mitchell chose to focus on the aftermath of the war and hard times there. Her novel was a success showing that the readers liked the new perspective of this time period and would’ve enjoyed another novel from Margaret Mitchell, but she chose to stop there.

After researching Margaret Mitchell, I thought it was very interesting that she decided not to publish anymore of her work. She wrote many more stories but decided never to publish them for public eye. Did she regret making her first novel public? Did she not like others taking credit for her work? Or was she simply satisfied with the one novel? - were all questions that came to mind when researching. But ultimately, her novel brings about many important questions and debates many different topics that successfully captured her readers.

My essential question is “How do our decisions impact our survival?” This question relates to the novel because the characters look back and question if they could have changed the outcome to change how they are trying to survive. They wonder if they could have done something in the past to change the current situation.

In real life, this question resonates because people just barely getting by, trying to survive wonder if they could have changed something by doing something different in the past. Our decisions really do affect our survival, but once it is in the past, you cannot change anything. The only thing you can do is keep going and try to fix whatever you can for the future.

And that’s it.