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Tear Jerker / Gone with the Wind

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"Be kind to Captain Butler. He loves you so."
  • After escaping Atlanta, Scarlett and Melanie find the land around Tara ravaged, all homes except Tara in ruins, and Scarlett's mother dead of typhoid.
    • Take a good look at Mammy when she's telling Scarlett what happened. That is the look of a woman who has lost the woman that she's raised since the time said woman was born and nearly lost two girls that she also helped raise. She can't even bear to say the words "she's dead" to Scarlett. All she can do is look at the half open doors to the room where Ellen lies in repose as tears run down her face. It's heartbreaking to say the least.
    • After crying by Ellen's body all night and learning from Pork and Mammy that the Yankees stole everything (even Ellen's rosaries), Scarlett sits with Gerard and discovers that they don't even have money to buy food to eat (the family's funds having been used to purchase Confederate bonds, which are all but useless at this point of the war). Brokenhearted, exhausted and hungry, Scarlett asks Gerard what are they going to do with no food and no money to get it. Gerard's response? "We must ask Mrs. O'Hara. Yes. Mrs. O'Hara will know exactly what to do. Now, go for a ride. I'm busy." Scarlett's expression just sells it; she's not only lost her mother (who was established in an earlier scene as the bedrock of her family) and almost lost her younger sisters but her father has gone mad from grief. Now, Scarlett has to pick up the pieces on her own.
    • Before we get to Tara, Scarlett, Melanie, baby Beau and Prissy stop at Twelve Oaks. The "big house" (which is what the owner's home was often referred to back then) has been bombarded with fire and only a blackened hull and fragment of the grand double winged staircase is left. Melanie pokes her head out and sees the sight of her father-in-law's simple pine tombstone...she lies back down with a heartbroken expression. Scarlett reflects on how glad she is that Ashley isn't there to see the remnants of his childhood home and curses the Yankees who did this. When a cow shows up, Scarlett is back to practicality, ordering Prissy to use her petticoat to hitch the cow to the wagon but it's sinking in for her that Rhett was right. There may not be anything to go back to.
      Scarlett: We need milk for the baby and...(voice cracks) and I don't know what we're going find back home.
    • Even sadder? While Ellen has already been buried in the book by the time Scarlett manages to get to Tara, Scarlett misses her mother's passing by hours in the film.
  • Charles Hamilton, a kind and gentle young man, is taken advantage of to the extreme. Scarlett merely marries him for the pettiest reason- simply to make Ashley jealous, and hardly even shows him any kind of love or affection. Then when he tragically dies of illness, she doesn't even give a damn about his death, nor their son Wade and simply whines and moans about her "life being over" since she's become a widow. Plus he didn't even receive any kind of justice, with the exception of Melanie (his sister) being the only one who really grieves for him.
  • In the movie, when they get the casualty lists from Gettysburg, there's a band playing a cheerful melody. One of the boys in the band has just found out his brother has been killed and cries while he plays.
    • That scene is even sadder in the book, where Scarlett is reading the names and realizing that the list includes many of her former beaux and childhood playmates. Her relief that Ashley is alive is eclipsed by her devastation. It's one of many scenes in the book that show that Scarlett isn't completely heartless. Rhett's conversation with Scarlett shows that he's also entirely capable of empathy - he asks gently, when he sees Scarlett's reaction to the casualty list, "I'm sorry, Scarlett. Many of your friends?", and then, somberly, talks at some length about how this likely won't be the only such report and how the Confederates appear to have lost the battle (he heard at the telegraph office that Lee's army had retreated into Maryland).
  • The shot - one of the most famous stills from the movie - of Scarlett wandering dazed through Atlanta, after the bombardment has stopped, the camera pulling back to show dead and wounded Confederates as far as the eye can see.
    • Right after that, Scarlett finally finds Dr. Meade and before she can even get another word out, she gets told to help. When she reminds Meade that Melly could die, he responds with how he has nothing to even ease the pain of the men he's treating. This and Scarlett's horrified crestfallen reaction sells just how dire of their situations are for both of them.
  • Ashley's recital of the Episcopalian funeral service - from memory - over Gerald O'Hara's grave when he realizes that the Catholic service is far too brief for the assembled mourners, who were expecting a much longer and more emotional farewell. Also qualified as a Heartwarming Moment.
  • Scarlett's miscarriage. She's utterly devastated as this is the first time she's genuinely wanted the baby and cannot bring herself to call for Rhett, who she thinks wants nothing to do with her.
  • Gerald O'Hara and Bonnie, two people Scarlett loved, dying the exact same way.
    • In the movie, Scarlett's reaction really drives it home
    Scarlett: (annoyed) Just like Pa! (dawning horror as she realizes what's going to happen) Just like Pa! (Bonnie falls off the horse and is killed, Scarlett faints)
  • Mammy telling Melly what Rhett and Scarlett have been saying to each other since Bonnie died. They're already terrible to each other, and the grief of losing Bonnie has clearly ramped up their self-destructive tendencies EVEN MORE. In particular (in the movie, at least), when she says that Rhett has been refusing to allow the funeral because, he says, he won't put Bonnie in the dark because she's afraid of it. Couple this with how much he doted on his daughter and his refusal to allow the 'leave her to scream' policy (at a time when it was common practice!), and it's bad. But then imagine, instead of Mammy's tearful words to Melanie, Rhett yelling it through the door with his voice cracking...
    • Bonnie's death itself is really sad as well.
    • The description of life in the Butler household after Bonnie's death is thoroughly haunting, with Scarlett finally feeling the impact of having alienated Rhett and all of her old acquaintances, namely that she has no one to seek comfort and is truly lonely and afraid.
  • A dying Melanie telling Scarlett, "Be kind to Captain Butler. He loves you so."
    • Melanie's death scene, and the one immediately afterward, when Scarlett finally realizes that Ashley loves his wife more than he ever will her.
    • Scarlett's Heel Realization as Melanie dies. She finally understands that Ashley did love her more, and realizes she wasted a good portion of her life wanting something that will never be. She even tells Ashley that if he'd just made it clear he loved Melanie and not her (Scarlett had talked herself into thinking Ashley was merely marrying Melanie to be honorable) then she would have been able to move on. Hell, maybe her and Rhett could have been happier and Bonnie might not have died.
    • In that same scene, Melanie asking Scarlett to take care of not only Ashley, "as you've looked after me for him", but also Beau. Scarlett readily promises that Melly's son shall want for nothing, while at the same time begging her to try and fight off death.
    Melanie: Promise me.
    Scarlett: Anything.
    Melanie: Look after my little son. I gave him to you once before, remember? The day he was born.
    • Just before Scarlett goes into the dying Melanie's room to see her, she passes Melanie's young, son, Beau, who is crying and is very confused.
    Beau: (wiping his tears) Where is my mother going? Why can't I go with her?
  • The ending, when Rhett rebuffs Scarlett's genuine entreaties and leaves her. No matter how much you might dislike her (and with good reason), you realize, this is a woman who within approximately one year (and even less time in the movie) has lost an unborn child (the first one she really wanted), her living child (her favorite), her best friend (and she didn't even realize this until the woman was on her deathbed), the man she thought she loved and now the man she did love. That is hard.
    • It becomes even more sad considering Rhett, who has loved Scarlett for years and put up with her attitude, finally gives up on her and leaves just when she realized she reciprocated that love.
    (from the book, right before he delivers the immortal line) "I wish I could care what you do or where you go, but I can't."
  • Scarlett's description of her father after her mother's death. It's borderline Nightmare Fuel for anyone who's watched a parent or grandparent succumb to dementia:
    ". . .he’s lost his mind. He acts dazed and sometimes he can’t seem to remember that Mother is dead. It’s more than I can stand to see him sit by the hour, waiting for her and so patiently too, and he used to have no more patience than a child. But it’s worse when he does remember that she’s gone. Every now and then, after he’s sat still with his ear cocked listening for her, he jumps up suddenly and stumps out of the house and down to the burying ground. And then he comes dragging back with the tears all over his face and he says over and over till I could scream: ‘Katie Scarlett, Mrs. O’Hara is dead. Your mother is dead,’ and it’s just like I was hearing it again for the first time. And sometimes, late at night, I hear him calling her. . ."
  • Although it is heartwarming to see Melanie and Scarlett standing vigil over some wounded soldiers, the reason why Melanie is doing so is because she imagines that Ashley might be in the same position "with only strangers to comfort him".
  • During a party where a great many southern gentlemen are gathered and discussing the war (Largely boasting of how easily the South would beat the North), Ashley and Rhett are asked their opinion of the war. Ashley admits that while he'll go to war if war is declared, he feels that all war ever brings is misery and is responsible for all the ills of the world, shocking the assembled gentlemen who object, albeit with some compassion. When Rhett discusses his feelings, he effectively outlines the practical reasons why the South would be at a disadvantage, and indeed a number of those reasons were exactly why the South lost the war, ending by stating that while the North holds all the cards, all the South has is cotton, slaves, and arrogance, enraging the assembled gentlemen who take it as an insult. Tragically, many of the gentlemen would die in the war, arrogance and pride being a poor defense against rifles and cannons. The older gentelman who brings his traumatic memories from Mexican War is quickly hushed by embarassed relatives.


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