The Wind Done Gone: The Juxtaposition of Humor and Parody in Tragedy

In contrast to my last post from the MFA program, this critical piece is about an unauthorized parody of Gone With the Wind from the perspective of Rhett Butler’s black mistress. It is the story of Scarlett and Rhett but from the other side of things, as an outsider. It is a fascinating story and the use of humor in what is a tragic story is quite poignant.

The Wind Done Gone by Alice Randall is “an unauthorized parody” of Gone with the Wind from the perspective of a formerly enslaved person. The author uses shades of the book/movie to prove up how ridiculous the people she worked for were. The best part is that while the life of the character is tragic many of the lines are actually incredibly funny.  The effect on the reader is laughing and crying at the same time. 

This book is told in a journal style with short passages instead of chapters. The author uses this structure as an open forum for Cynara/Cinnamon to talk about her life. This structure also allows for one-liner humorous gems:

“Georgia is laundry what needs washing.” 

“Mammy worked from can’t-see in the morning to can’t see at night.”

These lines are evocative of her southern, country upbringing but also are some levity to explain the tension around her position in life as well as the fact that her mother is dying. This happens over and over, especially in earlier passages. 

By positioning Cinnamon has a sort of mistress of “R” who is Rhett Butler, she is able to poke fun at people who owned her but in the context of dark humor. This is a woman who understands herself and what she has become. She can sort of poke fun at her station. She feels like she has gotten ahold of something that is owed her. At one point, as she is preparing to leave Atlanta she admits that everything she has, “she has earned.” She doesn’t want to admit what a life of prostitution has bought her but these insights are what make the story so unique. 

Even in the end, when everything is falling apart, there’s great moments like, “I gave you my name,” R. says. “I never told you mine,” I reply. The author just leaves these lines at the end of journal entries and the effect on the reader is profound. It’s another sort of dark but funny moment that you don’t want to laugh it and you feel bad for feeling a chuckle. 

The reality is that this woman has lived a tragic life which she recounts with such banality: …this would be my would be skeleton: childhood on a cotton farm; a time of shawl-fetch slavery away in Charleston; a bare breasted hour on an auction block; drudge slavery as a maid in Beauty’s Atlanta brothel, when Milledgeville was the capital of Georgia and Atlanta was nothing; a season of candle-flame concubinage in the attic of that house; a watery Grand Tour of Europe; and finally concubinage in my own white clapboard home, with green shutters and gaslights, in the center of a fast growing city that has come the capital of Georgia, concubinage that persists till now.”

The ability of the author to inject humorous moments amid the tragedy of a life that began in slavery is a masterful way to insert humor in tragedy. In my own work, I realize that providing some levity is important. Writing about the horrors of America’s peculiar institution can be a 24/7 tragedy fest of beatings, rape, and inhumane treatment. However, providing a glimpse of humor can give the reader relief and help remind the reader that tragedy can have its funny moments. Sometimes laughter can save us from sinking down into a deep hole of depression. I think that is why Cinnamon uses her witty observations of others. It helps salve the pain and guilt she feels about her station in life. 

The humor also punctuates the ridiculousness of the people she worked for and how they were able to live vapid lives on the backs of the labor of her family and her ancestors before them. Her treatise on the difference between race and blood and how being born of a slave while having a white father, like her Planter, made one black instead of white. The passage is serious but yet it points out the ridiculousness of American racism. If you look at it objectively, it is rather funny. Cinnamon has the dark humor of a traumatic life lived. The book is serious but these moments of dark humor can be laugh-out-loud funny while also reinforcing the tragedy of her life. There are fewer of them as the book goes on. Either the author changed styles or this was an intentional choice as Cinnamon gets older and begins to become ill (with lupus according to the post script).