The Book That Changed My Life: 'Gone With the Wind' and 'The Catcher in the Rye'

 Jennie Hill

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

With all the controversy surrounding this book and especially its famous 1939 film, it may seem like a strange choice for "The Book that Changed My Life". In fact, it is precisely because of these controversies that this book has had such a big influence on my life. 

When I first read Gone With the Wind, I was an impressionable young teen; I was swept away with the grandeur and romance of the book. I will admit that I cried at three different points of the book, but not in sadness. I cried with anger and frustration at the futility and blindness of the characters: shallow, naïve people caught up in historic events and making a royal mess of things. But, as much as this book drove me mad, I still loved it. I admired Scarlett O'Hara's determination and courage as much as I hated her callousness. At this stage, Gone With the Wind has made me resolve not to be as spoilt and selfish as Scarlett or as blind to real need as Melanie; a big influence in my life, but not the biggest. 

Fast forward 13 years and Gone With the Wind has come to represent everything wrong with whitewashed Hollywood, history and media in general. Having a book that had meant so much to my younger self highlighted in this way completely changed the way I approached all literature (and, for that matter, movies, TV shows, adverts . . .). I had loved a book which glorified the antebellum South, ignored the horrors of slavery and perpetuated harmful stereotypes. Clearly, I had awful judgement. 

This change of thinking occurred about five years ago. From then on, I changed my approach to reading: I researched the historical and social context of my fiction, I prioritised own-voice novels and authors with completely different life experiences to my own. I joined a large and diverse reading group so I could learn from others' interpretations. My reading choices changed from 99% fiction to include essays, biographies and educational texts. In short, my relationship with reading changed completely; no longer did I blindly read for pleasure, but to educate myself. 

Emma Burns

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

I KNOW it's a cliché to have read The Catcher in the Rye as a teenager and to feel like the world has opened up to you. 

My cliché is even more melodramatic, given that I first read it sitting in a window seat in a New York apartment at 17, with the sounds of jazz from the club below drifting up to me. Yes, I know. 10/10 for eye-rolling, obvious movie scene. 

But (and this is a big but) it is a great novel. 

It is too often dismissed as 'classic teenager whining' but that is reductive and diminishes why it resonates with so many - not least me. Snobs do like to say "Oh, I liked it then, but I've grown up now..."

It captures the constant turmoil of trying to know who you are, and what your place in the world actually is. Holden's brother is dead from cancer, he is at an awful boarding school, with students to whom he cannot relate, he is on the verge of being expelled and he leaves for New York city and wanders, trying to work out what life means. He is astute, irritating and hilarious. The hip, conversational American slang is fresh and immediate and still holds truths within the narrative. 

It changed my life because for the first time I really felt that a character in a book felt like me. As Holden himself says, "What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though."

So, yes, it was the book that changed my life - and I am really glad it was this one.