Gone with the Wind (novel) novel has become a reference point for subsequent writers of the South, both black and white. Scholars at American universities refer to, interpret, and study it in their writings. The novel has been absorbed into American popular culture. Mitchell received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for the book in 1937. It was adapted into a 1939 American film. "Gone with the Wind" is the only novel by Mitchell published during her lifetime. Mitchell used color symbolism, especially the colors red and green, which frequently are associated with Scarlett O'Hara. Mitchell identified the primary theme as survival. She left the ending
Gone with the Wind (film) the Klan in the film by referring to it only as a "political meeting". Thomas Cripps reasons that the film in some respects undercuts racial stereotypes; in particular, the film created greater engagement between Hollywood and black audiences, with dozens of movies making small gestures in recognition of the emerging trend. Only a few weeks after its initial run, a story editor at Warner wrote a memorandum to Walter Wanger about "Mississippi Belle", a script that contained the worst excesses of plantation films, suggesting that "Gone with the Wind" had made the film "unproducible". More than any film since "The