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 South during the era of segregation, in which white Southerners are portrayed as defending traditional values and the issue of slavery is largely ignored. The film has been described as a "regression" that promotes the myth of the black rapist and the honourable and defensive role of the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction, and as a "social propaganda" film offering a "white supremacist" view of the past. From 1972 to 1996, the Atlanta Historical Society held a number of "Gone with the Wind" exhibits, among them a 1994 exhibit titled, "Disputed Territories: "Gone with the Wind" and Southern Myths".