Grandparents, and possibly even parents, would have been around at the time for millions of people, memories would be fresh. In that case, as in Mitchell’s, we would not exactly be talking about ancient history. For perspective, it’s as if someone born in 2015 were to write about the transition from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan. Mitchell was born in 1900, thirty-five years after the end of the Civil War. On that count, it has a lot to say, not least about how to come to terms with history. But at its core, it’s much less about politics than it is about the human heart. To be sure, its presentation of slavery is appalling. Teeming with life, it offers surprising insights into the Confederacy and the Old South. But it does raise a host of questions-about winners’ narratives, about honor and humiliation, about memory, about innocence and guilt, about men and women, about what’s taken for granted, about the particularity of human lives, and about parallel worlds. The book is enthralling, and it casts a spell.ĭoes it make a plausible argument for continuing to display the Confederate flag? Not even close. (Scarlett O’Hara, Rhett Butler, and Ashley Wilkes? Really?) About twenty pages, I thought, would be enough. I expected to be appalled by its politics and racism, and to be bored by the melodrama. I confess that I did not have high hopes. Inspired by recent debates over the Confederate flag, I decided to give the book a try. When Americans think about the Confederacy, they often think about Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 classic, Gone With the Wind.
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