I have re-read the book several times over the years and found my perception of the characters changed as I gained more life experience and a deeper understanding of history.
Ten/fifteen years ago, I read that Margaret Mitchell downplayed her book saying something like ‘I just strung together a bunch of stories I heard growing up’. So I re-read the book for the individual incidents. Read that way, the book documents the way southerners of the 1930s remembered the War and the Reconstruction period.
Add me to the list of those who have read the book multiple times - my experience was much like yours, goldfinch. :)
“Ten/fifteen years ago, I read that Margaret Mitchell downplayed her book saying something like I just strung together a bunch of stories I heard growing up.”
She was selling herself and her accomplishment short. Mitchell was one of those kids who liked talking to old people. She ‘interviewed’ (or rather listened) to countless actual veterans of the war.
That and the fact that ‘Sherman’s Sentinels’ — the still-standing chimneys of burned out homes surrounding Atlanta — were quite common as she was coming up — gives her book more authenticity than someone just passing on secondhand stories.