When a book touches your soul , your mind it is very difficult to narrate the experiance. Mitchell describes a lot of things in the book -a family, a war , an infatuation and a furtive love all enrolled into a kaliedoscopic roll of intense pain and suffering , intense desire and need but what makes the book a milestone is the sheer vision of survival , a metaphorical phoenix rising from the ashes , a story of grit and strength.
Scarlet O’ Hara, for me is not just a character , she appears as the embodiment of grit personified , a character somehow breaking the barrier of her own dimension, alarger than life figure , walking tightrope on the journey of life withstanding pain , loss , suffering , dejection, passion and yet somehow showing a steel nerve - a resilient mind and a resilient constitution.
What makes Scarlet memorable is the stubborn refusal to somehow get bogged down by her circumstance and what is marvellous in the book is that she is never portrayed as a Goddes or as a very responsible child with some extra ordinary sense of duty or responsibility.
She appears as any other human being with a personality which always appeared to be selfish and carefree.
Mitchell’s depiction of this extraordinary metamorphosis of character and that too in such a subtle and slow way made the book outstanding a -reading of a lifetime ! Scarlett O’ Hara becomes a part of one’s existence , definitely not as a Goddess figure but as an eerie presence that hovers over when one is faced with survival issues