Despite the great length of this reading, it was by far my favorite reading of the semester. Not only was it very interesting reading about the differing views of the Civil War between the North and South, it also served as a wake up call for me. After reading this book, I no longer view the United States as a perfect nation in harmony with each other. I now tend to view the nation as separated and split in two by differing beliefs about the national identity.
Until reading "Confederates in the Attic", I was ignorant to the fact that people in the United States still obsessed over the Civil War and it's results. I was unaware that Southerners still reenacted the Civil War as close to the real thing as possible. I found it shocking and intriguing how they followed every detail, including the food they ate, how they slept, and what they wore. This shows how much importance the South places on the Civil War and that they still do not want to accept the fact that its over. This book portrays the South as still being very racist and still believing is pre-Civil War national beliefs.
This reading shows the stark contrast between the North and the South and how they view the Civil War and the nation in general. The North has far fewer reenactments groups and far fewer extremists who do not believe the Civil War should be over. For all these reasons and more, this reading was by far the most interesting to me.
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Although the traditions of the Old South remain important to many of the southern states today, I disagree with you about the book portraying the South as "still being very racist." Racial tension does exist, especially in more rural areas, but I think that the book argues more that Southerners embrace the idealized "Gone With the Wind" perception of life in the Old South, in which racism plays only a peripheral role.
ReplyDeleteI agree. The book does not ignore the racial tensions that are clearly still present in the South, but I don't think the goal was to portray Southerners as ignorant or racist. I thought the writing was almost better, as you could tell when reading it how much Horwitz invested himself into the novel. However, instead of focusing on the very real racial tensions that exist,I think he concentrated more on the idea of Southern nationalism as a whole, and how it is still present today.
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