Rhett Butler - Role

Role

In the beginning of the novel, we first meet Rhett at the Twelve Oaks Plantation barbecue, the home of John Wilkes and his son Ashley and daughters Honey and India Wilkes. The novel describes Rhett as "a visitor from Charleston"; a black sheep, who was expelled from West Point and is not received by any family with reputation in the whole of Charleston, and perhaps all of South Carolina. Rhett's enthrallment with Scarlett O'Hara begins when he overhears her declaration of love for Ashley in the library while the rest of the "proper" girls take a nap. He recognizes that she is willful and spirited and that they are alike in many ways, including their disgust for the impending, and later ongoing, war with the Yankees.

They meet again when Scarlett has already lost her first husband, Charles Hamilton, while she is staying with Charles' sister Melanie and their Aunt Pittypat in Atlanta during the war. Rhett, the daring and infamous blockade runner, creates a stir when he outbids (with $150 in gold) ($3,880 as of 2012) the other gentlemen in order to dance with Scarlett, who is in mourning. Rhett seemingly ruins Scarlett's reputation after this very public display of frivolity and Scarlett's father, Gerald O'Hara, comes to speak to Rhett and to take Scarlett back to Tara. However, Rhett gets Gerald drunk and they come to terms. Gerald returns to Tara and Scarlett remains in Atlanta.

As the Yankees advance towards Atlanta, Scarlett stays behind to help deliver Melanie's baby and then must depend on Rhett to get them out of the city. Scarlett sends her maid Prissy to find Rhett, and when he comes to Aunt Pitty's, he has stolen a horse and buggy in order to "rescue" them. Once they have fled Atlanta, Rhett—in a single moment of perverse idealism—joins the withdrawing Confederate soldiers for their last stand against General Sherman. Before he leaves, Rhett asks that Scarlett kiss him. She refuses, but he hauls her in—she slaps him and tells him that she hopes he gets killed while in battle. He laughs, and turns into the dark, leaving Scarlett alone with Melanie, Beau, her own young son Wade, and Prissy.

Several months later, Scarlett returns to Atlanta, this time to solicit money from Rhett to save Tara from foreclosure, only to learn from Aunt Pitty that he is in military jail, imprisoned by the Yankees for stealing the Confederate gold. Scarlett waltzes in, supposedly horrified that Rhett's life is in danger, all the while maneuvering him to give her money for the plantation. When Rhett sees through her ploy, he laughs in her face and Scarlett attacks him, causing her to faint. After regaining consciousness, she storms out.

On her way back to Aunt Pittypat's she meets Frank Kennedy, her sister Suellen's beau. Learning that Frank has done very well for himself, she plies him with affection, falsely tells him that Suellen is tired of waiting and plans to marry someone else, and finally secures a marriage proposal from him, which she accepts. Once Frank is married to her, he could not possibly allow his wife's kinfolk to be evicted from Tara, so he provides her with the $300 ($4,762 as of 2012) which she needs to pay the taxes on Tara.

Two weeks later, Scarlett is shocked when she sees Rhett while she is running Frank's store, free from the Yankees and amused that she has rushed into yet another marriage with a man she does not love, much less the fact that she stole him right out from under her sister's nose.

Frank Kennedy is killed during a Ku Klux Klan raid on the shanty town after Scarlett is attacked. Rhett saves Ashley Wilkes and several others by alibiing them to the Yankee captain, a man with whom he has played cards on several occasions.

While Scarlett is in mourning following Frank's death, Rhett appears and offers a marriage proposal promising to give her everything. Scarlett accepts only for Rhett's money. In the novel, Rhett's fortune is estimated at $500,000 ($7,936,364 as of 2012) Rhett secretly hopes that Scarlett will eventually return the love he's had since the day he saw her at Twelve Oaks. Her continuing affection for Ashley Wilkes becomes a problem for the couple, however.

When their daughter, Bonnie, falls off a pony and dies, the tragedy causes a rift between the two which is impossible to bridge. Rhett eventually leaves because he knows he has to get away from Scarlett. Her confession of love is something that Rhett seems to have expected from the moment he first saw her breathless face when she rushes to him. He knows that Scarlett could never be happy with Ashley and when she discovers that, he does not want to be around when she throws her obsession onto him.

When he finally receives Scarlett's love, it is too late to salvage the love he once had for her, so he leaves her with his famous parting shot: "My dear, I don't give a damn." It has since been immortalized in film in an altered version: "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."