Rhett Butler

Rhett Butler is a fictional character and one of the main protagonists of Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. 2Role 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. On her way back to Aunt Pittypat's Scarlett 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. 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. Scarlett accepts only for Rhett's money. In the novel, Rhett's fortune is estimated at $500,000 ($8,178,409 as of 2016) Rhett secretly hopes that Scarlett will eventually return the love he's had since the day he saw her at Twelve Oak