英语本科《飘》中瑞德·巴特勒的人物性格特点分析.doc

河北师范大学
高等教育自学考试本科毕业论文

题目：《飘》中瑞德·巴特勒的人物性格特点分析 On the Characterization of Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind

摘要:《飘》是世界文学经典名著之一，是由美国文学作家玛格丽特·米切尔所著。瑞德·巴特勒是小说中的男主人公。他英俊潇洒，花钱任意，衣着时髦。他很高兴以最糟糕的形式出现在公众面前。一个取乐与轻蔑的微笑，一个无可辩驳的评论，一个优雅的鞠躬，无不显露出他的玩世不恭与睿智。他说他绝不为抛弃他的南方制度而战，但他在战争的最后时刻加入军队。他出身于贵族，但他是贵族的叛逆者。他被叫做无赖，卖国贼，但他为南方和人民做过许多好事。在生意上，他事业有成。在爱情上，他一败涂地。他怀着一个男人对一个女人的爱所能达到的最高程度在爱思佳丽特，但因为了解她而不敢直言相告,导致一场爱情悲剧。

关键词： 英俊 ; 玩世不恭 ; 睿智 ; 精明

Abstract: Gone with the wind, which was written by Margaret Mitchell, is one of the most popular masterpieces in the world. Rhett Butler is the leading man-role in this novel. He is handsome, and he spent money freely. He wears clothes which are always the height of style and tailoring. He is happy to present himself in the worst possible light with an amused, contempt smile, an unanswerable remarks and a graceful bow. These show his cynicism and sagaciousness. He says he would never uphold the South that cast him, but he joins the army at the eleventh-hour of the war. He was born as a gentleman but a renegade. He is called a rascal and a traitor, but he does a lot of good deeds for the South and the people. He succeeds in business but fails in love. He loves Scarlett as much as a man can love a woman, but he can’t tell her because he knows her. It is a tragic love.

Key words: handsome; cynical; sagacious; shrewd

Content
Abstract………………………………………………………………………..3
Abstract in Chinese…………………………………………………………….4
I. Introduction…………………………………………………………………..5
1. Brief introduction of the Author…………………………………………..6
2. Brief introduction of the novel’s content………………………………….7
3. The social background of Gone with the wind
a. The Civil War in the U.S.A……………………………………………...8
b. The Reconstruction after the Civil War………………………………..10
II. Analysis of the character of Rhett Butler in seven aspects
1. He is handsome and charming..................................................................11
2. He is a renegade………………………………………………………...14.
3. He is cynical and sagacious......................................................................16
4. He has a clear understanding of the society and war, and has the courage to say the truth..........................................................................................18
5. He is shrewd, farsighted...........................................................................20
6. He is kind, helpful and he loves the South in his own way.....................22.
7. Rhett Butler loves Scarlett O’Hara as much as a man can love a woman…………………………………………………………………23
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………..28
Notes…………………………………………………………………...............29
Bibliography…………………………………………………………………..30
Introduction
1. Brief introduction of the Author
Margaret Mitchell (November 8, 1900-August 16, 1949) was a famous American writer, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1937 for her novel Gone with the Wind。Gone with the wind was her only major publication. She was born in Atlanta, Georgia. She once received a doctor degree of literature. She was struck by an automobile on her way to the cinema with her husband. And after 5 days, she died.
It was her life experience and unfortunate love that made her to write a beautiful and sad love story in the Civil War.
When she was a little girl, her grandma often told her about the history of their family and some war stories. Imaging herself lived in the past; she made up many small stories in which she was a heroine in a war. All of these became materials when she wrote Gone with the Wind many years later.
Her mother’s death made her father lose the courage and motivation of life, as Starlet’s father got mad after his wife died.
At 18 years old, she met a young handsome officer, Clift Henry, who was the Ashley in her heart. Pretty soon, they fell into love. But he lost his life in the First World War, which made her very sad.
Later, she got married with a bad-tempered and cold bully. Not surprisingly, this marriage came to an end shortly. In 1944, she got married again. Her husband Marsh was a reporter, who had loved and supported Mitchell for many years. Without Marsh’s encouragement, Mitchell couldn’t finish Gone with the Wind. She spent nearly 10 years on writing the novel. It took her half of a year to check the time and places of historical events in her novel.
But because of the publication of Gone with the Wind, her life became a tragedy. For half of a century, the 1000-page novel has been translated into more than 30 languages and sold more than 20,000,000 copies. Gone with the Wind is enough to establish her unshakable position in the history of world literature.
2. Brief introduction of the novel’s content
It is a story about the Civil War and Reconstruction as seen from the Southern point of view. The novel opens in 1861, and the protagonist is Scarlett O’Hara. Scarlett O’Hara is a young girl who loves Ashley Wilkes. Ashley marries Melanie Hamilton and Scarlett marries Melanie’s brother Charles, but she is soon widowed. Then she marries Frank Kennedy, her sister’s fiancé, to save Tara, the family plantation, her home. Frank is also killed, and Scarlett finally marries Rhett Butler, who loves her deeply.
During the story, she experiences Secession, the Civil War, Reconstruction, as well as three marriages and motherhood.
3. The social background of Gone with the wind
a. The Civil War in the U.S.A.
In the presidential election of 1860, the Republican Party, led by Abraham Lincoln, had campaigned against the expansion of slavery beyond the states in which it already existed. In response to the Republican victory in that election, seven states declared their secession from the Union before Lincoln took office on March 4, 1861. Both the outgoing administration of President James Buchanan and Lincoln's incoming administration rejected the legality of secession, considering it rebellion. Several other slave states rejected calls for secession at this point.
Hostilities began on April 12, 1861, when Confederate forces attacked a U.S. military installation at Fort Sumter in South Carolina. Lincoln responded by calling for a volunteer army from each state to recapture federal property. This led to declarations of secession by four more slave states. Both sides raised armies as the Union assumed control of the Border States early in the war and established a naval blockade. In September 1862, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation made ending slavery in the South a war goal, and dissuaded the British from intervening.
Confederate commander Robert E. Lee won battles in the east, but in 1863 his northward advance was turned back with heavy casualties after the Battle of Gettysburg. To the west, the Union gained control of the Mississippi River after their capture of Vicksburg, Mississippi, thereby splitting the Confederacy in two. The Union was able to capitalize on its long-term advantages in men and materiel by 1864 when Ulysses S. Grant fought battles of attrition against Lee, while Union general William Tecumseh Sherman captured Atlanta and marched to the sea. Confederate resistance ended after Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865.
The American Civil War was one of the earliest true industrial wars. Railroads, the telegraph, steamships, and mass-produced weapons were employed extensively. The practices of total war, developed by Sherman in Georgia, and of trench warfare around Petersburg foreshadowed World War I in Europe. It remains the deadliest war in American history, resulting in the deaths of 620,000 soldiers and an undetermined number of civilian casualties. Ten percent of all Northern males 20–45 years of age died; as did 30 percent of all Southern white males aged 18–40. Victory for the North meant the end of the Confederacy and of slavery in the United States, and strengthened the role of the federal government. The social, political, economic and racial issues of the war decisively shaped the reconstruction era that lasted to 1877
b. The Reconstruction after the Civil War
Reconstruction, one of the most turbulent and controversial eras in American history, began during the Civil War and ended in 1877. It witnessed America's first experiment in interracial democracy. The role of the federal government in protecting citizens' rights, and the possibility of economic and racial justice are still unresolved.
Central to Reconstruction was the effort of former slaves to breathe full meaning into their newly acquired freedom, and to claim their rights as citizens. After rejecting the Reconstruction plan of President Andrew Johnson, the Republican Congress enacted laws and Constitutional amendments that empowered the federal government to enforce the principle of equal rights, and gave black Southerners the right to vote and hold office. The new Southern governments confronted violent opposition from the Ku Klux Klan and similar groups. Meantime, the North abandoned its commitment to protect the rights of the former slaves. Reconstruction ended, and white supremacy was restored throughout the South.
For much of this century, Reconstruction was widely viewed as an era of corruption and misgovernment, supposedly caused by allowing blacks to take part in politics. This interpretation helped to justify the South's system of racial segregation and deny the vote to blacks. Today, because of extensive new research and profound changes in American race relations, historians view Reconstruction far more favorably, as a time of genuine progress for former slaves and the South as a whole.
For all Americans, Reconstruction was a time of fundamental social, economic, and political change. The overthrow of Reconstruction left to future generations the troublesome problem of racial justice.

Analysis of the character of Rhett Butler in seven aspects

1. He is handsome and charming.
In the eyes of Atlanta’s people, Rhett Butler was a dashing figure and one that people turned to look at. He spent money freely, rode a wild black stallion, and wore which were always the height of style and tailoring. There were few ladies who could resist his charm when he chooses to exert.
At the barbecue of Twelve Oaks, it was the first time Scarlett met Rhett Butler, “He was a tall man and powerfully built. Scarlett thought she had never seen a man with such wide shoulders, so heavy with muscles, almost too heavy to for gentility. When her eye caught his, he smiled, showing animal-white teeth below a closed-clipped black mustache. He was dark of face, swarthy as a pirate, and his eyes were as bold and black as any pirate’s appraising a galleon to be scuttled or a maiden to be ravished. There was a cool recklessness in his face and a cynical humor in his mouth as he smiled at her, she did not know who he could be, but there was undeniably a look of good blood in his dark face. It showed in the thin hawk nose over the full red lips, the high forehead and the wide-set eyes.”
At a charity ball in Atlanta, they met again. Rhett Butler appeared like this: He was dressed in black broadcloth, a tall man, towering over the officers who stood near him, bulky in the shoulders but tapering to a small waist and absurdly small feet in varnished boots. His severe black suit, with fine ruffled shirt and trousers smartly strapped beneath high insteps, was oddly at variance with his physique and face, for he was foppishly groomed, the clothes of a dandy on a body that was powerful and latently dangerous in its lazy grace. His hair was jet black, and his black mustache was small and closely clipped, almost foreign looking compared with the dashing, swooping mustaches of the cavalrymen near by. He looked, and was, a man of lusty and unashamed appetites. He had an air of utter assurance, of displeasing insolence about him, and there was a twinkle of malice in his bold eyes as he stared at Scarlett。
Every time Rhett called Scarlett. She thought: there was something exciting about him that she could not analyze, something different from any man she had ever known. There was something breathtaking in the grace of his big body which made his very entrance into a room like an abrupt physical impact, something in the impertinence and bland mockery of his dark eyes that challenged her spirit to subdue him
One time, Scarlett was on Rhett’s carriage. She suddenly thought how nice it was to see a nice man who was a whole, …, and who looked well fed and healthy. He was so well dressed, too. His coat and trousers were actually of the same material and they filled him. …. He looked as if he had not a care in the world and that in itself was startling these days, …. His brown face was bland and his mouth, red lipped, clear cut as a woman’s, frankly sensual, smiled carelessly. The muscles of his body rippled against his well-trained clothes, as he got in beside her, and, as always, the sense of his great physical power struck her like a blow. She watched the swell of his powerful shoulders against the cloth with a fascination that was disturbing, a little frightening. His body seemed so tough and hard, as tough and hard as his keen mind. His was such an easy, graceful strength, lazy as a panther stretching in the sun, alert as a panther to spring and strike.
Above all, we can see Rhett is very handsome and charming.
2. He is a renegade.
Rhett Butler was descended from a noble family, but he is not a gentleman. He was a renegade who was called a scamp, a rascal and a gambler
He had the worst reputation and he wasn’t received in the best parlors. He had been expelled from West Point for drunkenness and “something about women”. That terrific scandal concerning the Charleston girl he had compromised and the brother he had killed was public property. He is a black sheep of a lovely family-his father, a charming old gentleman with an iron will and a ramrod for a backbone had cast him out without a penny when he was twenty and even stricken his name from the family Bible. About this, he said:“ Why am I the black sheep of the Butler family? For this reason and no other-I didn’t conform to Charleston and I couldn’t. And Charleston is the South, only intensified. I wonder if you realize yet what a bore it is. So many things that one must do because they have always been done. So many things, quite harmless, that one must not do for the same reason. So many things that annoyed me by their senselessness. Not marrying a young lady, of whom you have probably heard, was merely the last straw. Why should I marry a boring fool, simply because an accident prevents me from getting her home before dark? And why permit her wild-eyed brother to shoot and kill me, when I could shoot straighter? If I had been a gentleman, of course, I would have let him kill me and that w