Like many other who have read the novel "Gone with the wind", I too fell in love with Scarlett O'Hara. She was a hard to like character, marked by a selfishness that is unseemly in heroes. But still, I admired her as her character developed more and more as the novel progressed. The same was with Rhett Butler. People wonder how anyone could like a man as Rhett Butler was. But the fact is, the reason he was a hero was because regardless of his failings, which were many, he stood up and was willing to change himself for the sake of his children. A highly admirable trait, and something way more heroic than the qualities of a usual do gooder. For, it takes a lot of courage and gumption to change your very basic nature.

Armed with the desire to read more about this ungentlemanly hero, I decided to get "Rhett Butlers People" from the library. It was pretty hard to get hold of it too since the book was checked out the first couple of times I went in. Anyways, finally got hold of the book. The first couple chapters, as expected, were pretty boring. But that is usually a problem with longer english novels, it takes a while and lots of drivel to go through, before the book starts becoming interesting. I read through the book off and on over three weeks, it never gripped me enough to make me sit and read it or feel like knowing whats next. And unlike its prequel, this one left me totally unmoved - maybe because of the happy ending? Or I think mostly because I was so bored of Rhett being portrayed as such a good guy that I wondered what a woman like Scarlett saw in McCaig's Rhett? Now Mitchell's Rhett and Scarlett were made for each other, but this guy? I think not!

And I started thinking, why do our heroes have to be good? Well, okay let me rephrase that. Why do our heroes have to be do gooders or nice inside people? Why can't we accept as our hero a selfish, cynical, practical, shrewd, fearless man who transforms himself for better? Why did McCaig have to go and make Rhett nicer than the his holy highness? And with a traumatic childhood to boot! Didn't he realize how that takes away from his character?

The world is full of people like Rhett...people who have all the 'villainous' qualities and not all are because of abusive pasts. We are all different kinds of people here, and we all have to make a life on this planet. The world is also full of people like Rhett, who are compelled to change themselves into someone better and more acceptable to society for some reason or the other - mostly love for someone. And those people, I find are way more interesting than the usual nice guy for they are more human and easier to believe. The good ones just make me wonder whats wrong. Oh well...am a cynic.