by the Union army; his wife is very ill after giving birth to their infant son; his childhood
friends are either dead or still engaged at war; and he must rely on Scarlett’s charity to
support himself and his family.
When Scarlett finds him attempting to split kindling soon after his arrival at Tara,
she is disconcerted and confused for, she realizes, Ashley was never meant to engage in
physical labor of any sort. Rather ineloquent, her thoughts are revealed through the
narrator: “God intended him to sit in a great house, talking with pleasant people, playing
the piano and writing things which sounded beautiful and made no sense whatsoever”
(Ch. XXXI, pg. 516). The mere sight of him chopping logs seems to violate the laws of
nature. And indeed, Ashley feels this too. Despondent and reflective, he wonders aloud
about the future of the South before offering his own prognosis: “ ‘In the end what will
happen will be what has happened whenever a civilization breaks up. The people who
have brains and courage come through and the ones who haven’t are winnowed out. At
least, it has been interesting, if not comfortable, to witness a Götterdämmerung.’” When
Scarlett asks what he is talking about, he explains that the Götterdämmerung refers to “ ‘a
dusk of the gods. Unfortunately, we Southerners did think we were gods’” (Ch. XXXI,
pg. 517).
Though Scarlett dismisses Ashley’s words as foolish nonsense, she remembers
enough of what he says to recall it, years later, to Rhett Butler. Rhett has always talked
ill of Ashley, and Scarlett assumed it was because he was jealous, either of the bond she
shared with Ashley, or of Ashley’s gentlemanly grace, intelligence, and refinement. Yet
during one of their arguments about Ashley, Rhett explains that it is not jealousy that is
the root of his dislike for Ashley, but pity: “ ‘I pity him because he ought to be dead and
he isn’t. And I have a contempt for him because he doesn’t know what to do with
9
Convention