Gone with the Wind
Margaret Mitchell
Contributed by Joslyn Justiniano
Chapter 59
Summary

Bonnie is ruined; Rhett allows her to have and do anything. She will not allow any other person to tell her anything, even Scarlett. Bonnie’s blue eyes look much like those of Scarlett's father. Rhett gets her a horse to ride and begins to instruct her to jump over fences. However, she demands to have an increasingly elevated fence. At some point, she yells at Scarlett to watch her take a jump over the fences. As both Scarlett and Rhett look on, she is tossed from her horse and dies — just like Gerald.

The night prior to Bonnie’s burial service, Mammy goes to Melanie’s house to request help. Since Scarlett revealed to Rhett he is squarely responsible for Bonnie’s death, the two are scarcely talking. Rhett has become lost in his own mind, and works as if he is not living in the real world; he keeps Bonnie’s body in a room splendidly lit with candles since she was fearful of darkness, and he declines to have her covered. Mammy asks Melanie to converse with him and influence him to enable the burial service to be conducted.

Analysis

Bonnie’s passing is, by any measure, catastrophic. While it can possibly bring Scarlett and Rhett together, it instead drives them more distantly separated. Rhett bears some blame regarding his daughter’s death. To ascertain her love, he never reproved her and dependably gave her all that she needed. A four-year-old child riding a horse over the fence is extraordinarily unsafe — yet Bonnie, just as her grandfather who died before her, was resolved.

It is a shocking, repulsive time when Scarlett flashes back to when her father hops and shouts for Bonnie to stop. Scarlett adored Bonnie, maybe more than she did with Ella and Wade, and she cries for her child. All things considered, her accusatory remarks to Rhett are over-the-top. However, as Mammy calls attention to, Scarlett has survived everything the world could toss at her. She is not pleasant or enthusiastic about it, yet she has survived regardless of whether her heart is breaking for Bonnie. She will survive now. Rhett, on the other hand, “ain’never had to stan’ nuthin’ he din’ wanter stan’”, as Mammy says. He has caused the vast majority of his own anguish: terrible behavior got him kicked out of his parents’ home; his defiant disposition compelled influential individuals to dismiss him in Atlanta; and, indeed, even his short time in the Confederate armed forces happened on the grounds that he decided to enroll. Rhett gets what he merits, and a lot of it. However, he does not have the right to lose Bonnie, and it breaks him.

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