Scarlett O'Hara is in love with drippy Ashley Wilkes, and is devastated when he announces that he plans to marry her cousin Melanie. She pleads with Ashley to marry her instead, but then, on the first day of the Civil War, she meets mercurial Rhett Butler. A man to match her strength of character and romantic desires, Butler changes the course of her life. Despite hunger, and the burning of Atlanta, Scarlett survives the war and its aftermath, but ultimately loses the only man she really loved.