When we first see Rufus, he was an innocent little boy who seemed to be goodhearted. He was friends with Alice and Nigel who he treated quite nicely despite the historical time period and he showed Dana respect and fondness. He even accepted Dana's correction of calling her a "black woman" instead of the n-word. Because of this, we feel that Rufus has the potential to become a good person and not be like his slave-owning father. Dana also thinks the same as she continuously takes care of Rufus and shows him affection as she thinks she could teach him tolerance.
But later in the book, we can see that Dana's efforts were mostly ineffective as Rufus turned into a copy his father. However, there is a key difference between him and his father and that is that he "loves" Alice, a black woman, which makes him seem more tolerant. But other than Alice, there is no other reason to think of him as more tolerant than his father as he also sells, beats, and rapes his slaves and breaks up slave families with an agenda. This only gets worse as he grows up and he becomes more and more like his father despite the occasional flashes of empathy and humanity with Dana and Alice.
The reason for Rufus's degradation is result of the power he was handed. As the son of a white slave owner and eventually an owner himself, he believes that it's his right to do whatever he wants with his slaves and as such, this corrupting influence changes him for the worst. It is worthy to note that Rufus does have feelings of regret for some of his actions, but instead of changing himself for the better, he keeps doing what he wants and makes other people change for him. A example of this is when he wants Alice. He makes Dana coerce Alice into having "consensual" sex with Rufus instead of him raping her. These backhanded attempts are Rufus's way of making himself feel better for his horrific actions.
In the end, because of the power given to white slave-owners during the Antebellum period, Rufus turns into a monster. I wonder how Kevin would turn out if he was given a bunch of slaves.
There are a bunch of times in the book where Kevin acts in ways similar to Rufus, and that makes us wonder how different a person Rufus would have been if he had been born in the the 20th century. We can only contemplate, but it is at the least a very interesting topic to think about.
ReplyDeleteIt's definitely interesting to compare the similarities between Kevin and Rufus. It just goes to show the importance of environment- if Kevin had grown up in the antebellum era, and Rufus in the modern one, it's pretty likely that their roles would have been switched. I believe that that's a major theme of Kindred- the idea that our environment and circumstances are what make us who we are. Without being handed the power over all the lives of the slaves on the Weylin plantation, and without learning the toxic lessons about life that Tom taught him, Rufus would've been very different indeed.
ReplyDeleteI think another important detail is that Rufus doesn't know of a world that is different than this. he is unable to see a different world outside of the few glimpses that Dana gives him. I want to think that Kevin would no turn into Rufus, I think that central to Rufus's personality is a sense of entitlement, which Kevin doesn't have because he is from the future. I think Kevin would know that the situation was wrong, and so wouldn't use his power the way Rufus does.
ReplyDeleteI think that not only does he see his degradation of his slaves as his right, but also as his job. Because his father has established a well-run plantation based on hard-working slave labor, he comes to understand society's notion that business will go down if you don't punish or threaten the slaves. Things get foggier with this business aspect as we analyze his terrorizing affection towards Alice, and I start to wonder if he truly did love her and didn't know how because of society's skewed standards, or if he just wanted her so badly as his object to manipulate for his own pleasure.
ReplyDeleteThere's the classic saying Power corrupts, Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and I think that saying absolutely (lol) applies to this situation. As we read more of Kindred, we might forget that at first, although he had some bad tendencies to be expected of a white boy raised in the antebellum south, Rufus is very open to learning from Dana, and he even hates his father. Then, he ends up owning the plantation and basically becomes the evil that his father was, resulting in much pain and death, including his own.
ReplyDeleteYou're right to put "consensual" in quotation marks, as even though Alice doesn't forcibly *resist* Rufus and goes to him "willingly" (under Dana's influence), every time they are together is always rape. She makes clear that she "hates" him, and wonders if he can tell. Even after they have this quasi-family together, and he's talking about freeing their children, taking something like a fatherly role, etc., she's never stopped thinking about escape. We see how these "domestic" relationships that sometimes arose in the context of slavery were always inherently rapacious, and we see in Alice one more example of an enslaved person putting on a deliberate act in order to hide their hatred of the system and the people who perpetuate it.
ReplyDeleteYour post reflects the shift in Rufus's character as we see him grow. The second time Dana goes back we see Rufus as a thoughtful child that listens to Dana carefully, but as time goes on and Dana keeps coming back we see that greatly shift. Rufus turns into the slave owner that we read about in history books, but looking back to how he was as a child it is evident that he turned into that because of he was a product of his environment.
ReplyDeleteNice post! You make great points about Rufus' transition from child to adult. He is definitely a product of his upbringing, with slave owners as parents. His parents also send him very unhealthy messages about how he should act and be as a person.
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