Rufus' progression, despite our wishes to the opposite, tends to become negative through unsavory manifestations in his personality, etc.—nonetheless, we find this to be only natural as Rufus can only be a product of the conditions of his environment and the systems that he engages.
This is established—we need not prove Rufus' negative development as we encounter such in his encounters with Dana, with others, and his general presentation throughout the story.
Then, a question that arises out of this fact is Dana's dismissiveness and quasi-enabling behaviors towards Rufus: why does she always give Rufus the benefit of the doubt, why is she so...forgiving of his flaws? For somebody from the later 20th century with such modern sensibilities and who embodies the progressive changes that would have been unimaginable in Rufus' era, she sometimes acts with an almost passive and relenting attitude.
For a first thought, might we need to blame Dana? Is this a flaw of hers, one that we should criticize her and use her, rather than Rufus, as a negative example that we should not embody and rather learn from their mistakes? Perhaps we should avoid this conclusion—out of the entire story, Dana, in my opinion, is one of the few that truly seems to have a sort of agency, that she is most relatable. Rufus, Kevin, and others all seem to play their dedicated roles, they need not grapple with any dilemmas and thus, they cannot necessarily be compared to a character like Dana. In Dana's mind, Rufus as a mid-20s year old is not far separated from the much younger version that first made an impression on Dana (this seems very reasonable!). In general, it seems that she grows, develops, as the story continues and changes in a much more personal way, one that is more personal that really and which sets her apart from all others.
We might be able to debate the unreliability of Dana and how her narration might be compromised with her own selfish aims, but the reality might be that there isn't anyone else in the story, that we would compare her with...if we were to compare her to ourselves, could we not also feel similar to how she might?
By virtue of the intrinsic difference that Dana has in relation to all others within Kindred, we can't compare her, if she is to be viewed as one part of this story's whole, to another part. She is a very different character whose job is to not just bring the story and message of Kindred out to us, but to also pull us into her experiences, to make us think what it'd be like to be her.
I feel like it is a very unjustified thought to blame Dana for the way she acts towards Rufus. As readers who are so detached and able to get the full context without being able to actually experience anything, it may be a little frustrating to see her continuously make excuses for him. Although she is may be a bit of an unreliable narrator at times, it's interesting to note the way her biases slip in and she depicts Rufus through her narration of him, making him seem more caring than he actually is. Along with her personal relationship with Rufus and watching him grow up, it makes sense that she resorts to making excuses for him. We watch her throughout the novel lose her power as she gets more acclimated to 1800s society.
ReplyDeleteI think that part of the reason Dana keeps forgiving Rufus throughout the story is that she needs him to be ok in order for her to even be there, so she has to find some way to be able to live with him. It seems almost inevitable that Rufus turns into something more resembling his father, even though Dana's influence has brought him somewhat away from that. I also think what you said about Dana having the only real agency was interesting, since I think she has a lot of influence over some of the characters, and she's the only one who can really leave and come back, but in the world of 1800s Maryland Dana also has very little direct agency.
ReplyDeleteDana has seen Rufus in different stages of life, but most of it was concentrated when he was a child. Dana spent alot of time around Rufus when he was little, but didn't really see him develop. Instead her interactions with him were more episodic. Because of this I think that there would've been a delay in realizing the transformation from a child of his time into an instrument of slavery. I think that Dana killing Rufus at the end of the novel is when Dana completely removes the child from her image of Rufus.
ReplyDeleteI kind of get into your points here in my blog as well. I think Dana is purposefully imperfect (allbeit not in massive ways), so that we can relate to her at a human level. You can't really blame her for any of her faults, and if anything you begin to respect her more for at least trying to initiate change when she knows the risks behind what she's doing. She has this sort of "agency" that you mention, where we feel like she's actually responsible for what happens on the Weylin Plantation, which is probably an unfair responsibility to put on her. However, we respect her more for being willing to take on this responsibility.
ReplyDeleteI think I made clear in class that I find aspects of Dana's willingness to cut Rufus some slack to be generally bewildering and even frustrating--especially as we near the end, and she's considering "forgiving" him for crossing what she's always said is her "red line" for their relationship. But I do think there is some psychological rationale to be found via the title of the novel: it's easier to remember that Alice is an ancestor of Dana because they look so much alike. But the novel compels Dana to look RUFUS in the eye and see herself, to some extent--to face and even affirm the fact that *this slave-owning man is her KIN*. And she sees him "grow up," quite literally, in an accelerated way. It might be harder to hate a grown man (even a racist and violent grown man) if you'd known him as a child, and we see Dana becoming attached to young Rufus pretty quickly (because of their unique relationship). She understands it as her mission to "save his life," and this forces her to see his life as worth saving. In a head-spinning way, the novel won't allow her to have the kind of critical distance from him that she WANTS to have: just like, within a family, we might be more apt to forgive the transgressions of some of our troubled family members, Dana really internalizes the idea that Rufus is HER family, and that she has no choice over this situation, so she might as well do what she can for him, try to influence him in some positive way, and ultimately to recognize that we all (literally and symbolically) have ancestors on both sides of this system--this is what it MEANS to say that the system has shaped the world we all live in.
ReplyDeleteHistorically, Rufus is all of our ancestor, as is Alice. And that's a strange relationship between the present and the past that this novel compels readers to grapple with.
While I read the novel, I was also confused and taken aback that Dana kept forgiving Rufus for the atrocities that he was committing, whether it was to her or any of the other slaves on the Weylin plantation. One of my guesses is that Rufus is family to Dana (albeit many generations previous), and we tend to allow our family to make more mistakes and excuse them for it. Another big part of this is how short Dana has really known Rufus. Because of the concept of how time moves way faster in the past timeline vs. the present, Dana gets to know Rufus in short increments throughout his life. This could cause her to still think of him as the little boy she saved in the river, pointing towards why she excuses him of all these horrible things in the future.
ReplyDeleteWhen reading the novel I was very upset that Dana continued to forgive Rufus for his actions while enabling to hurt Alice. I found her attentiveness to Rufus and disregard to Alice deeply upsetting. But I think one of the main reasons Dana forgives Rufus while being so cold towards Alice is out of survival. Given the time period Rufus holds all the power and if Dana were to give Rufus the cold shoulder she most likely would find herself or someone else on the plantation in a dangerous situation. With that said I don't think Dana is consciously forgiving Rufus for this purpose, unlike Alice who (sometimes) puts on a show to satisfy Rufus Dana is being genuine with her emotions towards Rufus and her leniency towards him. I believe it is because of her genuine care for Rufus which makes it sometimes difficult to see Dana as a sympathetic character at times. I feel like if she explicitly stated that she was only doing what she needed to do to keep everyone safe and ensure the birth of Hagar I could understand her more. But I find it hard to understand why she loves Rufus so much (in his older years) with all he has put her through.
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