While this in no way will encompass everything I've come to think about Rufus (because I don't think such thing is even possible), I just wanted to give my last impressions about the boy we've watched grow up throughout Kindred, especially focusing on the last scene that he is with Dana.
Throughout the book, I couldn't help but liking Rufus. To me, he was a generically good guy who was merely a product of his culture and society, thus making him do bad things. This could just be wishful thinking, benefit of the doubt, etc., but I'd like to think I'm right. Moving on, I always felt bad for him when he did bad things because I felt as though he was just acting out. He drew a gun on Kevin and Dana because he didn't want them to leave him. Instead of knowing how to express himself and explaining his emotions to make them understand how much he needs them, all he can think to do is threaten them to stay.
Another example of this poor expression occurs with Alice. I believe that Rufus actually loves her (or at least believes he loves her) but just doesn't understand how to express it in a way that she will understand and that will make her love him back. He wants her, he loves her, he gets her. The rape and all the acting out associated with Alice is all part of a misguided attempt to win her trust and her love. Rufus loves his childhood friend, he just doesn't know how to show it.
With regards to the last scene, and Rufus's attempt to rape or seduce Dana, all I see is desperation. Here is a man who has been abandoned by people he cares about through his entire life. We hear about his nightmares that Dana will leave and not come back, or will return but not save him. In this final scene, we Rufus devastated by the death of a woman he actually loved, and the confusion of loving his half black children, yet also owning them, and the subsequent contradictions associated with slavery.
I feel sorry for Rufus, and it is because I see all of this desperation that, in the end, I like him. I pity him a lot, but I think that rather than him being a genuinely bad person, he is more a product of his awful society.
1 comment:
Your views on Rufus, probably not coincidentally, closely reflect Dana's own ambivalence. She "pities" rather than "hates" him, as Alice does, and she also keeps wanting to believe that he can be "saved" in some way. And to a significant extent, he DOES do the right thing (too late, admittedly) under Dana's influence when he frees his and Alice's children (and in general when he begins to acknowledge himself as their father). This is a HUGE step from the order of the day under Tom Weylin.
Post a Comment