Is Rufus Truly Evil?

Throughout Kindred, we have this recurring character named Rufus who is always seen causing trouble. He is portrayed as an evil rapist, who isn’t afraid to guilt trip Dana into doing things that he wants. However, I am not sure that we can call him pure evil. It seems to me that he is a victim of circumstance. It through his experiences that he became the dangerous man he is seen as.

At the beginning of the book, we first meet Rufus as a boy. He a perfectly normal boy by today’s standards and is very nice to Dana. He has made a friend in Alice, and it seems that Alice trusts him when she states “mister Rufe won’t tell” when Dana questions if Rufus will tell his dad about Dana. However, as time passes by, Rufus gets worse and worse. He goes from being a kind little boy to a literal rapist. He moves from being very nice and timid around Dana, to yelling and threatening her when he doesn’t get what he wants. However, I don’t believe that Rufus was born evil as seen by his portrayal in his earlier years. He was simply changed as time went on.

There are two very big factors that changed Rufus. The first one is the time period that he grew up in. As the white son of a plantation owner pre-civil war, he must have grown up with beliefs that people of color are inferior to him. He must have seen other white people yelling and whipping slaves, so he thought that being mean to them was perfectly normal. As time went on, he started to change his beliefs. Even Kevin, who is person born in an era where slavery was considered evil had changed after his five years stuck in the past. It is conceivable that someone who lived in a period of slavery for their whole life would change.

The second big factor was Rufus’s father. Early in the book, we learn that Tom Weylin beat his son for disobeying him. This must have contributed to Rufus’s change. His father wanted him to be more like him, so whenever Rufus stepped out of line, he was punished. Because of this, Rufus gradually became more and more cruel, if only to avoid getting beaten. Eventually this change became permanent, and became a part of Rufus’s character.

Overall, I think that Rufus is kind of a victim here. I don’t think that him being the person who us readers see him as is necessarily his fault. Rufus’s behavior is just the result of living in an era of slavery, with a very harsh father. It is his experiences that forced him to become the man we see him as.

Dana's Dilemma

Throughout the whole book, we see that Dana has this huge internal conflict with herself. She has to decide between making a morally correct choice, and the preservation of her own life. As an African-American woman who has lived in a time of freedom, it must be incredibly hard living in the pre-civil war era. She is constantly stuck with a choice between playing nice with white people, and appealing to the slaves. On one hand, if she takes and stand with the people of her own race, she risks her very own life. However, if she constant sucks up to the slave owners and become complicit in the various tortures that slave go through, she will be going against her own morals. This has lead a huge dilemma that Dana faces.

As a person living far past the end of the civil war, it must be hard watching people suffer. She must find it incredibly repulsing to have to negotiate with Rufus and his actions towards Alice. She is given the option to either be complicit in Rufus’s desire to rape Alice, or take a stand against him, and risk getting beaten. Morally, there is an obvious choice here. It is preventing the rape of a fellow human being. However, that action has its consequences. As seen in the scene where Rufus tries to convince Dana to help him rape Alice, Rufus is prone to this seemingly bipolar disorder. At the flip of a switch, he can turn from a demur individual to a raging bully. He yells “You talk to her- talk some sense into her or you’re going to watch while Jake Edwards beats some sense into her!” (Butler 163). Dana is at risk of getting whipped for her actions. However, for me, if I were in Dana’s place, I might still defy Rufus. I might even so far as to kill Rufus. It seems to me that despite Dana’s best efforts, Rufus is just going to end up being another terrible human being. However, this course of action leads to another problem. Since Dana is a time traveler, things are somewhat complicated. We know that Rufus and Alice eventually give birth to one of Dana’s ancestors. Simply killing Rufus might end up creating a paradox, and it might erase Dana’s existence. This leads to a huge moral quandary. Should Dana allow Rufus to rape Alice so that she can continue to survive? Or should she put a stop to it, and deliver justice to a would-be rapist? As readers, what would you do if you were in Dana’s shoes?