Rufus: a complicated person
Rufus Weylin. A horrible person. A great person. A lover. A rapist. Ultimately a conflicted person.
Why is he all of these things? The answer is a complicated question involving elements of psychology which I don't understand, but he is a product of his time. Despite all of the things that he did, including continuously raping Alice, mistreating Dana, and mistreating himself leading to Dana's need to return without wishing to come, I do not think Rufus is at heart a bad person. He was simply taught that he could do whatever he wished to do to black people (slaves). I don't believe that most slave owners were much different from Rufus. Of course, there are people that are elementally horrible, who would treat humans terribly no matter what, but I think the vast majority of people grew up with the slave owner complex in their DNA, meaning that they were taught that Black People weren't humans with human rights.
As evidenced by the way that when Dana taught Rufus to not use the n-word when he was younger, I believe that most white slave owners(or those white people sympathetic with slave owners) could be taught at a young age that using words such as the n-word were not okay. This is why I think that slavery was simply a herd mentality for white people: a huge case of many kids being taught that their actions were acceptable. Those who were not taught that these actions were acceptable by their parents were taught by everyone around them. I think that these same people, if raised in the 21st century, would be as anti-slavery as everyone else. This isn't to excuse all of the horrible things that happened; slavery was a dark time in American history. I simply think that white slave owners (for the most part) were taught that their actions were okay, and acted on those actions creating a nightmare for black people.
Why is he all of these things? The answer is a complicated question involving elements of psychology which I don't understand, but he is a product of his time. Despite all of the things that he did, including continuously raping Alice, mistreating Dana, and mistreating himself leading to Dana's need to return without wishing to come, I do not think Rufus is at heart a bad person. He was simply taught that he could do whatever he wished to do to black people (slaves). I don't believe that most slave owners were much different from Rufus. Of course, there are people that are elementally horrible, who would treat humans terribly no matter what, but I think the vast majority of people grew up with the slave owner complex in their DNA, meaning that they were taught that Black People weren't humans with human rights.
As evidenced by the way that when Dana taught Rufus to not use the n-word when he was younger, I believe that most white slave owners(or those white people sympathetic with slave owners) could be taught at a young age that using words such as the n-word were not okay. This is why I think that slavery was simply a herd mentality for white people: a huge case of many kids being taught that their actions were acceptable. Those who were not taught that these actions were acceptable by their parents were taught by everyone around them. I think that these same people, if raised in the 21st century, would be as anti-slavery as everyone else. This isn't to excuse all of the horrible things that happened; slavery was a dark time in American history. I simply think that white slave owners (for the most part) were taught that their actions were okay, and acted on those actions creating a nightmare for black people.
One thing I always reflect on when I read _Kindred_ is how Butler in no way makes it at all appealing to even imagine being Rufus--there's no sense in which he is in an enviable position, or seems to enjoy the power and privilege he exercises on the plantation. We see slavery as exacting profound damage on both black and white people. Rufus is a product of his environment--the whole point is that being a slaveowner is *not* "in his DNA"--it's a learned set of behaviors, and we see this "education" happening from a very young age. The early N-word conversation is revealing: there's no sense in which Rufus even realizes it's "wrong"--it is simply the word he has been taught to use, and it reflects his social position (and that of the person being referred to). And Dana is only able to teach him not to (always) use it around her (he still does, occasionally)--he will still use it every day around the plantation, when talking to and about the slaves who live there and when talking to other white people. She can only make so much of a dent in his personality--the force of his surrounding social context is so enormous.
ReplyDeleteYes, I agree that rufus was one of the most real, sympathetic, heartbreaking characters in the book. The fact that we saw him as a child, recognized his ability to change so quickly in response to one encounter with dana, in which she reprimanded him and immediately following he helped her escape despite being taught that it's wrong, made us know that he had potential in him to be like someone in our present time. It was his environment that turned him into the man he became, one who struggled with healthy relationships and was engrained to treat humans like objects, and we know he did not have to become that but now he was set in it. One of the most affecting scenes of the book was after alice killed herself and rufus confessed to dana how lonely he was all the time. Rufus was dealt a bad hand. I believe that in a lot of ways his life was more deprived than those of the slaves on his plantation.
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