How Dana’s Influence Fails in Kindred by Octavia Butler
In Octavia Butler's Kindred, Dana introduces Rufus to her 20th century ideas of romance that causes Rufus to be a morally inferior individual. From Dana’s second trip to the past, Rufus has been influenced from witnessing Dana and Kevin’s healthy interracial relationship, and tries to morph a 19th century slave-master relationship into what he has witnessed from Dana’s "Utopia". Not only does Dana's relationship with Kevin facilitate Rufus's behavior, but Dana needs Alice to birth Rufus's child, so deep down she knows that somehow, at some point, Rufus has to get Alice pregnant for her to exist.
Throughout all of Dana and Kevin's trips to the Weylin plantation, Rufus is exposed to a new dynamic that doesn't exist in 19th century America. His views on relationships begin to shift due the new presence of a interracial relationship, but also Dana's direct influence on him. This direct influence, Dana actively exposing Rufus to modern views, contorts Rufus's view of what love is to be something that it is not. When Rufus tells Dana of his feelings for Alice on page 163, it is unclear what he truly means. Rufus says, "I know you, Dana. You want Kevin the way I want Alice"(Butler 163). Rufus never explicitly says that he loves Alice, but only compares his emotions to how he believes Dana feels. This example demonstrates how Kevin does not know how to love between a white and black person, and only tries to mimic what he sees from what he believes to be a Utopian interracial relationship. These ideals he tries to apply to his life as a plantation owner become twisted and contorted when combined with the societal standards put on him as a white slave owner in the 19th century. Thus Dana's attempts at making her lineage less violent, Alice being raped by Rufus to bring Hagard into existence, fails, because Rufus ultimately can't separate love from ownership in the end, and 19th century societal standards eventually overcome Dana's influence. Rufus's idea of love becomes indistinguishable from authority and power because he has no consistent model for affection as he grows up and forms relationships.
Beginning when Rufus was a child, Dana tries to ingrain the idea that black people are not inferior to white people, and should not be treated inferiorly either. This effort by Dana not only goes to waste, but actually makes Rufus's situation worse because she is only at the Weylin plantation for short periods of time, and can't fully make her impact the way she could if she never left as Rufus progressed in age. Because Dana is not able to fully make her mark on Rufus, Rufus is still brought up on morals popular in the 1800s, while the 19th century morals Dana has taught him may still linger in the back of his mind.
Rufus seeing Dana as a figure to follow and learn off of is negative is negative in the grand scheme. It's almost like he wants to convince Dana that he is like her, even though everyone else around him knows him for his worse self. For example, when Alice mentions that Rufus doesn't beat her when Dana's around, but instead gets someone else to beat her for him, "He arranges for other people to hit me [Alice]" (228). Rufus versus someone else hitting Alice has the same physical effect, but the reason Rufus bestows the duties on another person while Dana is at the plantation is to appeal and appear to conform to Dana's beliefs, his figure of authority. Because Dana is the only person who treats Rufus with compassion when she's at the plantation (especially when he's younger), Rufus grows to crave her approval and attempts to reshape himself, superficially, according to her principles. A further instance of this is when Alice told Dana that she needed to see the papers to believe him, "Did he show you any free papers?" when Dana never thinks about not believing him when he says that to her (235). This example indicates how Rufus manipulates Dana’s trust while Alice, who knows him in all respects, has learned to doubt promises he makes.
Rufus would not have gone to the extent that he had if he didn't try to enforce the modern idea of interracial relationships and love. He would have instead been more a cog in the machine for slavery like his father, and put less emotion into it. Because he puts all of his emotions into his work, people like Alice have to suffer more. No normal slave owner would keep one concubine ("love") for himself, delude himself into believing it is love, and play the mind games that Rufus did to Alice. These actions were purely because Rufus was chasing the type of love that Dana and Kevin had for each other while they played master-concubine, a role they took on to survive the time period. Once again, this extra emotional damage on one person is caused by Rufus feeling as though he has to find one love modeled off of Dana and Kevin, and he tries to do so in his context, which in my opinion is impossible.
The relationship between Rufus and Dana is complex and builds up to end in a multifaceted tragedy of injury, death, and regret. Dana wishes to teach modern morals to Rufus and change the violent and unromantic ancestry she has, but her influence isn't strong enough and is confined by the time she has in the past, and the power she lacks in the world of antebellum slavery. Rufus takes on some modern ideas and twists them into extreme ownership and control. This persona Rufus takes on forces to Alice suffer and pushes her to commit suicide, as this route appeared to Alice as the only one she could take. In the end, Butler shows that one person's virtuous intentions aren't enough to change the deeply rooted system of slavery and individual flaws.
-Ava Roberts
I really like your analysis of Rufus's desire for Dana's approval in the fourth paragraph, and how he tries to act like a superficially better person around her, something that at least partly succeeds, as seen in how Dana has a repeated pattern of thinking that Rufus would never do some bad thing to her, only for him to do that to her anyways. I think this ties into typical patterns of relationships that turn abusive after initially seeming healthy, and Olly's analysis of how Dana considers herself different from the other enslaved people.
ReplyDeleteYou describe Kevin and Dana's relationship as healthy. I think that the healthiness of Kevin and Dana's relationship is... it's not abusive, and I wouldn't jump to say it's unhealthy, but I'd be slow to label it healthy as well. There are issues that Butler subtly highlights: Kevin's expectations that Dana will type his stuff; the power dynamic (age, race, gender, employment) between them that already skews towards Kevin; the way Dana conflates him with other, more dangerous white men in the 19th century; and Kevin's ignorance and tendency to, as Mr Mitchell says, put his foot in his mouth.
I think that, to build on what you said in the fourth paragraph, Rufus has an oedipus complex surrounding Dana that results at least partially from the obsessive behavior his mother modeled for him, and he then projected that complex onto Alice at least somewhat, impacting whatever "feelings" were already there.
I think one of the most upsetting aspects of Kindred is how futile Dana's attempts to make Rufus a better person are. We often discussed in class how the book evokes the question of "what would you do if you were put in the past," and how people tend to say they would try to help slaves or change the system. We see, with Dana's efforts, just how hard it really is to have any effect on people when slavery is so engrained in them as "the way things work." Throughout the story, even when Rufus (at least thinks he) is trying to be a good person, he can't resist the urge to exercise his power over others. Great post!
ReplyDeleteI agree that individually Dana doesn't have a major effect on the time, but her kind nature, and efforts to do so are admirable. I also agree that Dana's relationship with Rufus is very weird and complex. Dana's character is a very reasonable character (for the most part), and even as she moves her line of acceptance of Rufus, it's mostly out of necessity for survival. Because her actions are so logical (not just, but for the most part, imo), do you think she almost represents the ideal reader in what they like to think they would do?
ReplyDeleteThis is a detailed and compelling account of how Dana's efforts to exert some influence on Rufus's feelings and behavior toward Alice, and it illustrates nicely how futile and even ironically counterproductive these efforts turn out to be. Is it "better" for Rufus to be obsessively "in love" with Alice, to the exclusion of any other enslaved women? Does Dana just want to "feel better" about the violent and rapacious ancestry she is discovering? Like all of us when we contemplate our indebtedness to the long era of slavery for shaping the world we live in today, it's hard to know what to DO with this information. It makes sense that Dana badly wants to imagine that her family represents an exception, but Rufus and Alice remain fully anchored in their time period--and Alice never shares in Rufus's "utopian" view of a possible future where they could be "really married."
ReplyDeleteAs far as Alice is concerned, Dana's efforts to "soften" Rufus just make her situation worse--arguably they are the *reason* she is enslaved in the first place. But we DO see some impact from Dana's influence when Rufus does free HIS children, including Dana's ancestor Hagar. This does little to ease the suffering of the other enslaved people on the plantation, however.