Is Rufus that bad? Well kinda...

In class yesterday, we talked about how Octavia Butler doesn't just portray the affects of slavery on blacks, but also on whites. However, she doesn't just use Kevin as our white reference point from the 21st century, but she also uses Rufus. We see how Dana's ideas affect Rufus in a unique way that the society of the 1810s and 1820s couldn't have accepted, making us see Rufus in whole new light of... sympathy?
From the beginning, we see that Rufus isn't "as bad" as his father, Tom Weylin. He doesn't treat the slaves as badly, as he is even buddies (to a certain extent) with Nigel. He still has many issues, which we will just begin touching on, but he seems to be a bit kinder than most. Even Dana cares for him a bit, and tries to influence him when he is younger, which works to a certain extent. Butler doesn't just show us a 2-D monstrous slave master, but she shows us how that slave master came to be, and how under the surface, he is much more than what we think. She shows us a 3-D slave master, making it so much harder to judge Rufus as harshly as we would like to.
Take Rufus' relationship with Alice, for example. She is literally forced into a relationship with him. She is raped multiple times, torn from her husband, pushed back into slavery after being a free woman, humiliated, and physically injured many times. Not to mention her mental injuries. Yet we see something of "true love", if we can even call it that, from Rufus. He wants Alice to love him, he wants it to be a legit relationship on an emotional level as well consent on a physical level. He even uses Kevin and Dana as inspiration for an interracial relationship. But when Alice won't let him get what he wants so easily, he resorts to what society has drilled into his mind: force her. She is a slave in the end, no matter how much he "loves" her.
What do you guys think? Can we muster up some sympathy for Rufus?

Comments

  1. UnknownApril 5, 2018 at 10:54 AM

    If Rufus were born into a modern family, he would probably do some of the same things but they would be illegal and he would be punished for them. Since he's grown up without any checks on his desires, he's likely to get worse.
    But he can be sympathetic because he's lonely and wants a peer. Being the son of a slaveholder, the only people who could acceptably be his friends are other sons of slaveholders, but there aren't any around. If he'd grown up today, he'd have friends and lose the only thing that lets us feel bad for him.

    -Reed

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  2. SolomiaApril 18, 2018 at 8:47 PM

    My main problem with Rufus is that even when he is being kind and seemingly caring, it is always for his own good. For example, he makes sure Alice is taken care of, but only up to the point that she is well, and can serve as his mistress. He is nice to Dana right up until the point that she defies him in any small way, at which point he turns very nasty very quickly. Because Kevin is more emotional than his father, when he is nice, he’s very nice, but when he is angry, he is incredibly cruel and that cruelty is driven by emotion rather than necessity.

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  3. RayaApril 20, 2018 at 7:36 PM

    I feel like Rufus is almost more dangerous. He's way too emotional about what he does, which makes him relatively unpredictable. With Tom, it was do x get y punishment, but with Rufus it's more complicated. I don't think I necessarily feel sympathy for Rufus in terms of feeling bad for him, but I feel like Butler does a good job explaining why he is the way he is.

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  4. MaggieApril 20, 2018 at 9:25 PM

    I am more of a nature than a nurture believer on this version of the famous nature vs nurture debate. I think it is crazy to say that Rufus is an inherently bad person and he would have behaved the same in the 20th or 21st centuries as he did then, just as it would be crazy to say that all of the 21st century white people would have been abolitionists if born in the 19th century. I'm sorry to say that humans have not probably evolved in those three or four generations to be better people. For these reasons, I think we have to view Rufus in his context. He is a product of the environment that he grew up in, as we are products of ours.

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  5. 羅　理愛　（スミトロ　リア）April 21, 2018 at 7:45 AM

    Personally I appreciate how deliberately Butler created her characters and avoided staying at any kind of 2D surface with them, and it was interesting to see how frustrated I get as a reader when following the plot. My mind told to hate Rufus as much as we despise his father, but he is such an intricate character who is so enwrapped in an awful system that we can't just blame him even though we want to. Even Tom Weylin was a product of the society around him; he had to punish/degrade/dehumanize his slaves because that was just how "business" worked for him, as awful as that sounds.

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