This post is going to be a collection of thoughts about Rufus, and will probably be filled with a bunch of different ideas all jumbled together. Rufus is an interesting character. We've seen him at various points in life and he's incredibly different every time Dana travels back to see him. So I can't quite figure out what I think about him because he's almost a different person every chapter. I have to admit that I have been sympathetic towards him at some points in the novel, but it changes every time I blink, so I don't really know what to say about his character. Moving on then.
In class we talked about whether Rufus and Alice's relationship (or whatever you want to call it) is like an unrequited love, and I think this is a difficult question to answer because I'm not sure if Rufus knows what love is. Was that an exaggeration? Maybe. But I think that Rufus' life experiences have really skewed his idea about love. We talked in class today about how Rufus seems to only have unstable relationships in his life. His mother, who did seem to love him unconditionally, horrible as she was, abandoned the family. His father thinks he's an idiot and is incredibly harsh. You could say that Dana is one of his friends but he's conditioned to see her as a slave and she keeps leaving too. So not a whole lot of love here. I don't deny that Rufus doesn't have the capability to understand feelings, but with this kind of upbringing I'm sure it's very confusing for him, and that might explain why his love for Alice is so...unconventional. We talked in class about how this has made him more forceful, and we can definitely see that in his "relationship" with Alice. He exercises extreme control in this relationship because it seems to be the only one that he has any control over in the first place. Maybe considering Rufus' situation, we can call this an unrequited love. We'd have to twist the definition of the word "love" a little bit though.
While I think this "love" is really quite pathetic, it does make Rufus more human. At least the feelings for Alice part, raping her makes him more despicable, and once again, I don't know how to feel about Rufus because I understand he's been shaped by his environment but at the same time I don't want to condone his actions at all. So, unrequited love? Or at least unrequited something? What do you think about Rufus' relationships and his version of love?
I think you bring up a really good question, that is, does Rufus know what love is? If he claims he does (and he seems to use the word quite a bit), how is Rufus' definition of love different than ours? It seems as though Rufus hasn't gotten a very good example of love from his parents' relationship. Tom Weylin seemed to have just picked a pretty girl who couldn't read after his first wife died, and there is very little positive feelings between Margaret and Tom Weylin. If he doesn't see love between his parents, maybe he can see it between the slaves, however, his lower opinion of African Americans may make him discredit the relationships he sees there (also, he probably hates the love that Alice feels towards Isaac). With no one that he feels he can turn to as a role model for good relationships (Dana may be the only exception), it might be easier to imagine why his relationships with Alice and Dana are turning out so poorly.
ReplyDeleteIf we are to take Rufus’ actions at face value, they would be characterized as nothing less than abhorrent. However, as he himself echoes time and time again, his intention is/was never to hurt Alice, referring both to her rebuffs of his advances and during the onset of her recovery. In this situation, he is being as sympathetic a character that he is capable of being, and though it doesn’t mean we forgive him, it makes us recognize just how helpless we are in his transformation.
ReplyDeleteAt its core, these dynamics reflect the crude misogynist air that is still prevalent today; Rufus has considered Alice a companion for his entire life, and by giving her special treatment in his heart, he believes that she owes him her affection. He feels, for lack of a better term, “friend-zoned” by her, and given his history of poor relationships, this is a blow to his pride. Adding on to the fact that he considers her to be lower than him, her refusal seems even less acceptable. In today’s society, we have heard many instances of men delivering and even following through with threats when women reject them. Until recently, there was an overwhelming consensus that the woman should just “take one for the team”. Now the mainstream belief is that women have the right to refuse. But in Alice’s case, as a slave, she has no rights, and the difference between taking one for the team and exercising on her own volition could be the difference between life and death.
I think that Rufus' relationship could be initially described as unrequited love, but the things he's done no longer makes it love. His position gives him power over Alice from the start and he uses it to pretty much wreck her life. Rufus has grown up in an environment of manipulation and anger, so I can understand how he got to where he is but I think being a decent person also takes personal effort. Dana tells Rufus that his behavior is bad but he refutes the idea of letting Alice being happy and doesn't try to change, or even realize what he's doing is immoral.
ReplyDeleteI agree that initially it was more of unrequited love. But, the minute he tried to force her to love him, it wasn't anything more than abuse. There is definitely something there that unrequited, and I wouldn't say it was love, but it's more of just wanting someone to acknowledge you and never be mad at you. He seems to just want something to toy around with.
DeleteI think Rufus' feelings toward Alice are starting to resonate between a dangerous mix of both love and obsession/possession. Rufus values Alice in a way that Tom Weylin doesn't with the black women he uses, but Rufus also wants Alice to a level that is blinding him. He isn't looking for Alice to love him back anymore, or even consent particularly--just to have her, whether he has to hurt her first or if she comes willingly. In this sense, she in his mind has become more of a goal to obtain/*thing* he wants. Whether the lopsided, overprotective love from his mother and distance from his father influenced Rufus to his current state, it's very possible.
ReplyDeleteYou saw me squirm in class when trying to address the incredibly sticky question of Rufus's "love" for Alice. It definitely seems the wrong word to use, given the circumstances, and it sounds like a ridiculous minimization of the effects of slavery to lament that it leaves the slave-owner unable to love. Yet there is a sense in which this is true, and it has profound consequences: slavery brutalizes people on both sides of the power divide, and it's in no way *equating* the harm to slave-owners with the suffering of the slaves to point out (in this novel) how badly Rufus's social/emotional capacity is damaged by his social context. He is unable to love, and yet he has the capacity to imagine an alternate future for himself and Alice. Do we "prefer" his "loving" serial rape of Alice to his father's more utilitarian, dehumanizing method? That's not a judgment I feel qualified to make--they're both awful in a whole range of different ways. But Rufus's situation is morally complicated in a way that his father's is not, and this makes it interesting for Butler's speculative-fiction purposes.
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