Dana and Rufus's relationship

Kindred is built on the relationship between Rufus and Dana. The importance of their relationship is reflective in the books opening, which starts with Dana saving Rufus from Dana. Dana is sent back in time supposedly everytime Rufus is met with life threatening situations, but after her first couple journeys back when Rufus gets older and turns into the man he is for life, saving Rufus turns into a daunting task for Dana that she attempts only to keep her protect her family lineage.

Rufus grows up to be, as essentially every white male of the antebellum south, a person that does terrible things. Dana, a person from the future who I believed would be the main one to notice his behavior because it is not something she is used to, is the last person to comment about his actions. A specific part in the novel that made me question Dana and Rufus’s relationship and whether she somehow liked him out of all the bad things that he had done was on page 186, Kevin comes back to Dana from spending five years in the north, and both Dana and Kevin start to escape when they run into Rufus. When Rufus sees them escape, he pulls out his rifle threatening to shoot them. Dana’s reaction to Rufus’s actions baffled me. “People kept warning me about him, dropping hints that he was meaner than he seemed to be. Sarah had warned me and most of the time, she loved him like one of the sons she had lost. And I had seen the marks he occasionally left on Alice. But he had never been that way with me- not even when he was angry enough to be”. What confused me was how Dana felt that Rufus, this man who raped a woman and kept her from her husband and treats slaves poorly (or at least as any other plantation owner would, but again seeing that she was not used to slave owners would think that what he was doing was bad) would not be mean. It seemed that she did not take notice in his terrible actions till they somehow affected her, hence “he had never been that way with me”.

Initially reading the scene, I felt Dana as selfish. Although I won’t go into detail, it also reminded me of her demeanor and weird actions when telling Alice that Rufus told her to talk to Alice about sleeping with him, which made me think about Dana in an even worse way. But then I thought back to Dana’s situation. She had to go back to the antebellum south and was essentially treated in the same way the other slaves were. But her relationship with Rufus sort of protected her, kept her from being hurt more than she could have. If I was in Dana’s situation, perhaps I also would form a bond with Rufus that blinds me of the various things he did because I would be more grateful for getting “off the hook” in certain situations. The question to ask then: is it selfish for a slave to be in a slightly better situation than other slaves and ignore how the other slaves are treated? I do not know.