While reading Kindred, I was especially intrigued by “The
Rope,” the section of the novel in which Alice hangs herself and Rufus attempts
to replace her with Dana, because Dana won’t try to escape. Rufus seems to
truly believe that his actions are reasonable, that Dana will grow to stop
hating him, and he seems to see no wrongs with his repeated rapes and other
punishments towards slaves.
Continuing to look at this novel from an (extremely non-professional)
psychological viewpoint, I think that both his actions and Dana’s actions are quite
interesting and can be examined further.
For Dana I think it’s extremely interesting the lengths which
she is willing to go for supposed survival. Once Dana realizes that she is in
the Antebellum south, her first instinct is a sort of ‘kill or be killed’
instinct. She fights the man who tries to capture her at Alice’s house, and she
brings a knife along with her during future visits so that she can fight any
slaveowner who comes after her. However, upon realizing that she is the great
x~5 grandaughter of Rufus, she proceeds to willingly hand her life over to his
family in order to make sure that her family ends up forming, and in turn, herself
being born. I think that this intense self-preservation, to the point where she
is willing to give up all of her ideals and server the very man who she
despises is really interesting. This is something that we see extremely often
in so many parts of life – prisoners will give up their country or friends in
order to be spared from torture, death, or prison sentences. Friends will rat
eachother out to teachers in order to look good. Sports players will cheat and
lie in order to stop themselves from getting punished. And more. I think that the
way that humans are so willing to give up integrity for self-preservation (and sometimes
even less, such as money) is extremely interesting and even sometimes
frightening, to say the least. I won’t lie and say that I haven’t cheated and
bit my tongue against wrongdoings in order to save my own skin, but it’s
something that I regret, and I think it’s valuable for us all to look inside
ourselves and attempt just a little bit harder to be more righteous and
self-sacrificing.
This thought isn’t as fleshed out, but I also think Rufus’s
actions towards his slaves are really interesting. Although he is being taught
by Dana that what he is doing is wrong, the vast majority of his society is
telling him that raping and abusing slaves is perfectly fine, so that is what
he continuously does. His character is really interesting because he is portrayed
as just trying to protect himself in some ways, and instead of just trying to
be evil, such as his father sometimes seems, Rufus really just seems to think
that nothing he does is wrong (excluding his suicidal tendencies after Alice’s
death.) I haven’t fully explicated these thoughts, but the way that our parents
and society form who we are is really interesting, and a good way to explain divides
in understanding between political parties, where one side simply can not
understand how the other side can believe a specific idea.
Unrelated to Kindred, but I was thinking about Libra and conspiracy
theories and found this. It’s worth a watch and a bit of research/reading –
really really scary stuff about the media we intake.
I think what you say about Rufus is really important. He is being pressured by society to do all the terrible things that he is doing. While that doesn't excuse his actions, it is meaningful that he isn't an inherently evil person. I think is asks us to look at ourselves and see how we are influenced to do things that we shouldn't.
ReplyDeleteI agree with both you and Jake; as readers we tend to want to blame each individual character for their wrongdoings as "antagonists" but to be quite honest, I'm not sure if there are any complete antagonists in this book. Every character, including Rufus and Tom Weylin, is a product of their society, and whether or not their integrity/moral values (if any) were different had little to do with their actions - because male white owner-female black slave rape was thought of as normal and almost obligatory, it's indeed difficult to know to what extent Rufus truly thought of Alice as human, rather than his object.
ReplyDeleteThese are two really interesting psychological profiles! I think it's definitely accurate that Dana's main goal from the beginning is the preservation of herself and her family line, and she's willing to go to any lengths to guarantee her own birth. I don't think we can really fault her for that- as you said, survival instinct is more or less the more basic urge that humans have, and we've all done unsavory things to save our own skins. I also agree that Rufus has been molded by his surroundings into the evil person he is, but that of course doesn't excuse his actions, it only explains them.
ReplyDeleteI definitely understand what you're saying. In someone else's post, they said Rufus was a victim because he grew up in the time period where rape and sub human treatment was normal. However, having said that, it's reasonable to understand that and see where that came from, but I don't think it's a good reason to really call them a victim of their on behavior.
ReplyDeleteI think you make a very interesting connection by showing that what Dana had to go through was a universal situation that applies even to our lives today. She has to go back in time as a black women in the slave era to protect her family lineage, so it is extremely hard to fault her for many things.
ReplyDeleteI see where you are coming from and I agree for the most part. Dana I feel is somebody who wants so badly to look out for others and put the slaves first, but she has self interests and her actions can get complicated quickly (ex. talking to a slave man--> he gets sold, killing Rufus-->all the slaves are sold.)
ReplyDeleteI also saw that video, it scares me and is one of the many things in the media and our social realm that makes us more into conspiracy theories. At a certain point it's not really a conspiracy anymore. Also interesting stuff about Rufus and
ReplyDeleteDana. Cool post. We should talk more about conspiracies in class.