Rufus: Man or Monster?

Like Dana, I find it hard to not forgive Rufus, even when he has done something horrible and manipulative, so it surprises me that everyone in the class seems to have hardly any sympathy for him. He is actually in quite a bad situation; he grew up with a crazy woman for a mother, and a cold father, and his only "friends" as a child--Nigel and Alice--are unavailable to him (for friendship and love respectively) as he grows older. (Some people will probably complain at this point that I am trying the lessen the cruelty of the slave owners; I recognize that they did many terrible things, but the slaveholders were still complex people). Today we would probably look at his erratic behavior and, provided he wasn't enslaving anyone in the present time, diagnose him with a variety of psychiatric disorders related to neglect and identity confusion. I don't think he is bad to the core, and that is why I still sometimes find him sympathetic.

Strangely, I found it harder to like Kevin when he comes back after five years in the nineteenth century than to like Rufus throughout the novel. It must have been the contrast between Kevin's earlier kindness and his harshness when he returns to the present. The situation with Kevin is also more confused because although he usually seems very progressive and egalitarian, he exhibits flashes on strange behavior that makes you question his relationship with Dana. His insistence about her typing his manuscripts makes him seem less egalitarian and modern than he may have seemed at first. Of course, Rufus is no more predictable, but his unpredictability is expected because he lived in a time where it was okay to be kind sometimes and cruel other times. This makes him almost easier to understand. 

Finally, I'd like to comment on a remark that was made in class last week. Someone said something about whether or not Rufus was a "monster". I would like to argue that he cannot be a monster because Kindred is not a book about Dana's relationship with a monster. This is not a story about a monster, because a monster can exist in many time, and what makes this book so complicated and interesting in the effect of an era on a person's personality. I don't like the phrase "a man of his time" --it seems like a cop-out, a way to avoid passing judgement or blame--but I think there is a lot of validity to the phrase. Rufus was formed by his time, and although he has unique characteristics (we don't know if he was kinder or crueler than most of the men around him, though he was certainly different), I cannot imagine that he would act the same way in 1976 as he did in 1815.