Although at first Dana is fine surviving in the past as a free black woman on a slave-holding plantation in the South, the real trouble starts after Kevin comes back with her. If in the first trip together they share a similar outlook on the atrocious by modern standards treatment in the slave-holding world, then Kevin becomes tempered to the life there. It is even more obvious how adjusted he became when he returned to 1976 and had trouble re-adjusting to everything that is now so new to him. The difference is all the more shocking to Dana after she comes back because Kevin had no choice to adjust and get used to the atrocities of the time but Dana was only gone a short while from Maryland so she basically met a completely different person from the one she married and knew.
In addition to the problems with Kevin and the tensions created in that relationship by such an arrangement, it is obviously disturbing to Dana that efforts to raise Rufus as a well-mannered and normal (by 1976 standards) individual completely fall through. Without her guidance, Rufus quickly turns into the spoiled child who emulates the father he hates but without any of the restrictions or morals his father had but hid. I hate to say it, but Tom Weylin seemed rather fair to his slaves but hides his own sentiments so as to hide weakness. Tom is almost as business-minded with his family as he is with his children, instilling fear in Rufus from an early age. The boy ends up with a life-time fear of blame and justifies his actions with completely inverted logic. This way he can do what he wants and keep the people he wants while blaming his victims for putting themselves in such a situation
In the end, the story is from Dana's perspective. Dana is also not without fault, so although her outlook hasn't tempered to the time's like Kevin's has and she still manages to be a caring individual unlike the grown Rufus, she also has her own dilemma. The circumstances of her time travel have led her to believe that her actions are essential to her own survival. She believes that she needs to be Rufus' and Alice's matchmaker, forcing Alice to comply against her wishes. It truly is messed up that Dana forces a girl in a similar position to herself to have sex with the master just because Dana is worried that otherwise she will never be born, something she has no proof of. What if Dana just did nothing, would she just disappear off the face of the Earth? Butler never gives enough detail as to the specifics of the time travel to be able to justify Dana's quite terrible actions, as much as she hates to admit it. Perhaps something will be revealed later in the book to provide explanation for the first scene in the book, and maybe that'll explain the weird time travel that otherwise leaves me completely unsatisfied with the character's motives.
I feel like Rufus's father was a bit more fair in terms of sticking to his word, but Rufus seems to have a tiny bit more morality. The thing about Rufus though is that he relies so heavily on his emotions to make decisions that he's really unpredictable.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that Rufus and Alice wouldn't have had Hagar without Dana there... it's weird because I'm trying to think-- Dana's family history involved herself in the 1800's even before she knew about Rufus, so does she just follow the same actions that the first Dana that manipulated her history have?? Sorta a weird question, and I'm not sure I phrased it the greatest.
Even though I shared your dissatisfaction with the motives of the characters, after finishing the book I can understand why Butler created them like that. The "moral" of the time travel is that it forces the characters to make these seemingly impossible decisions. For example the decision that Dana has to make between convincing her ancestor to get raped or face the possibility of being erased from existence. There is seemingly no right answer and her choice leaves us with a bid of a bad taste in our mouths after reading it. But in the end Butler is using the complexities of time travel to try to impart some of the brutal truths of this era.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I can understand your disapproval of Dana's actions in convincing Alice to have sex with Rufus, I don't think you can really fault her for it. Her very existence is dependent on this, and who knows what other ramifications there might be if Rufus and Alice don't have children. She is probably terrified by having been pulled back in time, and she knows that her only purpose in being there is to make sure she is born, so I definitely have some sympathy for her.
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