The recurrent theme in Octavia Butler’s Kindred of Dana forgiving Rufus came up several times during class discussions. This got me thinking more about the relationship between Dana and Rufus. It is easier to think that I would not have forgiven Rufus so easily for his repeat offenses. However, after further consideration, it makes more sense to me that Dana would forgive him so readily.
This change in my viewpoint came when I considered my own first experience in a setting so different from my own but with obvious culture ties. The summer after my freshman year of high school, I went on an Appalachian Service Project trip with a church that a family friend belongs to. We went to Inez, Kentucky to help repair the house of a family living in severe poverty. To give a bit of context, this town is almost entirely white. I was told that there was only one black family in the entire county. I spent a lot of time playing with the children of the family whose house I was working on. For me this was interesting because I have a little sister who was the same age as one of the children. These little six and seven year old girls went around dropping F-bombs and swearing like mad at everyone and everything because they didn’t know any better. At home, I would have been appalled and never would have tolerated my sister treating me in that way, but because of the context that I was in, I found myself instead forgiving these children and feeling sad for them as I tried to set them a good example.
Obviously my experience in KY was nothing like Dana’s experience on the Weylin Plantation, but I can say that because of this I was able to understand Dana’s readiness to forgive perhaps not only because of her familial and emotional ties, but also because the context is so different from what she is used to.
An additional subtext to the specific questions of forgiveness Dana contemplates is the larger question of "forgiving" the holders and traders and exploiters of slaves in our own history. American slavery represents one of the great large-scale human crimes (or holocausts) of modern times, and we've had nothing like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that has addressed South Africa's much more recent transition away from a racially segregated society. By making Rufus Dana's *ancestor*, Butler forces her to come to terms with the fact that her own existence is bound up in the history of slaveholding, too. "Forgiving" Rufus in part means coming to terms with the unspoken historical underpinnings of her relationship with Kevin.
ReplyDelete