The Map Quest

A very crucial scene in Octavia Butler’s Kindred is when Dana has been drawn back into Rufus’s time and has a map of Maryland with her. Rufus wants Dana to burn the map and says that she would be in great trouble if his father saw her with the map. When she doesn’t want to burn it, he blackmails her by saying that he won’t mail the letter to Kevin until she burns the map. The paragraphs following are particularly key.

I did not fully see how important the scene is and how much this couple of paragraphs foreshadows until after I had finished the book.

“He waited, watching me. I wanted to ask him what he would do with my letter if I didn’t burn the map. I wanted to ask, but I didn’t want to bear an answer that might send me out to face another patrol or earn another whipping. I wanted to do things the easy way if I could.”

After dropping the map into the fire, Dana says

“’I can manage without it you know,’ I said quietly. ‘No need for you to,’ said Rufus. ‘You’ll be all right here. You’re home.’” (143).

When I first read this scene, Rufus and Dana were kind of scaring me because I felt like their relationship could turn ugly with this new element of blackmailing each other. Now after finishing the book, other elements pop out at me. Dana says that she wants to do things the easy way. Which makes sense of course since she wants to avoid a whipping. However, it also shows a major sign of Dana breaking with the system. Later in Kindred, Alice asks Dana if she would go to Rufus and she says no. I think that Dana really does mean what she says and is acting honestly in the moment, but based on what we have seen, it makes us wonder if push came to the shove, would Dana go to him to avoid all of the physical pain.

Thus near the end when Dana is in such a situation, she thinks about how easy it would be to let Rufus rape her and although this is very disturbing, it makes more sense that she would have those thoughts.

The ambiguous first line of the prologue was also brought up during class, “I lost an arm on my last trip home” (9). In the beginning, we assume that “home” is the present day.  However, in light of Rufus’s later comment that she is home on the plantation with him, the ambiguity of the line shines forth. I think that this first line is quite intentionally ambiguous and so much so that the reader isn’t supposed to know which “home” it is referring to. It seems as though the point is that at this point, Dana has spent so much time and become so assimilated and attached in the past that even she does not know what to consider “home” anymore.

Oh Rufe.

Throughout the novel, I had been holding out for Rufus despite his later atrocities. I couldn’t help but have hope that he would turn out different from his father and not become the typical slaveholder. Looking at this all realistically, Rufus does treat his slaves much better than most of the slaveholders of the time. And I realize the necessity of taking into account that he is a product of his time, but since he has been exposed to these radical future ideals, it’s almost like a slap in the face. If Rufus, who has this  greater exposure, cannot beat the system of slavery in the south, who can?

The final scene between Rufus and Dana does not seem like the "final showdown" between the good and evil characters. This scene is much too sick and twisted to be at all glorified in my mind. I am having an extremely difficult time wrapping my head around this scene because so much is going on, both explicitly and subtly.

There are so many levels of complexity working together in this last scene. Rufus is going to rape Dana, his descendant. Dana is thinking about how easy it would be to let Rufus rape here. He doesn't want to hurt her, but he and she both know that he can and will if she resists. As it is, Dana and Rufus have had a very complicated relationship throughout his entire life. For Dana, she has been with Rufus almost continuously for the past several months, only going back to her own time for a few days. However,  Rufus has had Dana with him in relatively short chunks of time over the past twenty some years of his life.

Dana seems to think that they both need each other equally, she even says at one point that Kevin "doesn't understand how much they need each other" (or something to that effect). While it may be true that they both need each other, their roles in each others lives are extremely complex and differ drastically for each character. Both literally need the other to survive, Rufus needs Dana to keep saving his life and Dana needs Rufus to start her family blood line. However, Dana starts out as more of a motherly figure for Rufus and then as their age gap closes he begins to view her in more of a romantic way as the emotional half to his physical relationship with Alice. Thus making their relationship even more twisted.

It's difficult for me to talk about the relationship between Dana and Rufus in light of the final scene without ending up confused and feeling slightly nauseous. There is so much to discuss but in the end it all boils down to context. Rufus has spend his entire life raised in this awful oppressive system, and though what he does makes me sick, I can't help but feel sorry for him. Octavia Butler has succeeded in making me even more disgusted in what the antebellum south does to people and how easily humanity is broken.