Rufus and Dana's friendship evolution

 


    In Octavia Butler’s Kindred, Dana travels from the present to the past and meets her ancestor Rufus. They started to have a good friendship after Dana saved Rufus from drowning. After Tom Weylin died, Rufus took over the slave plantation and started to use his power more. That’s when Dana and Rufus’s friendship started to become rocky. At the beginning of the book, Dana was a sort of mother figure to Rufus, but towards the end of the book, Rufus started to manipulate Dana into doing things for him.

    When Dana first traveled to 1815, she saved Rufus from drowning. After that moment, they had a sort of a strong friendship. I feel like Dana only gets close to Rufus because she needs him for her to be born. Dana finds out that Rufus is the father of her ancestor Hagar, and she realizes that “He had to be the one. There had to be some kind of reason for the link he and I seemed to have” (Butler 29). This quote shows that Dana needs to get close to Rufus. She also starts to be happy that she saved Rufus from the River. She says, “Still, now I had a special reason for being glad I had been able to save him” (Butler 29). This shows that once she realizes that Rufus isn’t just some kid that she saved from the river, she needs to start to bond with him so that she can make sure he stays alive and gets with Alice.

    Towards the end of Kindred, Rufus’s and Dana's friendship started to change. Ever since his father died and he became the owner of the slave plantation, Rufus started to use his power and manipulate Dana to do things for him. Rufus threatens Dana to get Alice for him or he is going to use his force on her. He tells Dana, “You can! You and nobody else. Go to her. Send her to me. I’ll have her whether you help or not. All I want you to do is fix it so I don’t have to beat her. You’re no friend of hers if you won’t do that much!” (Butler 164). This shows that Rufus has started to use his power and manipulate Dana into doing things for him. Dana starts to become sort of conflicted because Rufus wants Dana to convince Alice to have sex with him, and she doesn’t want to because she doesn’t want Rufus to hurt Alice. On the other hand, she has to do it because she needs her ancestor Hagar to be born so that she can guarantee her birth. Dana decides to talk to Alice so that she doesn’t have to get hurt by Rufus. Through this whole encounter, we as readers realize that Dana and Rufus’s relationship will never be the same again.



Works Cited
Butler, Octavia E. Kindred. Beacon Press, 1979

Comments

  1. Chloe N.H.November 29, 2025 at 2:59 PM

    Hi Antje! Rufus and Dana's relationship is a core aspect of the book, and I like how you described it in this post. I think the way that their relationship gets more and more strained and manipulative throughout the novel goes to show how ingrained slavery and the systems that upheld it was that even a kid who starts off innocent can become so horrible. Great post!

    ReplyDelete
  2. SophieDecember 1, 2025 at 10:35 AM

    Do you think Dana would have helped Rufus had 1, Alice not been her ancestor, 2, Rufus not been her ancestor, and 3, both? It's interesting to see her bias towards him and wonder if it's solely because of their relation. Do you think that changed over time?

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  3. MitchellDecember 3, 2025 at 9:00 AM

    It's pretty clear that Rufus's character evolution follows his coming of age in various ways: Dana can influence him to a larger extent when he is young, and she is this "magic" fairy godmother figure who materializes and saves his ass when he's in trouble. But her influence on him is so intermittent, and as he grows up, the influences of his society are overwhelming: he is literally positioned to inherit his father's role, so "becoming his father" is essentially already in the cards when Dana tries to prevent him from becoming his father. She does influence him--his emotions are all messed up by the end, and he does believe that in some twisted way he "loves" both Dana and Alice (which causes them both to suffer), but he is still fated to assume the ROLE of plantation-owner, and that potent combination of incentives and influences is ultimately the decisive factor.

    ReplyDelete
  4. SriDecember 16, 2025 at 8:55 PM

    Nice post Antje! I like how you displayed Rufus's growth in power as a slave owner hnd how it affects his relationship with Dana, shifting it from care to manipulation. This force Dana to make choices that conflict with her morals, so she can preserve her existence.

    ReplyDelete

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