Rufus was ready to die
I find the scene toward the end of the book, where Dana comes back to a distraught Rufus having recently discovered Alice's body, very interesting. So far, Dana had only been summoned to Rufus when he was in immediate danger - in a fight, or about to burn his house down - but this time, it seems that Rufus is just heavily grieving. I was confused at first when Dana appeared there, but my the end of the scene it started to make sense.
Rufus moves to assault Dana, but it just didn't seem like that was actually what he wanted. In their conversation just months ago, Rufus and Dana acknowledge that Dana has the power to let him die. Some time before that, Dana says that neither she nor Rufus would come out alive if he ever tried to rape her. Yet, with both sets of knowledge, Rufus tries to do so anyway. In a time when he's deep in panic and grief over the person he felt he loved dying, he wants Dana? That just doesn't make much sense to me - even though Dana and Alice blurred in his mind, after having found Alice dead due to his actions, it doesn't seem like Rufus would go straight to replacing her. To me it looks like this is Rufus's form of suicide, and I think that in that moment it became clear to him that his life, extended so many times by Dana, had to end with her too, so he forced her hand in killing him.
As their conversation months prior showed, Dana had the power to turn her back on Rufus if he pushed her too far each time she reappears in his time, and this time she does. Rather than saving Rufus from his grief and from himself, she finally walks away and doesn't save him from himself and the consequences of his actions. I think that the combination of Alice's death, his actions toward Dana, and maybe even the awareness that he was trying to get himself killed, finally let Dana do it.
It is important to remind us that the risk to his life that seemingly "calls Dana back" to the past entails Rufus contemplating suicide, deranged by grief and despair after his horrific scheme to manipulate Alice backfires, as she wields the only leverage she has over him, her ability to remove herself entirely from the situation. It's easy to forget that this is the nature of the crisis that calls her back, and this context means that your reading of the final scene makes a lot of sense.
ReplyDeleteI even suspect that Dana understands this context on some level, and it has to do with her potentially baffling tendency to sympathize with him all the way to the end: his attempt to assault her is maybe slightly more forgivable if we understand him as a grieving and remoseful man who isn't fully in control of his feelings or actions. She DOES view him as deranged by frustrated *love* at the end, and it's maybe easier therefore for her to view him in a more sympathetic light, despite the fact that he is echoing the actions of the patroller at the very start of the novel and otherwise making it all to clear what side he is on.
I definitely agree that Rufus wanted to die at this point. When Dana finds him in his office, he has a gun in his hand (presumably to use it on himself). In addition, he tells Dana "if I ever caught myself wanting you like I want her, I'd cut my throat" (164). He also knows that Dana feels similarly. So for him to "confess his feelings", seems like a subtle way to tell Dana to kill him.
ReplyDeleteMy only confusion is why would Rufus want to die to Dana? Why couldn't he have just committed suicide? However, it does feel natural for Dana to witness Rufus' death, as she has been there every time he had a near-death situation.
I believe it was even mentioned in the book that Dana thought she was brought back because Rufus was going to kill himself, or something about Rufus' subconscious calling Dana back because he wanted to die. I agree with your analysis that the only reason Rufus moved to assault Dana was because at that point, he didn't care whether he lived or not. I still think that a lot of his actions was due to his grief-stricken state, and the continually blurring line between Dana and Alice.
ReplyDeleteGood point, I'd never thought about it since it happened so quickly, I just remember that he had a gun, but I wasn't completely sure what he was going to do with it. I was actually surprised that Dana waited so long to kill him, as there were many times where her life was at stake and Rufus was responsible. After Hagar was born, I thought it wouldn't be a bad idea to kill Rufus, because the slaves would be sold eventually, as Rufus had no white children to inherit them.
ReplyDeleteReally nice blog. I definitely agree that Rufus wanted to die. We see him in the scene as he's about to kill himself, but I do think that Rufus didn't want to see himself turn into the monster he became by the end of the book. However, there is an argument to be made that this is not the case because he does struggle at the end and holds Dana when she is killing him.
ReplyDeleteAt first I thought his threat of suicide was yet another one of his manipulation tactics to get Dana to sympathize with him, so that he wouldn't feel so alone after Alice's own suicide. But I definitely agree that he seemed done with life by the end, especially since everything was falling apart around him. He had been pushing Dana's boundaries and crossing lines throughout the novel, but he must have known that crossing that one was too far, which is why he did it. Great post!
ReplyDeleteYou pose a really interesting question, and I agree that Rufus was ready to die. However, I wouldn't quite say that he wanted to die at the hands of Dana. I think it was more that Rufus was in a place of despair and wanted to die, as was clearly evident by the scene where he is playing with the gun in his hand. His attempt at raping Dana was his desperate attempt at seeing if he could get his way one last time. He lost Alice, which was one of the most important things in his life, so he wanted to push the limits with Dana and see if he still had control over anyone in his life. He knew fully well that it was a possibility that he would die if the plan backfired, but he wanted to take his last chance at control.
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