When Dana and Kevin travel back in time together, Dana
explains to Rufus that they are both from the future and are a married couple.
I understand that Dana tells Rufus this to help explain her strange arrivals
and to tell him who Kevin is, however, I think that what she told him might
have later led to a misunderstanding. While back in time together, Dana and
Kevin assume the roles of master and slave to blend in and protect themselves.
This move, however uncomfortable it makes us feel, also makes sense. However,
the combination of these two actions can be misleading from Rufus’s
perspective. He was told that they were a married couple but then sees the
master-slave dynamic between the two. Sure, he knew that Dana was educated and
that mixed-race marriage was a thing in the future but he mainly just saw the
act of master and slave. I know he got to see them sometimes not really acting,
but there was still a lot he didn’t understand about their relationship.
As we have
discussed in class, the relationship between Rufus and Alice is a master and
slave relationship, but it’s somewhat different. Rufus does seem to care about
Alice and wants her to care about him. He doesn’t just want any slave, he wants
Alice. However, he still treats her as a slave and as his property. He has her
come sleep with him each night. This reminded me about how Dana went in Kevin’s
room each night as well because Kevin didn’t want her to sleep in the attic but
it looks different from an outside perspective. I feel like Rufus, even if he
isn’t consciously trying to all the time, is trying to have a relationship like
Dana and Kevin. However, with their acting and his limited knowledge, Rufus and
Alice have a terrible relationship.
The thing is though, I don’t think
that providing Rufus with more or less information about the future and who
they are would change the outcome. With more information, he might just get
even more confused and with less information, he would still reflect his time
period in some way. I don’t see how Dana doing something different would change
it for the better. I feel like there’s only so much she could do with her
occasional influence on Rufus, who was already trapped in the system and
influenced by his time period. I think that the relationship between Rufus and
Alice was bound to be bad in some way and there was little that could be done by Dana to
change it.
