Rufus' Villainy

Rufus and Tom Weylin are dangerous in very different ways. Tom cannot be manipulated, but also has no feelings or emotional reasons for atrocities. Whereas Rufus can be manipulated through his emotions, but also can be much more erratic and vicious. And Rufus' qualities do not seem to me like the typical slave-master (or future slave master) villainous qualities. He treats Dana well much of the time, he interacts and talks to these people that he supposedly considers property, as if they are people (albeit lower people than himself). And yet this makes the villainy scarier. Take for example his treatment of Alice.

Rufus wishes Alice loved him, he "loves" her, and her specifically. He actually cares about her, and yet still thinks of her as property, and therefore has no problem thinking of rape as a viable solution to his problems. With both Alice and Dana, Rufus shows a simultaneous belief in the personhood and property-hood of the black people around him. He treats them terribly but does care about them, their thoughts, etc., just only to the point where they do what he wants.

What this does is creates a villain in a slave narrative in a very "realistic" (I don't know if it's actually realistic, but it feels that way to me) way. Because for me it's hard to imagine a person interacting and talking with people the way that slave owners would have had to, and not on some level understand that they had thoughts and feelings. And yet they still held them as property, and still treated them as such in most ways. A slave owner would have had to have known that a slave that he ever talked to had feelings, and still might have raped or done some other thing to them. And that to me is a much scarier and more upsetting depiction of slavery. What Butler shows is a person who understands that someone feels, but still treats them like property and totally gives no shits about their thoughts, and that is terrifying. It is an utter lack of caring, which is made scarier by a slave owner who clearly thinks of Alice and Dana as people much of the time. And as much as it sucks to say it, that's scarier to me than a person who doesn't care but also never even thinks of the slaves as people.