The Flight

Well I seem to have guessed correctly that Dana's stays in the past were going to progressively longer. However, I did not see that her time (1976) was going to stay roughly the same. Not much of a chance for living a double life. I still don't care for the dialogue. However, I have to give major credit to Ms. Butler for creating two incredibly complex characters. Not Dana nor Kevin; they seem pretty simple. But Rufus and his father are hard to figure out. Mr. Weylin's sense of fairness totally took me by surprise. I couldn't believe it when he honored the promise his son made to a slave and even had disdain for his son for breaking that promise. Rufus I just can't figure out, though. He does something decent and then immediately nullifies it by doing something terribly cruel. When I read "The Fight," I was ready to hate Rufus for trying to rape Alice. The chapter starts terribly. Then we learn that Rufus paid a white preacher to preside over Nigel and Carrie's wedding with all the same respect as a "legitimate" white-person's wedding. And then later in that same chapter, when Dana asks Rufus if he would ever sell a slave, Rufus says "I don't think so." He's clearly trying to fight his upbringing and society, but I fear that it will ultimately beat him in the end.