UNUSED: Through this violence-enforced control, the one-sided systems such as slavery could be maintained without strong backlash from the enslaved.

Dana, observing an act of violence inflicted upon a black man by a white patroller, recalls "I could literally smell his [the man being whipped] sweat, hear every ragged breath, every cry, every cut of the whip. I could see his body jerking, convulsing, straining against the rope as his screaming went on and on" (Butler 36). Here, as Dana hid and watched the sheer brutality of the patrollers unfold, she reacted with great anguish, as she never sensed that blacks were subject to such a shockingly high degree of violence from white patrollers. Similar to the readers of Kindred, Dana goes on to reflect, "I had only seen people beaten on television and in the movies...but I hadn't lain nearby and smelled their sweat or heard them pleading and praying, shamed before their families and themselves" (Butler 36). Dana admits that witnessing this moment of violence deepened her understanding of the kind of violence the enslaved were put through in this era. She much more readily grasped the severity of violence towards the enslaved. Therefore, the inclusion of extremely vivid representations of violence in the novel is crucial for readers to identify with the intense emotions Dana experienced when she witnessed the violence in person. Had such unfiltered imagery been excluded, Dana (as well as the reader) would still remain somewhat detached from the violent moments of Antebellum era, making the novel less powerful in reproducing the emotional agitation these moments evoke.

Later on in the text, when Rufus becomes the master of the slaves on the Weylin plantation, Dana's prediction is shown to be correct. Rufus, while trying to justify his attempt at raping Alice, exclaimed to Dana that he "wouldn't have hurt her [Alice] if she hadn't just kept saying no" (Butler, 123). Here, Rufus states that the only reason he hurt Alice was that she was not complying when he wanted to have sex with her. Rufus repeatedly uses violence against Alice to fulfill his sexual desires by raping and abusing her, instead of opting to build a more mutual relationship when he had the opportunity to do so. And when Alice denies him consent, Rufus immediately resorts to using violence against her to get what he wants. The fact that Rufus became more and more violent as he grew up highlights the idea that his upbringing was the origin of such malevolence. And if Rufus got the chance to have his kids, his violence would influence his kids' behavior the same way Tom's violence influenced Rufus's behavior, effectively normalizing violence, and therefore slavery, for many generations to come.

UNUSED: Tom Weylin's abuse towards Rufus instilled the idea that the use of violence is justified to pursue your goals. Rufus's early exposure to violent behavior will eventually lead up to him developing violent behavior as he grows up.

Chapter 2 The Fire: Though the whip – one of the most symbolic objects of American plantation slavery – represents the height of inhumane punishment to Dana, Rufus sees it as an everyday part of life for black people. Rufus’s father uses the whip indiscriminately, even on his own son. As such, Rufus’s father appears to be a cruel man in general, beyond being specifically racially motivated.

The whipping served its purpose as far as i was concerned. It scared me, made me wonder how long it would be before I made a mistake that would give me a reason to whip me”(92). As Dana is concerned to be whipped, it keeps her in line and hardworking.

NL "I asked her where you went […] and she got mad and said she didn't know. I asked her again later, and she hit me. And she never hits me." (2.2.51)

Rufus' mother has never hit him before, but there's something about watching Dana disappear that makes her so uncomfortable she has no other way of expressing herself. This detail just goes to show that people tend to react violently whenever they're confronted with something they don't understand.

He had spent his life watching his father ignore, even sell the children he had had with black women. (5.11.26)

It's no wonder Rufus doesn't respect black women. He's spent his entire life watching a father who has children with black women and sells them off for a profit as though they were investments instead of people.

Connect from Rufus's numbing: I remembered suddenly the way he used to talk to his mother. If he couldn't get what he wanted from her gently, he stopped being gentle. Why not? She always forgave him. (5.6.85)

In this passage, Dana outlines how Margaret Weylin's spoiling behavior toward Rufus is part of what makes him grow up to be so horrible to women. His mother has taught him that a woman will give him whatever he wants and forgive him immediately when he's cruel to them.

Here, Dana is reflecting on the violent nature of Tom Weylin. She observes that Tom didn't "maximize" the extent of his power over the enslave. Rather, Tom simply grew up as an ordinary man, and in the Antebellum era, holding power over others through violence is encompassed by the ordinary. He, much like Rufus, was taught from childhood that leveraging violence to maintain control over others is acceptable. If violence was never a part of Tom's childhood, he wouldn't have been numbed from the violent reality of the Antebellum society. By including the background that Tom's life was shaped by the harshness of violent Antebellum society, Tom's present behavior of extorting power through violence can be traced back to the influence of Antebellum society's violent tendencies on Tom's childhood.

Similarly to Margaret, Tom Weylin also played a siginificant role in raising Rufus to be numb to gender-based violence. Dana contemplated that "He [Rufus] had spent his life watching his father ignore, even sell the children he had had with black women. (Butler 231).
Here, Dana notes that Tom Weylin often used black women to satisy his sexual desires, and then sell the kids off for profit as if they were all objects. This proves that much of Rufus's tendency to view black women as inferiors stems from his early childhood exposure to his father's behavior. Rufus has spent much of his childhood watching Tom Weylin exercising his power and violence onto black women in order to get what he wanted from them, ultimately driving Rufus to normalize the act of using of violence against women for extortion.