A Profile on Rufus from A Death In The Family.
" I know I am making the choice most dangerous to an artist in valuing life above art." With these words James Agee, author of A Death In The Family, expresses his restless journey that would lead him to an early death.
James {Rufus} Agee was born in Knoxville, Tennessee in 1909. His father was a postal worker who was killed in an automobile accident. Thirty years later, A Death In The Family, a novel of Agee's childhood would be the cornerstone of his fame. In this novel, Rufus is the protagonist and he spends more time on his view than any other character in the novel. Rufus is an intelligent and sensitive boy at the age of six, but doesn't get the fully understand the concept of his father's death. Rufus has a need to fit in with the other children in his neighborhood. Rufus allows the children to make fun of him, because he thinks that if the children didn't tease him over and over again then they didn't like him. Rufus has a hard time perceiving others points of view over his father's death, which enables him having a hard time seeing the religion standpoint. .
Rufus and his father Jay first enter the novel when him and his father go to see a Charlie Chaplin film. On first hand we see Rufus's deep love for his father. The narrator tells us that Rufus sees that his father loves the silent companionship with his son. The reader can now at this point comprehend that Rufus is perceiving in others emotions and thoughts. .
Throughout A Death In The Family, Rufus continuously questions his mother, Mary, and aunt's faith in God concerning the death of his father. When Mary calls Rufus and his sister, Little Catherine, to her bedside and tells them that God has taken their father to heaven. Rufus asks his mother, " Is Daddy dead?" Behind this explanation Rufus is looking for logical sense of the word instead of a religious explanation. In many ways, Rufus is conflicting two views of his childhood.
