“I was glad to avoid the road, though. The possibility of meeting a white adult here frightened me, more than the possibility of street violence ever had at home.”

Dana appears in Rufus’s room just in time to save him from burning the house down and killing himself just like how he almost drowned himself when he was about five. When she hears the language Rufus uses to address her and of the way Rufus’s father treats him and people like her, she questions him about where and when she is exactly. After questioning Rufus for a while about where she is and what year she’s in, Dana comes to a realization of exactly how dire her current situation really is. Learning from Rufus that she has traveled to the year 1815, Dana has landed at the heart of slavery in the United States.

I found it very interesting how she was more afraid of being seen by a white person than she was of encountering street violence back home. Based on history lessons and textbooks we read today, we know just how poorly African Americans were treated during that time. Now that Dana has been placed exactly in that time period, she comes to realize what it would mean for her if she was to be found wandering the streets alone without free papers. She would be dragged onto a plantation and forced to endure hard labor as a slave whether or not she was actually free. Dana experiences the same feelings of fear her ancestors and slaves had felt back then.