Who is Rufus in the novel, What Comes After?

Rufus is the Balch family dog who represents the mystical nature of life, as well as the innate natural instincts that lie within all living beings. Rufus represents the idea that all of humanity contains wild and reckless possibilities, yet love tames these tendencies. Rufus has the ability to sense disturbance in the humans around him, and frequently comforts those in distress, and warns those in danger. He is a pitbull mix, and thus could easily be condemned as aggressive. In fact, early on Isaac thinks that Rufus has killed a fawn, but Daniel insists he was trying to save the fawn from a pack of coyotes. Rufus represents the dichotomy of human nature.