Time travel is something that I've always personally considered impossible, complete fiction. Yet I found the book Kindred to be incredibly realistic, and so at first I wondered why the author would fictionalize the story more by including this Sci-Fi element. This topic sort of got brought up in class however. Kindred brings up one of the most awkward issues to deal with, and that is the one of race. I think that through the book, the author shows that even though we as a society think that we are no longer anyway similar to back in the slave days, most of us still see in color, even though we can't help it. When Dana goes back in time, she is at first disgusted with society, and the way she is treated. She longs to go back home, and be in a society where there is no race issues. Yet after a closer observation we see this is not true. There are similarities between Rufus and Kevin. Both ask her to write for them. It says that Kevin, her husband "asked me to do some typing for him three times. I'd done it the first time, grudgingly, not telling him how much I hated typing...The second time he asked , thoughh, I told him and I refused. he was annoyed. the third time when I refuesed again he was angry. " He seemed to think it was her place to type for him, and got angry when she refused. He automatically assumed that Dana would willingly type all his work, which mirrors Rufus's attitude about Dana.
On another note, there are some interesting things that I found in the reading. One was the fact that when Dana goes back, she is wearing pants. I think this was no accident on the authors part; Dana is dressed in masculine clothing because she is different from all the other women in the novel. She wears men's clothing because she is a leader, and doesn't adapt to normal conventions. It's very symbolic because Dana is the most respected black woman in the book. Yeah maybe you find something else to add about this, but I found that pretty important.
"she didn't want to meet you wouldn't have you in her house- or me either if I married you. "
"Dana is dressed in masculine clothing because she is different from all the other women in the novel"
ReplyDeleteI like the ideas presented in your post, with the exception of the above quote. Although Dana begins her time traveling as an independent woman (very different from the other women in the novel) she does not continue her time travels as the same woman. Take, for example, when Dana returns home after her first time being beaten by Weylin. Though physically she is back in 1976 away from the antebellum south, she does not act as though she is back to her normal life. In fact, she spends her time back in 1976 waiting for when she will be summoned back into the south. While waiting, she doesn’t do any of the activities that made her who she was – i.e. writing, watching TV, etc. She is no longer the independent woman she was before and never returns to that personality for the rest of the novel. So, in that sense, no – she isn’t any different from the other women in the novel. Like them, she has conformed to the fears of being a black woman in the antebellum south. The only difference now is that she wears pants.
I agree that Dana believes “there are no race issues” in her time. It supports the interpretation that Dana travels back in time to save herself. She must learn that, despite her marriage to Kevin, racial discrimination has not completely disappeared from her time. Because she is married to a white man, Dana grows blind to discrimination. She figures that, since interracial marriages are legitimized, that blacks have finally achieved equally. However, a trip to the past and, as you mentioned, a comparison of Rufus and Kevin remind her that this is not so. She is eventually forced to acknowledge that racism is still a factor in today’s society.
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