“But I got used to them very quickly. And I began to get into Robinson Crusoe. As a kind of castaway myself, I was happy to escape into the fictional world of someone else’s trouble” (Butler, 87)
I found this quote especially interesting to the plot of the book. Although this quote is said from Dana’s perspective, Rufe also uses an escape to cope with his own reality. Dana uses Robinson Crusoe to escape into the fictional world of someone else’s trouble to take the pressure off her own troubles. Her troubles amounted to more then just stress, but constant nervousness and protection, even defending herself from death. Dana uses the fictional world to escape her own harsh realities, and Rufe uses Dana to escape his.
Rufe uses Dana as his Robinson Crusoe to escape his realities of whippings, strict parenting and rules, pressure to be just like his dad. When all this amounts to the breakpoint, he retaliates by burning down curtains, stealing his dad’s passions. However, Dana is always there and literally shows up out of nowhere like a fictional character in a fictional world to relieve Rufe of the stress and corruption he is dealt day in and day out. We all have these tools to escape whether we are aware of it or not, music for example. There’s a certain comfort to problems that aren’t necessarily yours because you are not faced with their reality, no matter how bad it sounds, it’s the truth.
I noticed the same quote too! I think it's an interesting parallel you drew between Dana'as fiction and Rufus's attachment to Dana and how we seek comfort through fiction.
ReplyDeleteWhen I read the quote, I actually found it a little ironic. Dana says that someone else's trouble was an escape from her own reality to her. But the book Kindred does just the opposite. This fictional piece actually disturbs our peace of mind by plunging us headfirst into our own distressing history. I guess fiction can act as both an escape from and an encounter with reality. In class we talked about how time travel can act as a buffer. By the same reasoning, I think we can look at fiction itself as a buffer. Looking at history through the window of a fictional novel detaches us from it, given that it's based on time travel, a physical improbability. At the same time, it makes us feel vulnerable when we realize that the horrors of slavery were the truths of our own history.