Kevin explains: "This could be a great time to live in... I keep thinking what an experience it would be to stay in it--go West and watch the building of the country, see how much of the Old West mythology is true" (Butler 97).
Although Dana blatantly disagrees and is bitter about him statement, she fully understands his perspective: "And I began to realize why Kevin and I had fitted so easily into this time. We weren't really in. We were observers watching a show. We were watching history happen around us. And we were actors. While we waited to go home, we humored the people around us by pretending to be like them. But we were poor actors. We never really got into our roles. We never forgot that we were acting" (Butler 98).
Although Kevin never admits it, the readers later learn that he regrets his spoken words to Dana. When Kevin gets stuck in the antebellum South for five years, trouble confronts him in many different ways. Firstly, despite his advantaged race, he is physically hurt by his surrounding white community; this is depicted by the scar on his forehead. Kevin's character goes through a large catharsis that is eminent through the change in his dialogue. While once chipper and optimistic, Kevin's post-past dialogue is now dark and bitter. Kevin even recalls witnessing a woman dying in childbirth, remembering how poor medicine was in the past. When Kevin returns home, his frustration is imminent. He forgets how things work in the present, and enters depression when he sees a younger, attractive picture of himself before his trip to the past.
Dana's point about fitting in the past became invalid in Kevin's case; once Dana transported back to 1976 without Kevin, Kevin was no longer waiting to go home and was unsure if there would ever be an opportunity to return to his normal life in the present. At this point, Kevin was not an observer that needed to pretend to fit in, but rather a real member of this society. In short, he was no longer an "actor." After spending five continuous years in the past, Kevin obviously contemplates whether the past was truly the reality and the present really the diversion; an interesting point to contemplate is that Kevin spent more time in the past than he had in the marriage of his wife.
After his experience in the antebellum South, Kevin no longer fits into any society (neither the present nor the past). Kevin does not fit into the past because he does not believe in its morals. Although Kevin is white and advantaged in this sense, life is still extremely difficult as he challenges the status quo; Kevin aids the black slaves in anyway he can, despite this being illegal. Kevin does not fit into the present because of its unfamiliarity. Kevin does not know how different societal things work (such as appliances) and is even startled by a plane flying above his home. Overall, Kevin has a transformation within this novel that ultimately leaves him pretty hopeless.
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