questions lingering about kindred

Although we have finished our discussions about Kindred, I still find that I have many questions regarding the novel. One of the Main ones being: Why did Alice kill herself instead of run away?
I found a somewhat decent answer on sparknotes.com and it goes as follows:

Alice kills herself because she has lost all of her possible identities. Running ceases to exist as an option, because Alice cannot lay claim to any of the identities she would need to embrace in order to flee. She cannot see herself as a fiery young rebel willing to risk the whippings, dog attacks, and death that running away might entail. After years with Rufus, she cannot see herself as Isaac’s wife, so desperate to reunite with her husband that she will flee the Weylins’ plantation to find him. Neither can Alice take on one of the identities she would need to inhabit to remain on the plantation. Because she thinks Rufus has sold her children, she can no longer think of herself as a mother. Although she had found some measure of peace with Rufus, she can’t conceive of continuing to live alongside the man who has robbed her of her children, and so she can no longer think of herself as Rufus’s grudging partner. Alice kills herself because it becomes impossible for her to imagine a way to exist in the world.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this analysis.

Kindred Reader's guide.

Reader’s Guide:

1. Other than the birth of Hagar, why else might Dana have been pulled into the past? Was the “reason” necessary and what were the implications?

2. How does race affect the conflicts within the novel- in both past and modern times? (If Dana were white?, If Kevin was Black?, If Kevin went back in time instead of Dana)?

3. What is the significance of Butler choosing a white man as Dana’s ancestor instead of a black slave who finds himself in danger?

4. In what ways can Rufus be compared to Kevin ? Are they foil characters? What ways do they develop differently throughout the novel?

5. In Kindred slaves marry and have children to be bound more to the land. Rufus lets love control his actions with Alice and Dana. Dana and Kevin go back in time to ensure the other’s safety. Is Butler trying to signify that love is a weakness?

Kindred

So, I still question why Dana was not able to bring Rufus back to the future with her. I mean, she could take backpacks, toothpaste, knives, all kinds of inanimate objects to and from with her, and (with respect to the dead) corpses are inanimate objects, aren't they? Anyway, sometimes in this class I have no idea how to contribute to the discussion. I read Kindred as a story and decided to listen to what people had to say about it and develop my own ideas based off of them. However, the discussion got jumbled and I was stuck thinking, "What on earth? ... " Yet I have still managed to come up with two questions I can base a thesis off of. Yay me!

P.S. I've noticed Alex in particular gets cut off in class a lot... Not fair.

Bieng Transparent

I agree with Dr. Jenelle, that being transparent in ones teaching methods can be ideal when teaching a course on free thinking, assuming that the individual is not already a free thinker. However, in the case of the opposite, informing the student of this method could reveal more than the instructor intended.

Kindred vs. Man in the High Castle

While reading Kindred, I couldn't help but compare it to the other novels we have read this semester. What stuck with me were the connections I made to Man in the High Castle. In both novels, there is the issue of multiple realities and how the characters deal with and live in these realities. Both novels also deal with race.

In Man in the High Castle, the characters live in a world in which the Axis Powers won the war, but are also presented with an alternate reality in The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, a reality that we come to recognize as "true" by the end of the novel. In Kindred, Dana is forced to live in the harsh reality of the antebellum south, while continuing to hold the knowledge of what life is like in the 1970s. I thought it was interesting that in both novels the characters live in one reality but are aware of another.

Another similarity that struck me was that both novels deal with the issue of race. In Kindred, the characters are confronted with slavery and the unequal treatment of blacks, whereas characters in MITHC are oppressed by the Germans and the Japanese.

More interestingly, though, was that in both novels the characters facing discrimination had knowledge of of an alternate reality, and in these realities racial tensions were not the same. For example, in the reality of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy whites would not have been discriminated against, and in Dana's life in the 1970s slavery was outlawed and racial tensions, although still present, had been eased. However, regardless of this knowledge, characters in both books find themselves adjusting to their position as an inferior race. As Dana said, "I never realized how easily people could be trained to accept slavery." I found this concept to be disturbing, and I thought it was interesting that both novels touch on this subject.

Kindred

Kindred so far has been my favorite book we have read in class. I was extremely engaged in the story and although we talked about it not really being suspenseful, because the novel started off with Dana being alive and well, I was enthralled throughout the book. I completely forgot that Dana would eventually be okay in the future, so I was constantly worried she would not make it out alive from her 1817 "reality". Also, I began to question whether Hagar would even be born and that Dana's 1976 "reality" would actually never happen. By the end of the novel, I was content with accepting that there was a time paradox and both times were actual realities.

FYI: Visit by a Tibetan monk

For those interested, there will be a Tibetan monk visiting campus on Monday, March 28 @ 7pm in Nunemaker Hall. It is free and open to all. All I've been told is that he will be giving a demonstration... of what, I'm not sure! (Though I have no doubt it will be engaging.)

A Man of His Time

While reading Kindred by Butler, I was always interested in how much people changed in accordance with their surroundings, even when that was the one issue they had refused to let happen. While Rufus was a child, he was much more open to everyone, and there seemed to be a chance that he could be saved from following in his father's path. Eventhough Rufus never made the decision not to be like his father, or least I did not find him to have focused to much on it, Dana had. She had decided she would not let it happen, yet it did. He became a greedy manipulator and a slave owner who followed the customary practices as such. Dana, although she told herself she would never be able to blend in, lost track of where she stopped playing the role of a slave and when she became a very submissive one. Kevin was so changed by his five years that he had great difficulty transitioning back into his present time of 1976. He had such a hard time he verbally lashed out at Dana, and began to throw things. They all seemed to struggle with being real, or atleast what others thought was the real them. Perhaps, we are a product of our time, who are simply unable to accept our real selves of the present. If we were never affected by anything there, would be very little to us as beings. We seem to be always searching for truth to the point that we forget to find it in the present through acceptance.

Past and Present

As I dug deeper and deeper into Kindred, I finally began to see a common trend emerge between all the books we have read this semester, and that trend is the presence of time, both past and present. In this current book, the main character is brought back a century into time to a world much different than hers, along the way experiencing slavery alongside her ancestors. All I can think about while reading this book is an extremely well-known (and my own personal favorite) quote from Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." Though decades apart, Fitzgerald and the author of Kindred, Octavia Butler, are on the exact same page in believing and writing that who we are today can be accredited to the past, the paths our families and ancestors have paved for us, the things we have seen, and the experiences we have experienced.