Kevin's Experience in Kindred

On pages 97 and 98, Dana becomes aware that Kevin is fully acclimated to the past in just a relatively short amount of time.

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.

What is a Identity?

As of late, Emma and I have been playing a game called Ghost Tricks for the NintendoDS. The main plot follows a ghost who wakes to find that he has none of his memories. He uses his powers, which allows him to travel through objects and rewind time to save someone before their death, to try to figure out his life and his murder.

*SPOILER ALERT*
At the beginning of the game, the spirit takes on the form of the corpse found in the junkyard. Another spirit implies that it has to be his body as there are no other bodies there. For a while, we were led on to believe that it is our body and form in the world. We were only given a certain amount of information before the protagonist sets off to follow a woman who witnessed the murder. With very limited information, we assumed that the spirit’s identity is the only visible corpse in the opening chapter and he was as innocent as he sounds.

Then we were given new information that makes us question everything. We find out that animals, when dead, can communicate with language. People, when becoming “conscious” after death, can project their image as being someone else until they realize who they really are. That’s when we began to make the absurd theories to explain what was possible: the protagonist was a cat, the protagonist was suicidal. With very few suggestions, we began to question the spirit’s identity because we already have a shaky base to stand on from the beginning. Even a stronger base would have left us questions as it is not definite.

So what makes an identity definite?

From the game, the idea of identity mostly relies upon memory. But as the protagonist has no memory, we gain an idea of his identity from the dialogue he engages with other characters. As more information is revealed to us, more can be said about him. But that alone doesn’t answer his own questions about who he is, so he searches for what he is.

*EVEN MORE SPOILERS*
Then we find out that the image the protagonist takes on is not actually his own, but that of the antagonist of the game. Everything is thrown into a loop because we no longer have even a base to understand his identity from anything beyond what he exhibits in dialogue. But there is still an identity given to us; it just happens that it doesn’t satisfy our questions. Our perception of who the protagonist is always changes from new information yet pivots around what we think to be definite.

We’re still working on what his identity is. (We’re working on finishing the game. It takes a while.) But even with answers, who knows if we’ll take it for truth anymore.

Exploring Gender

When we began discussing Kindred last week, we compiled a brief list of the broader social themes that the story touches on, such as violence and race and gender inequality. Although we briefly discussed the gender dynamics that place men in a more authoritative role when we noted Kevin’s request for Dana to type his manuscripts, we didn’t go very far past that in our class discussions. While reading, I found the gender dynamics very interesting, so as I thought more about male and female roles in the novel, I began to consider the implications for the storyline if our main character Dana had been a black man instead of a black woman.

Based on her experiences in the 1800’s, Dana’s objective of time travel, of ensuring Hagar’s birth, would have been much more difficult to accomplish. As a man, who for this purpose we can call “Dane,” his relationships with others would be completely different from Dana’s relationships. Assuming there is only a gender shift, and Dane still has Dana’s characteristics; independent, intelligent, and altruistic, Dane would be seen as more of a threat than Dana was. Tom Weylin likely would have felt personally threatened by Dane, and consequently, would have either sold Dane to a slave trader, in which case the story would become nonexistent, or Dane would have been put to work in the fields with most of the other males. In Dana’s story, we witnessed a huge increase in the level of violence present when Dana was put to work in the fields for a day. So if Dana had been a man, it is likely that the story would have been much more violent physically, which would have the implication of shifting the reader’s attention away from the purpose of Dane’s visit, and instead toward the horrors of the time period.

As a man, Dane’s relationship with Alice would be extremely different from Dana’s. In Kindred, we witness a trusting, comfortable relationship between Alice and Dana because their experiences as black, female slaves bring them closer together. Alice would likely not have this same relationship with Dane because after Alice’s separation from Isaac, she became withdrawn and sullen. Without the understanding that is tied to being a female slave, which brought Dana and Alice together, Dane would have a more difficult time trying to establish a relationship with Alice. But he would still attempt to establish a relationship with her, because like Dana, Dane believes that in order for Alice to bear Hagar, Dane must intervene to somehow bring Rufus and Alice together.

Dane’s relationship with Rufus can then also be seen in different ways. We know that Rufus feels threatened if a man attempts to get too close to a woman he loves; we witnessed this when he sold Sam for flirting with Dana. Therefore, we may surmise that if Dane tried to establish a relationship with Alice, whom Rufus loves, Dane may have been sold in a way similar to Sam. Dane would have been sold south, and may not have ensured Hagar’s birth (which he believes is his purpose is for being transported to the 1800’s). As a male, Dane is far more threatening, and this would definitely affect his relationship with Rufus further. Once Rufus is an adult, the presence of an independent, intelligent male slave would be more intimidating than a female slave. At this time, men had power over women, so Rufus was less likely to feel threatened by Dana’s presence. Despite her intelligence and independence, she was still a woman, which meant that Rufus ultimately had the upper hand, and could enforce that power without worry. Rufus may be more intimidated by Dane however, because although Rufus had the power that comes with being a slave master, he would not have power associated with gender. If Dane were to challenge Rufus’ power as master, Rufus could not fall back on his power as a man, like he could in Dana’s presence. Rufus may recognize this as a possibility in Dane’s presence, and may therefore be less likely to trust Dane, as he would have Dana.

In Kindred, Dana’s relationships with others is vital to her success at perpetuating her ancestral lineage, as she tells Kevin she needs to “make a haven for herself” in the south, and that she needs to have a good relationship with others so that when she returns, she can rely on these people, and ensure Hagar’s birth. If Dana was a man however, we can guess that her relationships with key people such as Alice and Rufus would not be as positive. Dane would then have to work much harder to establish positive relationships in order to maintain his own existence, through Hagar’s birth. Perhaps we can then conclude that if Dana had been a man, it would have been much more difficult to perpetuate the family line.

However, in class we also discussed that ensuring Hagar’s birth was not the only reason Dana had travelled south. Dana not only repeatedly ensured her own existence, but realized her reality. Through her interactions with characters, especially Rufus, Dana learned about her role(s) in the south, and therefore slowly realized her own reality. I believe that even if Dana had been a man, “Dane” still would have accomplished this goal. Although his relationships with characters would have been different, they still would have indicated Dale’s reality. Even if that reality is not the same as Dana’s, like Dana, Dale would learn about his role in the south through interacting with others, and therefore recognize his own reality.

Switching Dana’s gender would undoubtedly change the story. There are infinitely many relationships to be examined, and many subtleties that could influence the text. In a very general case, I believe that unlike Dana, it would be much harder for Dane to ensure Hagar’s birth. However, like Dana, Dane would still be able to recognize his reality. Seeing how just one change can effect a story so vastly, it’s hard to imagine what may happen if we were to change multiple facets of the story.

Writers Write, Right?

Reading Kindred, I can’t help but be drawn to the idea that we discussed in class that Rufus allows Dana to become a writer by giving her the paper to write on and emphasizing her skills as a writer. In class, we discussed how this action comes cross as allowing Dana to truly consider herself a writer. I think this is an important idea that we have discovered: the idea of considering yourself a writer.

Does it take external influences to allow you to consider yourself a writer? I’d argue that the feeling comes within yourself and no one else; no amount of publication or praise can replace the feeling of whether or not you believe you are capable of writing and are successful in your writing. External factors, such as comments, praise, and publishing are very important in determining whether or not you have skills as a writer. However, I’d argue that personal feelings are much more important.

Moving to another topic, I’d argue that the novel is essentially a testament to finding the roots of your families history and exploring just how important these roots are. Ignoring time travel, we can observe the novel as describing the affects of Dana living and experiencing the cultural background that her relatives experienced. The horrors of slavery become much more real to her because she understands freedom; other slaves envy her because she experiences freedom, if only for a few days, in between trips back and forth from the past. Although other slaves often condemn her for having it easy, I’d still argue that the illusion of freedom prevents her from this feeling.

Thus, the breakdown from historical actress to a real-life person living and feeling everything as a slave in the early 1800’s. Although Dana talks about living as an actress earlier in the novel, her historical role is broken away, the safety net that she has shatters, and she begins to become separated from her place and time.

A Tragic Act

Throughout class on Thursday we discussed the events that led up to the death of Rufus. Many members of the class voiced how they believed that Rufus' final actions were his last attempts to console himself, over the suicide death of Alice, by raping Dana. We discussed how this was Rufus making a final attempt that either led to his death or him getting his way with Dana. While there were parts of this analysis that I agree with, I read this passage slightly different.

We find out, after Dana's re-appearence at the Weylin Plantation, that Alice has killed herself. Rufus is completely distraught. After months and months of cooperation and growing love for each other, Alice snaps when Rufus "sells" her kids (they are just up in Baltimore), eventually ending her own life. This leaves Rufus in a state of depression and confusion, yet not in a life threatening situation. This is why I believe that this is a time in which Rufus actually calls Dana from the future to join him in the past. This is because he is seriously considering putting a revolver bullet through his head. Although he is considering it, I don't believe he would actually do it and he knows this. I believe that this is a point of realization for Rufus. He understands the pain and suffering that he has caused, not only to alice, but the rest of his slaves as well. He has called on Dana not to save him, but to take his own life from him.

If there is any kind of understanding that goes on between Rufus and Dana it is that Dana will not hesitate to kill Rufus if he ever tried to rape Dana. Rufus must know this and thats why I believe he tries to rape her. He doesn't want to but he wants to die, especially at the hands of those that he has hurt and more specifically Dana. He makes advances towards Dana knowing what will become of him. He allows Dana to stab him, as he screams and screams. Grabbing the arm of Dana he is able to die and become an almost tragic figure.

I'm not quite sure if this argument truly holds up or if I even believe that it is what happened, but it is the way in which I read the text.

Unfortunately, the only one who ever knew what Rufus thought in those last fatal moments, was Octavia Butler.

Dana's Search for Identity

I want to extend on our discussion in class about how Dana was brought back into the reality of the 1810s to find her identity in her own reality and learn how to take care of herself. At the beginning of the novel, Dana has not yet found her place in the world. She does not take good care of her health. She gets little sleep, skips meals, and as a result Kevin tells her she looks “like she sleepwalks through the day” (53). Dana lives her life without really living it. She does not yet identify herself truly as a writer, remarking “what would a writer be doing working out of a slave market?” (53). She stands up for herself rather meekly when Buz teases her about her relationship with Kevin. She lives in a house that Kevin bought. She is even Kevin’s secretary temporarily. In certain ways she is a slave even before she is sent back to the antebellum south.

After Dana is brought back to Rufus’s time, she continues revealing her lack of confidence in herself and her identity. When she is beaten and about to be raped by the patrolman outside Alice’s cabin, she cannot quite bring herself to poke him in the eye and save herself. Afterward she claims that she would kill to protect herself from others like him but takes beatings from Tom Weylin and the overseer without fighting back. Dana does not identify herself as a slave. She even criticizes Sarah for giving in to slavery, but every day acts more and more the perfect slave herself because it makes it easier. She easily slips into the role of caregiver to everybody except herself. She takes unwarranted abuse from Alice and Rufus and forgives them every time. She makes threats toward Rufus, but never acts on them.

I think that when Dana stabs Rufus at the end of the novel, it represents how far she has come toward recognizing herself as someone worth saving. As she realizes that he plans to rape her, she does not immediately resist. She realizes "how easy it would be for [her] to continue to be still and forgive him even this” versus how “hard [it would be] to raise the knife” (260). She starts making excuses as to why it would not be so bad to let him have her. She tells herself he would not treat her as his father treated Tess. He would not beat her, he would not sell her. Ultimately, however, she realizes that “a slave is a slave” (260). If she lets him do this to her, their relationship will officially be of slave and master. She finally stands us for herself and her identity. She will not be a slave. And with the death of Rufus, her trips to his reality stop. She has found her identity.

A relationship often overlooked

A slave master is not a slave master without owning slaves like a professor is not considered a professor unless they are conducting a class of students. Both parties are constantly dependent on one another, but a relationship that is often overlooked is the dependency of the slave owner on the slaves and the professor on the students. Slave owners rely on slaves to obey orders and conduct work for power and profit. In the end, it is obviously the slaves making the profit for the owner rather than the owner making a profit for himself. Between the majority of the slave population and the dependency on the slave population for the white population to succeed makes you wonder, why did the majority fall into the shadows and the minority governed

In the novel, Dana exposes this dependent relationship to the fullest. If it was not for Dana, Rufus have been dead long before he actually was, and for all we know, the plantation would not have been as functioning as it was. Tom Weylin realizes this dependency he feels for Dana as he allows Dana to read to Rufus, take care of his wounds, and even feed him. On the other hand, Dana brought a sense of comfort and advice to the slaves, which resulted in a more civilized lifestyle for both the slaves and Tom Weylin’s family. Dana acted as a buffer between the white community and the black slaves, exposing the white population’s dependency on the black’s population to be successful and functioning.

Falling into Roles

Falling into Roles

Kindred was somewhat of a let down for me in character development. I thought that as we progressed through the novel, we would see contradictions and/or changes in character behavior that would alter the previously established interrelationships in an unexpected fashion. For example, once Kevin lived in the 1800’s, I thought his views would become influenced by the antebellum South and they would return with him to 1976. As a result, their relationship would not be able to return to what it was before time traveling began. We see glimpses of Dana and Kevin’s time together that would imply that there are certain power struggles between the two. I thought that these ideologies would become intensified in the 1800‘s. Although Kevin makes a few offhand comments that would point at this development when he first arrives, they appear to disappear during his 5 years in the South and are never mentioned again. In the epilogue, we see that the two remain a couple and there is little evidence that their relationship has changed. Thus, Kevin falls into a role in the 1800’s and is finally able to return to his expected role in 1976.

Similarly, all of the characters fall into their expected roles. Rufus grows up to be similar to his father, even though we see glimpses of a more fair man through his childhood behavior with Nigel and Alice and the way he treats Dana. Tom Wyelin is forever a slave owner that values his slaves as property and he never has a breakthrough compassionate moment. Dana adjusts to slave life in the 1800’s, but it barely effects how she views her own time (1976) when she returns. The only major changes to her daily life in 1976 are caused by a fear of time traveling so she doesn’t drive and avoids going outside. Lastly, Kevin, who appears to have changed the most and has a hard time adjusting back, is also able to separate his life in the 1800’s from his present as shown in the epilogue and going out with his friends to a sporting event. As a result, the novel brings up the question (which was mentioned in class) of what influences us. How much power does Dana have in Rufus’ growth even though one of her roles is to nurture him? Does society in our time period have an influence? Do other societies not have influential power (i.e. Dana falls into slave role, but knows that she is actually a free woman in her present so when she returns to 1976 she can disregard the torture she went through because it is not present anymore)?

On a final note, the novel does a great job in showing how Dana and Kevin must adapt to the 1800’s and how life in general is drastically different from 1976. But, it does not fully demonstrate how the characters are changed by their experience except that Dana is able to use her memories to write a novel. What does she carry back with her to 1976 from the 1800’s?

I still don’t know where I stand with this

I’m still not a fan of Kindred, although I am enjoying the story line a lot more than when I first started reading it. We keep discussing in class the paradox the book makes about time travel and the fact that Dana is still present in the past and it won’t alter her existence.

As I progress into the reading I came across this, “We look alike… Anyways, all that means we’re two halves of the same woman-- at least in his crazy head.” We have reached a point in the story where Dana and Alice acknowledge there exists a connection between them other than Rufus’s preferences. Dana has been aware of this connection, that they have a blood relation, although I am still skeptical of it. But as we discussed in class, Dana must have a greater and better reason for being in the past other than Rufus.

According to the paradox, whatever Dana’s actions, her existence will not be in any way threatened. But there’s still the question of what her true purpose is, at least in my point of view. I haven’t yet finished reading the book, so I’m still not sure of the answer and where the book’s conclusion will lead.

Still, I’m not a fan though.

De Ja Vu

In Kindred the aspect of time travel is essential and ultimately extremely confusing at the same time. Dana spend the novel being teleported back in time to what she, and we, believe is to save her lineage so that one day she will exist. This sounds reasonable enough for a fictional novel, but one major flaw exists in the time travel aspect and that is that its impossible to change the past. Some may argue that this is true but in Kindred what Dana is witnessing is more of an occasion of De Ja Vu than of common time travel. The reason she can change the past is because the present is already shaped by her going into the past. So the life she lives before even her first experience back in the old South is existent only because of the reason that she did travel back in time. So in a way shes not changing the past, she is merely living the present. Even in her life in the 1970's she witnesses events of racism and segregation, some events even similar to those of the old South. This combining with her first person viewing of slavery is a perfect example of De Ja Vu. Look at her profession; she works in an office they refer to as the slave market and she teleports to a time that the slave market is still in use, and in full force. It does not have to be the exact same scene to be considered De Ja Vu; it just needs enough similarity in importance to make an impact on the person in the situation.
Another terrific example of De Ja Vu in the novel is between Rufus and his father, so Dana's lineage. Throughout the novel Dana observes Rufus's father get more and more power hungry with time. He progress from a strict controlling master to a type of iron fisted dictator. By the end he is whipping and physically punishing his slaves for simple misdemeanors that could be brushed off. Pertaining to Rufus he develops in the same sort of way. As a boy he does not judge based on his skin color; he befriends blacks and enjoys their company. However, after he inherits the plantation this rush of power causes him to steer away from his childhood beliefs and emotions. He becomes like his father and falls victim to the disease that most white plantation owners had; they were all power hungry. This portrayal of father and son from Dana's point of view is also considered to be an occasion of De Ja Vu.

Identity Crisis

You are a product of your past.

Obviously, no one knows to what extent this is true -- the nature versus nurture debate is still deeply unexplored battlefield, partially because 'nature' and 'nurture' are so intimately interwoven that it is generally hopeless to try to separate them.

Suffice it to say that your identity has been a long time coming; the choices that you have made throughout your life have led you to certain experiences and away from others, have shaped and molded your thoughts; the choices that your parents made led them together and taught them how to raise you; the lines and lines of previous generations have sent down identity in strings of DNA but also in your roots, spread out among the cultures of the world. Whether or not you were raised according to a certain heritage, somewhere, somehow, someone who affected your life made a choice and your past shifted, just a little bit.

This is why it is easier to think of the past as static than not. The past is such a large part of identity that considering it malleable would only serve to disrupt the fundamentals of how we relate to the world. In a sense, your past is your vision through which to construct your reality.

When Dana takes a step into the past and meets her own ancestors, when the situation allows her (at least the illusion) of the ability to construct her own past, it both calls into question everything she knows about herself and highlights the grounding from which her family grew.

If we, for a moment, accept that Dana could have let her ancestor Rufus die, then she lives a paradox. She is a product of her past, but her past is a product of her. The logic chases itself in a circle, and there is no center point from which to ground reality, and say -- this is the stable me, this is who I am.

This makes me wonder -- if we were truly masters of ourselves -- if we were given the chance, from birth -- the ultimate freedom to construct our own identities, the ability to create not just our own futures, but our own pasts -- what would we be left with? What could we cling to? What would we lose?

Would we be able to be anybody at all?

Shades of Gray

I think that life would be so much easier if there were no shades of gray. It is easy to classify objects and events as either black or white, right or wrong, this or that, and put them into neat, little categories. For example, it is easy to establish a stereotype of a slave-owner in the antebellum south. Before reading Kindred, I regarded those slave-owners as cruel and heartless, without any redeeming qualities. However, while reading Kindred, I couldn’t help but notice the character of Rufus evolving with a complicated mixture of good and bad. As I followed the growth of Rufus into a full-fledged slave-owner, I am presented with the concept that the stereotype of a slave-owner is not as simple as it appears. As much as I want life to be simple, I am faced with yet another ambiguous shade of gray.

When Dana first talks to Rufus, she meets an innocent and caring child who sees past the barriers of race. While Rufus talks to Dana using racial slurs, he clearly does not understand the significance of the insults. At this point, Rufus is just a harmless kid with innate goodness, who is being influenced by his culture. As Rufus grows, his antebellum south culture increasingly shapes his personality and perspective of life. Because Dana observes Rufus growing up in spurts, she sees the striking differences in him each time she reappears in antebellum south. As Rufus ages, he becomes more and more similar to his father, the seemingly stereotypical slave-owner. However, both Rufus and his father, as slave-owners, show compassion and sympathy to their slaves at various points in the story. Yes, they are cruel human beings for subjecting other people to such torturous lives, but they (more Rufus than Tom) sometimes struggle to maintain this cold identity. This internal conflict reveals itself in Rufus’s raping of Alice, a slave with whom he is in love. In this situation, Rufus clearly cannot distinguish his real identity with his identity as a slave-owner, yet they are visibly separate to me, as a reader. I think Rufus acts heartless because, sadly, that is all he has ever seen from his father about slave-owning, just like the black children “play” at being sold; being a commodity is the only life they have ever known.

I used to think of slave-owners as purely cruel, using slaves as tools for work and entertainment. I did not realize, however, that slave-owners may have had conflicting feelings about slavery too, and felt they had no choice but to take on their harsh roles. When Dana is debating whether to let Rufus die in the future, Carrie points out that Rufus’s role as slave-owner is necessary to prevent all the slaves from being sold at the terrible slave market. In that sense, Rufus had to undertake the role of slave-owner in order to prevent worse fates for the slaves. Similar to the slaves being constrained, Rufus was also restricted by the demands of his culture.

Kindred was a difficult story for me to get through because it portrayed slave-owners as more than one dimensional, which interferes with the normal conception I had of slave-owners in the antebellum south. However, it opened my eyes to my superficial classification of an issue that clearly contains great depth.

Easy?

In class today, we spoke briefly about how Dana's condition may be classified as easier than the slaves she interacts with such as Sarah and Nigel because she does not truly belong to the 1810's. However, as the discussion progressed and we discussed a word play on “nowhere/now here” that summarizes Dana's existence, I reconsidered whether Dana's condition can really be classified as easier than the condition of a slave.

What creates such difficulty for Dana is that she constantly has to re-acclimate to the 1810's. Each time she is thrust back to the 19^th century, she must immediately address a challenging situation that may put her at risk. For example, when Dana returns to find Isaac severely beating Rufus, Dana must risk immediately returning to the Weylin plantation by herself with the knowledge that the last time she left was amidst a whipping from Tom Weylin. The unpredictability of when and where she will be sent next means that she never forms the consistencies of everyday life granted to the other slaves. She may benefit from the confusion and fear of Tom Weylin and the slaves that stems from her miraculous disappearances and reappearances without aging, but the inconsistency of her life outweighs this benefit, and the fear that protects her also holds the ability to hurt her. Tom Weylin whips Dana for teaching a slave to read. However, I would argue that the cruel whipping that Dana experiences closely connects to Tom Weylin's fear of Dana. He fears what he cannot understand.

Dana is aware of the difficulties of continually switching realities, which helps explain why she stays at the Weylin plantation and urges Kevin to do the same. Forming some assemblance of a life at the Weylin plantation is the only way she can have a sense of consistency and knowledge when she returns. Dana also realizes that she will always return to Rufus, so creating a tense or highly dangerous relationship with Tom Weylin or Rufus will ultimately hurt her. She cannot run from the Weylins as long as Rufus's misfortunes continue to call her into the 19^th century.

Combining all these aspects that complex Dana's life, I think its very difficult to say her existence is easy. She may possess some benefits from her existence in the late 20^th century but the inconsistency of her life in the 19^th century that constantly introduces danger and challenges seems to outweigh these benefits.

Realities

When Dana finally returns home with Kevin, he complains, “If I’m not home yet, maybe I don’t have a home” (pg. 190). Kevin has been living in the antebellum south for five years but has only lived in his apartment in 1976 for two days. He has trouble finding things in the kitchen and finds himself tinkering with the stove. Surprised, Dana considers this strange viewpoint and realizes herself that she is more familiar with Rufus’s time than with her own. She comments, “I felt as though I were losing my place here in my own time. Rufus’s time was a sharper, stronger reality” (pg. 191).

In all of the books which we have read so far, we are presented with different realities. We spend numerous classes attempting to dissect which reality is more ‘real’. In Cat’s Cradle the Bokononists participated in a ‘play’ that was scripted by Bokonon and Earl McCabe in order to provide the islanders with an escape from their miserable lives. While initially we may dismiss Bokononism as a fake religion, we begin to realize that it is real for so many characters. Bokononists realize that their lives are a ‘fiction’ of sorts, but they embrace it nonetheless in order to provide themselves with happiness. For example Bokononism is ‘outlawed’ yet everyone still practices it. In fact, the only reason it is outlawed is so that Bokononists will more readily embrace it.

In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried he constantly blurs the line between reality and fiction until the reader no longer knows which one he is reading. By inserting himself as the narrator he forces the reader to question the veracity, or falsity, of the stories he is writing. From there the reader must decide whether the veracity of the story is important.

In Dick’s The Man In The High Castle we are presented with two different realities. We read the book through one reality only to discover towards the end, through Tagomi and Juliana, that another reality exists. Immediately Juliana embraces this new reality and completely disregards her former life but the Abendsen’s aren’t nearly as willing to do the same. To them the previous reality that held truth for them, the one they lived their entire lives in, is more real. Juliana disagrees, however.

Initially while reading Kindred we believe that the 1976 reality is more ‘real’ than Rufus’s. We refuse to accept that perhaps Dana’s life is more rooted in the antebellum south than in 1976. While the book progresses, however, we realize that although she was afraid of adapting to the days of slavery, she does so anyway in order to survive. She becomes conditioned by the culture, as does Kevin. Their home feels foreign to them and Dana actually views the Weylin’s house as ‘home’. Butler describes Dana’s life and relations with others in more detail while Dana is in the antebellum south which presents this reality in a more ‘truthful’ and relatable way. Through doing so we recognize that perhaps the antebellum south is a ‘truer’ reality than that of 1976.

Stanford Prison Experiment

Reading Kindred reminds me a little of the Stanford Prison Experiment. For anyone who doesn't know about the experiment, check out this website, http://www.prisonexp.org/ , for a detailed description. Basically, psychologists at Stanford wanted to study the psychological effects of a prison environment on both prisoners and guards, so they recruited college students to volunteer to live in a simulated prison for two weeks. However, all parties, including the researchers, became so involved in their simulated roles that they lost sight of the reality that it was only an experiment, and the experiment was stopped after just six days.

For the men involved in the experiment, the simulation became their reality, their truth. Instead of identifying themselves by name, they used the numbers issued to them. The guards completely took on the power roles that had been (randomly) assigned to them, and the prisoners began to think that there was no way out, when in actuality they could have quit they experiment just by asking. The line between simulation and reality became so blurred that even the researchers began to think of their work more as prison management and less as academic research. The study proved that people have strong psychological reactions when thrown into situations of power, readily accepting their new station and following perceived expectations.

In Kindred, Dana is similar to the men who were assigned the role of prisoner, in that she suddenly finds herself in a situation where she has far less power and fewer rights than she is used to having in her normal life. She has to accept drastically decreased living conditions, and questioning those conditions endangers her safety. Her primary concern is to avoid punishment, because she knows that the Weylins, and really all white men, have complete control over her and are free to treat her with as much cruelty as they please. Dana feels disturbed by "how easily [she] seemed to acclimatize" (97), and over the course of her several month long stay she ceases to behave as though she is an "observer watching a show" (98) and actually takes on the role of slave while she waits for Kevin to contact her. Her reality of 1976 gets interrupted by a new reality of the antebellum South, and she must learn to adapt and survive in both, because each is as real as the other.

The biggest difference between Dana and the participants in the SPE is that Dana did not volunteer to enter her new reality, nor does she have a simple way to escape it. Her danger is far more real than the danger that the prisoners felt, yet the perceptions of danger and hopelessness are similar because the prisoners really did feel that they're lives were completely controlled by the guards and those who ran the prison. It's interesting, then, that in the situation of far greater "real" physical danger, Dana maintains her grip on her previous reality much better than the prisoners did when their imprisonment was only simulated.

“I think people really need to think what it's like to have all of society arrayed against you.” - Octavia Butler

The focus of Kindred is not meant to be time travel. Octavia Butler has said that she was “trying to get people to feel slavery” that she was “trying to get across the kind of emotional and psychological stones that slavery threw at people." Time travel however does seem like the perfect way to help us to better understand slavery and its effects. By having someone from closer to our time go back and experience slavery, we can feel more connected to it. While reading this novel, readers cannot look at slavery in the United States as just something of the past, something that isn’t relevant anymore. We are drawn back in time with Dana and get to experience the horrors of slavery firsthand, not through the lens of a history book.

Contrary to what we discussed in class, for me, rather than adding a buffer, time travel takes one away. Slavery has its effect on someone from close to our time; someone who has only ever known freedom gets thrust back into a time where her life has little meaning, where she is not legally or socially allowed to be married to her husband, and where teaching a child to read merits a whipping. Since the novel is also written in the first person perspective, another layer of buffer is taken away. We experience the things that happen to Dana from her point of view; this allows us to become more connected to her and feel more for her as she struggles with living in a time of slavery. As I am reading the novel I find myself thinking about what would happen if I were thrown back into a time period like this.

At one point Dana compares the ante bellum whites to Nazis in Germany, “Like the Nazis, ante bellum whites had known quite a bit about torture-quite a bit more than I ever wanted to learn” (pg 117). This comparison made me think about being transported back (to the not so distant past) into a Nazi occupied part of Europe. How would I handle being transported through time to help my relatives? Would I stay strong despite having a large portion of the population against me? The time travel aspect of the novel actually allows me to connect more to the characters and its purpose. Octavia Butler once said that “I think people really need to think what it's like to have all of society arrayed against you.” Reading Kindred allows us to think about exactly that; in the context of this novel, someone we know or even us ourselves could be put in a similar situation.