Connection to Dana

In reading the first section of Kindred, I have found Dana to be a character whom I truly connect with. Because of this, I am being taught lessons through her actions and through the way she deals with some of the seemingly unrealistic occurrences in the novel. Instead of mentally or physically collapsing after realizing that she has legitimately traveled through time, or breaking down at the impossibility of it all, Dana becomes willing to take on two realities that could not be more different.  As readers, this stresses the importance of taking on multiple perspectives and not assuming such a fixed and inflexible approach to reality. It is this less rigid approach which allows Dana to even explore the possibility that the people she comes into contact with when time traveling are her ancestors--she has a hunch and it seems crazy, but she allows her mind to follow this instinctual feeling. In turn, she is able to determine her role/purpose in being there. This ability to take on multiple perspectives also allows Dana to feel the emotions of the time period she travels to (the antebellum South) in the most real way possible, and to truly experience history. In this way, I believe the reader is being taught the importance of experience in order to gain knowledge instead of being told something or reading about it--Dana's actions go to show that enormous value should be placed on experience.
As we touched upon in class, the structure of the text is entirely responsible for the connection I feel to Dana. The first person narrative draws me in immediately. Despite how little I know about her (when I step back and think about it, not many character details have been provided and there has been very little character development), the fact that she is the reader's one consistent element to the book, given the time travel that takes place, I feel like I know her well. From the very beginning, I am invested in her cause, assessing her role, and wishing the best for her.

Kindred and Beloved

So far I have really enjoyed reading Kindred. What I like most about the story is that it mixes the impossibility of Dana’s time travel with the factual history of the slave era in the antebellum south. In some aspects, it reminds me of Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Although these stories are very different, they both mix the factual elements of slavery in the United States and the mystical characteristics of time travel. In Beloved, the character Beloved mysteriously appears at Sethe and her daughter Denver’s house. She is believed to be a reincarnation of Sethe’s daughter who was killed many years earlier because Sethe’s previous owner came to bring her back to the south. Throughout Beloved, the main characters struggle to understand Beloved’s true identity and begin to question the reality around them. Beloved, if she is even Sethe’s daughter, acts as a constant reminder that Sethe can’t ever really escape slavery and the impact it has had on her life. In Kindred, Dana is also forced to understand and confront her own distant history through being physically thrown into the middle of it. Both books highlight the inescapable impact that slavery has had on American history and those involved, even if it is generations later. Also as a reader, you are attempting to understand the time travel at the same time that the main characters. Even at the end of Beloved, Beloved’s true identity is still unclear, leaving the reader with questions. Although we have not finished Kindred, Dana is figuring out the ways of her time travel at the same time the reader is try to grasp it so far in the book. This contrasted with the historical aspect of each scenario is what draws the reader into the texts and forces one to always be on their toes, constantly trying to piece together what is real.

The Qualia of Slavery

Like many of the previous posts, I found Butler's quote about the intention of Kindred to be perhaps the most interesting part of the novel thus far. In a 2004 interview, she is quoted as saying “"I was trying to get people to feel slavery," and, "I was trying to get across the kind of emotional and psychological stones that slavery threw at people". In that sense, it seems to me that Kindred is attempting to do to slavery in the antebellum South what The Things They Carried does to The Vietnam War; not to paint a entirely loyal description of slavery (which might have been done without resorting to time travel, or without the genre of fiction as a whole), but to capture a more basic, fundamental essence of what slavery is and what it does to those who are engaged in that kind of social system.

There are, certainly, some very noticeable differences between Kindred and The Things They Carried, particularly in tone and style. O'Brien is purposely very inconsistent with his narrative: events happen out of order, some are explained twice while others are not explored at all. Butler has imbued her protagonist with a much more linear (despite the obvious presence of time travel), objective narrative. Both stories are told in first person, but Kindred is by far more emotionally detached than The Things They Carried. Does this detract from the focus of the book,which is to achieve the same kind of fundamental understanding of slavery that The Things They Carried strives for?

While I'm currently unprepared to fully answer this question, I say tentatively both yes and no. The detached narrative style does clearly separate the experience of the reader from the experience of the protagonist in a way that, if performed in The Things They Carried, would quickly destabilize the book. What Butler does achieve, however, is a much more material grasp on what it means to be owned by another human being. Unlike O'Brien's narrator, Dana has no problem directly defining the tenets and ideas of slavery, and is not forced to describe her way around the central focus of the book. What we are left with is a very vivid, tangible experience of slavery, as opposed to the illusive, intangible picture of Vietnam that we are presented with in The Things They Carried.

Why didn't I know Kevin was White? (until pg 54)

Ignoring the blatantly attention-grabbing nature of the title, I would like to address the lack of character development, first brought to my attention in Michael’s post “What Characters?”  I had an almost comic-like reaction when I read the lines, “He [Kevin] was an unusual-looking white man” (54).  Wait… what???  I thought he was black! 

The assessment of Kevin’s race was not only based on my expectation of a homogenous couple but also the police’s suspicious attempts to get Dana to blame Kevin for her injury.  I thought that the police attempted to unfairly blame Kevin because of their prejudice against him.  After discovering Kevin’s racial identity, ashamed of my reliance on stereotyping, I once again looked through the text to identify the key line I had skipped over.  All I discovered about Kevin’s physical characteristic was his “kind of pale, almost colorless eyes” (13).  Knowing that I wasn’t delusional, I let out a sigh of relief, and then, I wondered, “Why?”

I drew the conclusion that Octavia Butler has the reader’s experience reflect the character’s experiences.  I paralleled the shock that I received from discovering that Dana and Kevin were an interracial couple with Dana’s own discovery that she could trace her family roots to Rufus, a slave owner’s son.  Our experience as readers is actual two-fold Dana’s experience.  While Dana is thrown into the unknown environment of the past, we are thrown into an unknown environment of not only the past but also Dana’s present.  Similar to Michael’s conclusion, I believe that the flatness of the character serves as a effective medium for a more personal experience.

Childishness vs. Headiness

There's an interesting juxtaposition of childishness and headiness I experienced when I began reading Kindred. Whoever it was that, in class the other day, said this text wasn't too different from some entries in the Magic Tree House series hit the nail right on the head in my opinion (if you who said this reads this entry, I apologize for not knowing your name). What really connects Kindred to the many works shat out by Mary Pope Osborne, at least in my mind, is the way in which they both deal with the issue of time travel. Yes, I agree that the ease with which Dana accepts time travel is important to preserving her life and her sanity, but the quickness with which she accepts this development mirrors my own rapid suspension of disbelief when I was a first grader poring over Sunset of the Sabertooth. I don't think Dana's a simpleton, but if a classroom full of groggy college students could figure out that she can't really change or ensure that anything happens (because it's already happened and still is happening), I think she could too. It's almost like she's avoiding the reality that she continues to be confronted by, and, for some reason, this bothers me quite a bit.

What Characters?

Kindred does a good job of closing the gap between the reader and the horrifying reality of the Antebellum south, but it does this at the cost of character development. Disregarding the prologue (which is devoid of character development), the are only about three paragraphs of introduction / description before Dana is violently thrust into the past. We've barely met her, we don't know what we looks like, and she's already rescuing a drowning baby. This kind of introduction does a great job of gripping the reader, but leaves us feeling like we don't know our protagonist (I still feel like I don't know her, 100 pages later). By her second portal journey, all we find out is that Dana is black. Nothing more. As Mary said, most of the characters in Kindred seem very flat. However, I don't think that is really a big problem. The book is effective as a thriller because it removes traits of Dana and Kevin that could distance the reader from the possibility of being sucked into a portal and any point in time. It reminds me of the Twilight strategy: make a hollow character that the reader can fill and relate to,  and tell the story through those eyes. Unlike Stephanie Meyer, however, Octavia Butler uses this power for good rather than evil. She uses it to bring the reader closer to the racism, violence, and ignorance of this time period. She wants to get you so close you feel sick. And she succeeded; I felt nauseous when I read the first part of this book (I also read the first eighty pages in the back of a poorly ventilated Jitney winding through the Adirondacks, but I was sick nonetheless.) Even though it's annoying, Butler's lack of character development is excusable because it contributes to a sense of terror.

Is It True?? Does It Matter??

         While reading Kindred, I was deeply disturbed by the violence in the novel. From the first time Dana was transported to the past, I knew it was not going to be pretty. While Dana attempted to resuscitate Rufus, Rufus' mother was so quick to start beating her. As soon as Tom Weylin came over, he immediately pointed his rifle to Dana's head. Is this an accurate representation of people in the South??? Maybe I give people more credit than they deserve, but I like to think that Southerners in this time period were a little nicer to strangers.

            Of course, then the fact that Dana was an African American came into the picture. But I still found it hard to believe Rufus' parents had such an ingrained hatred of Africans that they wanted to harm the first African they saw. This made it even more shocking when Dana witnessed the attack at Alice's house. White men just came to Alice's house and threw her parents out, humiliating and physically abusing them.

            After reading this I NEEDED to know if Butler was writing the truth and had done research on the time period.  Butler was going too far with her depictions of white Southerners and I would not become invested in a book that was a lie. But I found that she actually went to Maryland to research slavery and her goal in writing this book was:

"The idea really was to make people feel the book. That’s the point of taking a modern day black person and making her experience slavery, not as just a matter of one-on-one but going back and being part of the whole system."

                        - http://www.wab.org/events/allofrochester/2003/interview.shtml

Suddenly the gruesome writing made sense. Even though I was disturbed with what I was reading, Butler did her job- I felt what it was like to be a slave. And just like in The Things They Carried, as if we keep going in circles, it didn't matter if her descriptions of events were true because all that mattered were the emotions the reader came out with. So her stories may not be accurate, but does it matter if I come out with an understanding of what it was like to be a slave?

The Virtues of Linear Time

When I was little, I thought the ability to travel in time would be great. I could relive the best moments of my own history, travel into the distant past to the time of the Egyptians, or jump forward into the future to find flying cars and a world controlled by robots. This desire, however, somewhat changed as I grew older and thought more about the confines of time and the complications that come with messing with it. Time is one of the few linear systems in our world and its simplicity brings humans great comfort. It is consistent; it will always go on at the same rate. When humans break this linear sequence of time, the safety is gone, forcing us to face a multitude of new problems, which are almost always misunderstood. What becomes reality if people disobey the confines of time by traveling through it? Can history be rewritten? Can history, the one thing that can be written in stone, be meddled with, distorted, changed? These questions stretch our minds and only leave us with more unknowns. In Kindred, Dana cannot make sense of these paradoxes, she simply must accept and move on in order to survive. Although the consequences of her actions in the past may be inconsequential, she must treat history as a pliable entity, she must think of every single decision as one that might influence something in the future. Dana must constantly make sure not to dramatically alter the future while she is living in the past, only adding stress and worry to her situation. Dana’s difficulty controlling the consequences of time travel only exhibits its downsides and the great unknowns of a non-linear time system. I don’t think we can ever understand time beyond its natural form. Though our minds wonder with the possibilities of time travel and the intrigue of the paradoxes of time, I think we are much better off living linearly. In a world where few things are certain, the clock’s reliable ticking is an undervalued virtue of life.

Letting Go

My idea for a thesis is based on the idea of searching for purpose in life throughout The Man in the High Castle.  One reoccurring theme that revolves around Mr.Tagomi, Julianna, and Hawthorne Abendsen is that they are always searching for worth or purpose in life, but in the end what they are looking for was within them all along all they needed to do is let go of their worries. I felt that in looking for answers for certain questions they gave themselves purpose. Also the use of the I Ching is a great example of how the answers were always within them all along. This is because the I Ching just lets you interpret a few words in the way you want to see them. The whole thing with letting go of worries has to do with the idea that all the characters find happiness when they let go. When Tagomi lets go of all anxieties and even overlooks the fact he is having a heart attack he begins to find some inner truth of sorts. Julianna and Abendsen both let go of the truth they found out, which was the fact they lived in a fictional novel. But they found happiness or at least appeared to be at ease because they simply overlooked the fact. I also felt that in looking for answers these two characters find that life does not always need direction or purpose to be enjoyable. I can wrap this up with some questions. Would you be okay with finding out you lived in a fictional novel? And if not what could you do about it? Finally is it true in saying that the happiest times people have in life are those in which all worries are thrown out the window whether knowingly or unknowingly?

In Response To An Overly Cynical Post

Before reading this post, you should all read Mary's post titled "An Overly Cynical Post."  I was going to comment on her post, but then realized that as an actual blog post, this would be the longest one I've written all year. For that reason, some of what I said is in direct response to her post, so context may be necessary.
(Hi Mary! Your title is accurate. As much as I appreciated your cynicism and your post, I think you're being a bit harsh on Butler. I hope you don't mind that this post is basically arguing with your post, I just found myself writing a lot about this. I responded with what I thought was the appropriate amount of snarkiness.)

1. First off, if we're talking the south in the early 1800's, we would be hard-pressed to encounter an accepting white person by chance given the fairly limited number of white people we've met. Also, Rufus is white but an example of someone in the 19th century who was not so discriminatory. He seems to have made friends, more than just a master-slave relationship, with multiple black kids.
Rufus's mother is not entirely an awful person; she shows a helluva lot of affection to Rufus. Even his father seems to show what I interpreted as compassion when he offers to buy Dana after hearing what Kevin intends to do. They are of course violently racist, but again, not surprising for the time and place.

2. Alright, you got me there. I may have laughed pretty hard at that conversation template. Most of the dialogue between Kevin and Dana is pretty formulaic and trashy. However, large amounts of dialogue may not always decrease the quality of a novel. In fact, I often find that books with lots of dialogue are easy to read - they kind of sweep you along. Sure, readability does not equal quality, but this could be an intentional attempt to make the reader feel more engaged. I personally find the majority of the dialogue honest and engaging, but I can understand how you may not feel the same way.

3. This isn't the first science fiction book we've read. I didn't hear you up in arms over the implausibility of ice-9 when we read Cat's Cradle. Although its explanation seemed reasonably scientific, it is just as much science fiction as time travel is.
When you say you were initially able to suspend your disbelief and allow Dana to travel to the past, I assume you had no issue with her clothing travelling with her. What's so different about attaching a canvas bag? Even another human being? Kevin's still just a bunch of atoms when it comes down to it - not really physically different than clothing or a bag. If you want to know the rules for this time travel all at once, I think you're expecting too much. How are Dana and Kevin supposed to know how this works? A little mystery/confusion is something that sometimes comes with a first-person narrative.
As you said at the end, some of your problems could end up being solved by just reading more. It could be that there is no limit to the things Dana could bring if she tried hard enough - a car, maybe. Or all of California 1976. Who knows.

4. I find it hard to believe that the supposed metatextuality makes the novel any harder for you to read. Now you may just be looking for things to complain about. In any case, it makes a lot of sense to me that Dana should be a writer given that the novel is written in the first person. Kindred could be read as an account of these events in Dana's life as written by Dana, as written by Butler. I'm not sure as to the significance of that interpretation, but the solution may again be to read on.

I'm sure that this won't make you feel any differently about Kindred. I'm just hoping to reflect the views of others in the class who do enjoy the novel and to try to protect them from your cynicism.

Truth is Transported

             For whatever reason I have been trying very hard to find some sort of connection between Man in the High Castle and Kindred. Until tonight I was drawing an absolute blank (might have something to do with my brain being a bit scrambled, but I digress). The connection I found was that in both tales we see a transportation of modern ideals and beliefs through time and space. For instance, P.K. wants the reader to maintain their idea of what truly occurred in American history in order to make his general thesis more effective. Such examples include technology and apartheid in the post WWII world. It is because if our knowledge of what truly occurred when the Allies defeated the Axis powers that we see what Dick is trying to accomplish. I found this same technique in the writing of Butler in Kindred. Like Dick, Butler is attempting to use the reserves of knowledge in a modern character to serve as a antithesis for what is seen when transported to another era. The only difference between the two novels is that the beholder of knowledge in Dick's work is the reader whereas in Kindred this role is fulfilled by the main character Edana as she travels from 1976 to the early 19th century south. For instance, her ideas of racism and political correctness are mute in the world of bigotry that is the Pre-Antebellum South. By creating this dichotomy, both authors have effectively demonstrated how lucky the participants (readers of Man in the High Castle and Edana) truly are to live in the world that they live in. For the readers of Dick it is the difference of a result of a war and as for Edana in Kindred it is the difference of a couple hundred years.

Pessimistic Animals

"You have no faith" (49). Such a phrase has many potential meanings. Such words can be taken in a literal sense, therefore declaring that a person has no religious beliefs.  It can also be read as a statement regarding a person's self confidence, implying that they lack assertiveness. In addition, it can be viewed as merely a statement regarding a person's optimism. In Phillip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle, I believe the last two translations apply. Throughout the novel, various characters resort to the oracle when they find themselves apprehensive of an upcoming event, used in only potentially bad situations. They consult the oracle in the hope that their dread will be eliminated with the fortune of a prosperous future. And if such a message is not produced by the I Ching, they place their misfortune on the negative oracle reading. The people in this alternative world are incapable to problem solve, weigh options, or think for themselves. No decisions are made without consultation with the oracle.  The I Ching thinks for them.
Linked to a lack of self-confidence, the people of Dick's post WWII universe additionally lack any sense of optimism. New ideas, such as that for Edfrank Jewelry, are deemed to be frivolous conjecture. Initial thoughts are of what possibly could go right amongst all that definitely will go wrong, instead of assessing their situation from logically. The I Ching deprives the people of Dick's alternate world of true emotions, a sense of hope, the ability to problem solve and adjust, and simply what it means to be human. 

Hell and Heaven

Life is what we make it to be. Our struggles our happiness, our loves, is for us to decide. When people are able to recognize this, they are able to transcend all aspects of time. Dana soon realized that Rufus’s struggle was her greatest sources of happiness.  Rufus made her feel needed, more than any other man ever had. Rufus made Dana not only realize her greatest love, but also her greatest fear. She was transported to a world where African Americans are slaves. This concept to Dana is not just a different period of time, but a surreal experience of her own personal hell. She was forced to live a life that diminished her existence. Dana was in a world that no matter what she did her actual life was worth less than the family mule. In this aspect Rufus was the shining light in her life. Through Rufus acknowledging her as a human being she was able to experience heaven even in hell. This experience was Dana’s greatest happiness in the mist of her greatest struggle. Granted with Kevin there she felt safer, but Kevin is unable to transport her spiritually, to a level where she experiences the greatest amount of peace. He is just able to guide her through hell. In addition, Rufus in a sense becomes a transcended being to Dana. This action means Dana must have overbearing faith in Rufus’s ability to ensure her overall survival. Her relationship with Rufus is not of a slave to their master, but the relationship between a human and God. 

The Power of Fear

Fear dictates the majority of Dana’s life in Kindred.  Fear causes her to go to Rufus and it forces her home.  Fear leads Dana to assimilate into life of the early 1800s, and it determines her submissive behavior.  Dana feels fear constantly throughout the novel: she is afraid of Mr. Weylin’s temper and Mrs. Weylin’s hatred; she is afraid that Rufus will turn into an abusive adult like his father and that he will not help her in her future journeys; she is afraid that the other slaves will not accept her and that she will be punished for being educated; she is afraid of coming and she is afraid of leaving without Kevin.  These fears shape how Dana behaves in her worlds.  I believe that the power of fear is such a strong theme throughout this novel because Octavia Butler is making a statement about human nature.  She does not only detail the horrors of slavery in the antebellum south, but she also parallels this to life in modern day Los Angeles.  Fear does not only exist as a driving emotion if you are a slave, but it dictates most people’s behavior every day.  For instance, I work hard in school because I am afraid of failing and disappointing my parents; I buy clothes that I’ve seen other people wear because I am afraid of being too different; I recycle because I fear what will happen to the earth if we do not start taking care of it.  I am not yet certain at this point in the novel whether Butler is leading the readers to believe that fear should control how you act, or whether it only makes things more difficult.  From what we have read, it seems that Dana’s fear has insured her and Rufus’s safety, but has it really improved things? We know that Rufus and Dana will survive because of the paradox of time travel, but if Dana was not so afraid perhaps she would stand up to the Weylins, take a more aggressive role in educating the slaves, improving their lives, and turning Rufus into a better, more moral man.  I mean, Dana is presented with a pretty unique opportunity to go into the past, knowing exactly how everything unravels, and she doesn't try to fix anything?! She just becomes a passive observer, tolerating the impossibly inhumane conditions that are forced upon her as a black woman, without trying to raise a little hell? She is well-educated enough to organize a slave riot, save hundreds of slaves from lives of abuse, but her fear prevents her from doing so.

An Overly Cynical Post

Thus far, I must say that I've been disappointed with Kindred (and not just because I dislike science fiction. It is difficult to account for personal taste). Small things irked me, and upon asking myself why they irked me, I discovered several stylistic elements that got in the way of my greater enjoyment. Please bear with me. After years and years of being pounded with creative writing classes, I simply cannot control myself.

1. Characters. Butler's characters are flat and dull, verging on stereotypical. We've got the happy couple, a portrait of bi-racial marital bliss. The fact that Dana is black and Kevin is white draws a blunt and obvious line between them and Dana's ancestors in the South, who are scandalized by bi-racial marriage. Dana and Kevin's relationship seems to scream, "Look how accepting we are in 1976! We are good! You people in the 1800s are bad! Shame on you!" It's a heavy-handed and inelegant contrast. Not everyone in the 20th century is quite so accepting. Not everyone in the 19th century was so discriminatory. We're well acquainted with this story of white vs. black, of good guy vs. bad guy. But it's more complicated than that.

Then there's the innocent youth, mistreated by his parents. Rufus may be naughty sometimes, and gets into trouble, but aw, he's just so misunderstood. 

Rufus's parents, the Bad White People, represent another stereotype. Yes, stereotypes usually exist because they have some grain of truth in them, but I want more from these characters. We know they're rude, petty, sometimes cruel. Okay, what else?

Rufus's parents and the other Southern whites are so uniformly unpleasant that of course every black person must be good. This distinction, if you'll forgive the pun, is too black-and-white. I want my preconceptions challenged in a grown-up book. So far I feel as though Butler is working with historical facts that are no more complex or nuanced than the ones I worked with in elementary-school American history. White=bad. Black=good. But is there more?

Maybe Butler's characters will come alive a bit more as I keep reading, but if I'm 100 pages in and the characters are still two-dimensional, well...

2. And then there's the dialogue. There's just so much of it. And very little of it is compelling. Exchanges between Dana and Kevin are particularly irritating. They all seem to be variations of:

Kevin: Oh my gosh! Are you all right?
Dana: Yeah. But I have to do ______! (something potentially life-threatening/ unpleasant)
Kevin: Don't do it! It's dangerous!
Dana: I have to.
Kevin: Okay.

3. The time-traveling thing. I was willing to suspend my disbelief and allow Dana to travel into the past. But apparently she can also take items and even other people back with her? What if she somehow could bring all of 1976 Los Angeles back to the 1810s? What are the parameters, the rules, that govern this kind of time travel?

4. This supposed metatextuality we touched upon in class. I don't think the fact that Dana and Kevin are writers makes Kindred a text that reflects upon itself. Maybe Butler made these characters writers because she is a writer, and it is the easiest and most interesting occupation she could think of. After all, write what you know, right?

Perhaps some of my problems with the novel will be resolved by simply continuing to read it. Perhaps I'll grow to dislike it more. But for now, these things get in the way of my reading, and prevent me from getting to whatever deeper meaning I'm supposed to find.

The Bokonon of Oz

            I had the opportunity to see Wicked on Broadway this past weekend, and even there I couldn’t help noticing many of the themes we’ve been talking about all semester. Those in charge in Oz make up a whole lie that they feed to the people. The wizard knows he’s no wizard at all; he’s simply a “corn-fed hick,” but he creates the entire illusion of his power because the people are willing to believe it. Similar to the way Bokonon makes up an entire set of lies that cause the people to look to him for comfort and security.

            The lies in Wicked extend beyond the wizard himself. Glinda and Madame Morrible know perfectly well that Elphaba is truly not wicked, but they make her out to be so for the people to have a common enemy. They create this act that they all go along with as it drives their society and keeps the people busy. Sound a little Bokonon-esque? Of course there are differences: for example, the people of Oz are not told outright that what they are told are lies. They don’t have to consciously choose to believe them the same way the San Lorenzans do. But the parallels still exist: people in power making up lies and employing themselves as actors to keep themselves and their people occupied. Wicked explores the idea of a façade – things aren’t always what they appear – that has come up repeatedly in class discussions of our texts.

            Wicked also exhibits metatextual elements that are common in the texts we read. As the audience gets caught up in the musical – immersing themselves in the characters and plot – subtle, humorous references to 1939 The Wizard of Oz film throughout pull them back into awareness that this musical is in fact a fictional parallel to another famous fictional work. These references make the musical self-aware just like the books we read in class.

            The things we discuss in class never leave you. Even a couple hundred miles from our classroom I still notice metatextuality, lies, and deceit in works. I can’t speak for the Wicked books, but I know the musical would fit right in with Cat’s Cradle, The Things They Carried, Man in the High Castle, and the rest of our curriculum.

The Levels of Free Will

I'll be honest, when I began Kindred it felt like a very serious and threatening version of Quantum Leap. But as I invested myself deeper into the novel I found more to connect to than the content of a 45 minute TV show. What I find most striking about Kindred is the way the author tackles free will. Unlike many time-travel stories, Dana has no choice of when or where she travels to. This provides a situation where Dana has to not only adapt to but accept the fact that she is at the mercy of an uncontrollable force; fear. Rufus's fear controls when she is torn from 1976 and thrown back to the early 1800's. More than that though, to touch on our discussion earlier today, she lacks free will in her effect on the future. She is still the same and therefore everything she does must result in who she is. She cannot change anything about her present or past because they have already happened and in some ways are the same. Dana is stuck in a sort of infinite time parallel where both of her presents (1976 and the 18-teens) are connected through her. Her reality of free will is crumbling with each new jump in time and she is merely a pawn in some bigger dynamic. Dana’s duty is to keep Rufus safe so that her lineage will continue to exist, but this comes at the cost of conscious decision. Each leap is a leap to a separate home.

Saving Ourselves

“Let yourself pull away from it. That sounds like the best thing you can do, whether it was real or not. Let it go” (Butler 17). Kevin’s advice to Dana that she let go of the past and her inexplicable connection to Rufus is well-meant, but impossible. Not just because history seems to have a hold on Dana, but because history is something that no person can ever entirely let go. As the character of Childan demonstrated in The Man in the High Castle, humans are drawn to that which has a trace of history because in it we see traces of ourselves. All that has happened in ‘the past’ has somehow contributed to our sense of the present, to the world in which we have a role. It is the frame that gives our lives context and helps us to establish ourselves, whether we are conscious of it or not. Whether that past is one of triumph and progress or cruelty and inhumanity is irrelevant so long as it’s ours.

In collapsing the distance between the reader and Dana and using genuine history as opposed to alternate history, Octavia E. Butler plays with this sense of history. In a way, we are experiencing exactly what Dana is experiencing. We, as readers, are powerless to stop the time jumps, and must remain helplessly ted to Dana. We are also powerless to resist the pull of involvement with history. It is ours, it has shaped us, just as Dana hopes her personal history as a modern black woman will help shape Rufus in his own time. There is a fascination that all people have with where we’ve come from; we’re as much involved with our sense of ancestry as Dana is with her actual ancestor, Rufus. She fears losing her ancestor will cause her to die, and we fear that losing that sense of historicity will cause us to not exist as the selves we know.

(So this is a bit of a non sequitur, but has anyone seen Biggles: Adventures in Time? It features the same basic concept of a man going back to save his ‘time twin’ whenever he gets in trouble. It’s not a very good movie, but amusing nonetheless!)

A Mother to her Ancestors

Kindred is one of those books I want to keep reading but can't read right before I go to sleep. It's too emotional, and even in the bright daylight I get teared up at the cruelty of the early 1800s, especially in the South. But to me what makes Dana's story seem so real despite defying every bit of logic we have learned to accept is her pure motherly instincts and unconditional love. Rufus is messing up her life, calling for her every time he perceives himself to be in a dangerous situation. Dana could be bitter towards him, hate him for putting her in so much danger, although he is not aware of the power he possesses. But Dana develops a certain fondness for Rufus, a need to protect him. This innate protective instinct, which we see across cultures, across generations, across species for that matter, is in my mind part of what gives us such a strong sense of being alive.
      This is of course ironic because Rufus is in fact her ancestor. Following classic legends, books, and even musicals such as the Lion King, the ancestors are supposed to watch over the living from the stars. When she first saves Rufus from drowning in the river, we see that she is an empathetic person willing and ready to act to save another human being. But the connection deepens from there. When she goes back the second time she delays her escape off the Weylin plantation in order to collect the burned drapes so Rufus can put them in his fireplace and hopefully not be caught by his father. The third time, when Kevin is eager to tell Rufus the truth about their situation, Dana actually places herself in a hurtful role of a slave in order to protect Rufus' innocence. She feels he is too young to have to comprehend the time travel and even more so the issues of racial identity, that are so prevalent in her life and that even she struggles to understand.
       She hesitates before telling Rufus what year they are from because she does not want to burden him with this knowledge. Rufus pleads to hear an explanation, saying "I already don't understand.... My leg hurts so much I can't even think about it"(Butler, 61-62). Dana, just as a good mother would, replies, "Let's wait then. When you feel better...." (Butler, 62). ALthough her and her husbands lives are in danger, and although Rufus understanding the situation may be essential to her life, Dana feels sorry for the boy because of his leg. Her ability to not panic and instead be lead by her normal emotions proves both her strength and motherly instincts, and through this I am drawn close to her as a character.