Two Worlds Become One

In Kindred, Octavia E. Butler constructs a story where two separate times in history become one—a world where present and past, truth and lie, amalgamate. The more Dana and Kevin become a part of the past, the less they connect with their present.

Butler warns us early on in one of Dana’s earlier trips to the past, that it would not be easy for the protagonists to live two clean-cut separate identities—past Dana and Kevin (slave and slave owner) and present Dana and Kevin (Californian writers in an interracial marriage). When Dana is forced to invent her identity to cover for her sudden appearance in the woods by the Weylin plantation, she tells Sarah she is a slave from New York and was carried away from her husband, who is still there. Obviously that is a complete lie since Dana is neither a slave nor from California—but it does stem from some truth. Dana was in fact married. She was also abruptly separated from her husband (through time travel and not a kidnapping, but nonetheless true). Dana immediately realizes that through the back-story she had created, “Lie and truth had merged” (Butler 40). She had brought some of her 1976 California life with her into the antebellum South. This fusion of lie and truth, past and present, will become a consistent theme throughout the story as it develops further.

In Part 1 of “Home,” after Dana is held at gunpoint and transported back into the present with Kevin, the two have an extremely difficult time readjusting to their normal lives. Unaccustomed to the technological advances of their time after spending months in the past, Kevin is found fiddling with the stove and the oven in the kitchen and staring blankly at the burners’ blue flames. He then goes to the living room and is unable to find the on/off button on the television. When Dana finally turns it on, Kevin feels uncomfortable and demands she turn it off. A similar event occurs when Kevin is examining his electric pencil sharpener with an expression that quickly shifts from awe to anger as he violently throws the sharpener to the floor while calling it a “damned toy” (194). Soon after, a jet flies over the house causing Kevin to jump onto the dresser terrified of the loud, booming noise. After five years in a world where electricity does not exist, Kevin found himself lost and overwhelmed in the midst of the technological advancements of his time.

Not only did the couple feel technologically lost in their time, they also felt emotionally lost. Dana begins to miss the familiarity of the Weylin house and the routine life on the plantation. She recalls the feeling of relief at seeing the yellow house, which serves as a contrast to the total lack of relief she is feeling in her original and true home. She admits that she felt as though she were losing her place in her own time. Living in a world without the technological conveniences of 1976 was more meaningful to her, “a sharper, stronger reality” (191). She goes on to explain that Rufus’s time was “a stark, powerful reality that the gentle conveniences and luxuries of this house, of now, could not touch” (191). No longer does 1976 feel like home to Dana and Kevin. Rather, the harsh times of the past have become such a part of them that they no longer know how to live freely. Kevin imagines a recently freed prisoner encountering similar adjustments. Even sleeping in a normal bed instead of on her pallet in the attic—or, as she calls it, “the world’s softest bed” (208)—becomes a problem for Dana.

The inability to readjust to the present is further accentuated by the deliberate and constant comparisons between the present and the Weylins. Dana first compares her comfortable office rooms in her house to the rooms of the Weylin house (193). Then, she compares Kevin’s facial expressions to those of Tom Weylin when he grabs her arm (194). Another comparison happens later when Tom Weylin threatens to skin Dana alive—a threat Dana’s aunt used to make, while, of course, not meaning as literally. Dana even mistakes Rufus for David after she is whipped by Fowler. Furthermore, Rufus says a line that David had said verbatim in one of the first chapters of the book—“Dana, get up. You’ll be more hurt if I carry you than if you walk” (213).

Dana and Kevin are no longer playing the part of slave or slave owner while in the antebellum South—they are living it. And by living it, a part of them becomes it.