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.
The notion of being able to 'fix' something in the past is noble, especially in regard to something as horrific as the cruelty and inhumanity imparted on the slaves of the antebellum South, but it is a flawed notion due to the paradoxical nature of time travel. The moment Dana first travels back in time and finds herself in the past, that means she was always there and always supposed to be there. She has woven herself into the fabric of time at that particular point, and just because she jumps back and forth in time doesn't undo the fact that she was there. And so, everything that happens as a result of her being there has already happened and consequently will always occur. I agree that fear tempers a lot of her actions and causes her to act with caution and prudence even when one would want her to rebel, but it is not the only force holding her in place. If she were to do something radical, like organize a slave riot, then it already would have happened, and then it wouldn't really be a 'change' from the present state because it already would have happened. Both of her realities, the 1800s and 1976 realities, are happening in tandem with one another through her actions. However, Dana doesn't seem to be conscious of these time-travel paradoxes and thus, she feels compelled to stay in her place so as not to disrupt what she thinks is the natural or proper flow of time. So in that way, fear is indeed preventing Dana from acting.
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