Reeling

         When I finished this book, I didn't find myself reeling in awe of its power. You know sometimes, you finish a really great book, and afterwards, you need a while to digest it? Well, Kindred didn't really do that for me. And I really think it should have, considering the point of the book is to make us think about what slavery means to modern people.

        There are several points in the book that try to 'close' the distance between 1976 and 1815, such as the South African race riots, "South African whites always struck me as a people who would have been happier living in the nineteenth century, or the eighteenth" (196), or when Dana alludes to the fact that her temp jobs are like slavery, or that being forced to do menial writing for Rufus is similar to doing it for Kevin. But the book didn't leave me reeling.

        In The Things They Carried, my stomach turned while reading the scene where Rat Kiley tortures the baby buffalo. That scene made me think. I think the scene that is the most disturbing in Kindred is on 176: "He beat me until I swung back and forth by my wrists, half-crazy with pain, unable to find my footing, unable to to stand the pressure of hanging,  unable to get away from the slashing blows..."

        Yet, this scene, while disturbing, didn't make me sick and it certainly should have. The kind of torture that happened in institutionally in slavery is incomparably more tragic than the buffalo scene. I don't want to say that violence and brutality is the only way to prove a point, but it was certainly effective in The Things They Carried. Butler probably didn't want to alienate potential readers by making the book too violent, but I think that Kindred really downplays the kind of horrors that went on during this period of time. 

        I think that the book has a lot more power if taken in context. In 1979, Martin Luther King had only been dead for ten years. In 1979, integrated schools had only been around for twenty. The tension of the Civil Rights movement was far from over in 1979. This book probably cut a lot closer to home in 1979. As Octave Butler said, "I think people really need to think what it's like to have all of society arrayed against you."