Why can’t we talk about slavery?

A point was made in class by our own professor that she had purposefully steered the direction of our conversations toward time travel and avoided slavery.  Why?  Evidence that even now in an open environment people will avoid talking about the main issue at hand if it is uncomfortable and/or emotionally sensitive.  Time traveling is a side note in the novel, but it is also so much easier to talk about.  And to be honest, could you really blame us for ignoring slavery?  How could 21^st Century college students actually discuss slavery when it is so detached from their experiences?  You can’t, and part of the reason may be, because our time periods are so different or because people just are not the same now as they were back then.

Through the first person narrative, we as readers can get a sense of slavery through the illusion of direct experience, and by doing this, we are in turn forced to ask if the experience is as distant from us as we believe.  Like us, Dana had a buffer to the events of the 1800’s until she lived long enough for the past to become “real now” even though it was “so abstract [back] then” (243).  After the culturally differences have been taken down, we realize that people have not changed.  Namely, the majority of us still lack courage.  Dana tells Sam that although other slaves may badmouth her for bowing down to Rufus, they who “let Fowler drive them into the fields (…) to keep the skin on their back and breath in their bodies,” are no different than she (237).  

Part of the reason for our aloof perspective on slavery is that we have hindsight.  As a representative for the readers, Dana advises Alice to “slow down” and take the easy route, and Dana never risks her own existence by finding a way to always forgive Rufus for his transgressions rather than confront him (234).  Even after her existence was assured through the birth of Hagar, Dana still found herself lacking the courage to directly confront Rufus.  In their final embrace, Dana realizes how easily she could accept Rufus’s actions, because “he was not hurting her” (260).  Only by realizing that “a slave was [still] a slave” and that Rufus was not Kevin did Dana have the courage to drive the knife into Rufus’s side (260).  As shown in Dana’s experiences, when we as people of a future time lose the power of our perspective, we realize how helpless we are to the traps of a time long past.