Kindred

Binita Patel 6 December 2011 Kindred Octavia Butler’s, Kindred, tells a story about of how a modern day black woman, Dana, is transported from California to the antebellum South to protect a man that would later be her ancestor. Her survival essentially relies on her ability to keep him alive. She is transported to a Maryland plantation where her ancestor, Rufus Weylin, lives on. Every time Rufus faces danger, Dana is summoned to protect him so that he can father the child that would be another ancestor to Dana. Every time Dana goes back to the past, she is confronted by the brutal reality of the slave trade in America. Butler’s novel is categorized as science fiction because she has the element of Dana traveling back in time in order to meet her ancestor. However, Kindred, does not focus on the time travelling aspect but instead focuses on the differences of the 20th century, where Dana is from, and the 19th century, where she goes back in time and meets Rufus and the slaves. This gives Butler the freedom to write in Dana’s point of view and what she goes through as being a “slave” opposed to writing in the perspective of a slave and the memories he or she has had. The genre of science fiction works great in this novel because it has portrayed the realness of slavery very well as well as keeping the seriousness of the subject without distorting it too much. Kindred, as a science fiction novel, succeeds at conveying important messages about our history of oppression and modes of resistance to it because even though it had the unreal element of time travel, it still made Dana’s experience real and the reader learns more about what slaves went through from Dana’s experiences rather than from reading testimonies and books by slaves themselves. It is safe to say that most people cannot relate to the scars and troubles from the antebellum South. In fact, the only people that could relate to this would be the descendents of the slaves. Even then, they would not relate to the scars and troubles because these descendents have not experienced the pain and torture themselves but instead have heard stories past down from generation to generation. The novel is seen through the eyes of a woman of the ‘modern’ period of history, and bases her experiences off of her counteractions that she has. Here, Dana is in a situation where everything is unfamiliar to her forcing her to make an extreme adjustment to the new atmosphere, which is the 19th century. Clearly, the time spent in the past has made Dana much tougher and stronger than she had been before. She says, “If I’d have my knife, I would surely have killed someone. As it was, I managed to leave scratches and bruises on Rufus, his father, and Edwards who was called over to help” (Butler 176) Putting a strong, independent, 20th century black woman in the antebellum south provides a strong contrast in living conditions, as well as psychological patterns with those of the 19th century. Dana sees and conveys the world of slavery around her with her knowledge from the 20th century. This allows the reader to find a connection with Dana, who is also the protagonist. Dana describes the whipping she took in gory detail: “He beat me until I swung back and forth by my wrists, half-crazy with pain, unable to find my footing, unable to stand the pressure of hanging, unable to get away from the steady slashing blows…”(176) Dana, along with readers, is not accustomed to this amount of first hand violence. The discrepancy between times moves the drama in the plot along, in particular, Dana and Rufus’s relationship. Once she learns that her purpose is to protect Rufus’s life, in order to continue her own family line, she takes on a maternal role. Here, Butler challenges our assumption that learning can happen without violence. According to Sarah, Outterson’s article, “Diversity, Change, Violence: Octavia Butler’s Pedagogical Philosophy”, she says that Butler “shows us these parents who make decisions that put children in danger, despite the anxiety these depictions provoke, to examine the real implications and workings-out of pedagogy and parenting.” Education in Butler’s work is violent in both senses: while it literally involves physical harm and suffering, violence also serves as a metaphor for “more fundamental bodily boundary-violation” meaning the main character, in this case Dana, needs to sacrifice a part of herself . Both forms become necessary to the teaching and learning that goes on in the novel. Dana teaches Rufus the lessons of discipline and respect for others that have been considered the parents role: ‘“Hush, Rufe.” I put my hand on his shoulder to quiet him. Apparently, I’d hit the nerve I’d aimed at. “I didn’t say you were trash. I said how’d you like to be called trash. I see you don’t like it. I don’t like being called nigger either.” (61) This also illustrates how Dana has a lasting effort on Rufus and can steer him in the right direction and away from the ways of his father. However, she only has a limited time to shed her 20th century knowledge on him. In fact, Rufus’s change is not as gradual as Dana’s change because every time she returns, she finds Rufus years older, and acting that much more like his father. This poses as one of the general themes that go along with time travel in science fiction. Every protagonist has visions of making the future a ‘better’ place. So they go back in time and try to influence the past in order to fix the future. The fact that Dana goes back in time lets her to prepare for the worst. It is evident that Dana is well educated and has read a good amount of material written by former slaves. Since she is well versed on the ‘old southern ways’, she can develop a higher understanding of her surroundings. She knows exactly what actions will cause a violent reaction: “But if that patroller’s friends had caught me, they would have killed me. And if they hadn’t caught me, they would probably have gone after Alice’s mother.” (51) She also realizes what she needs to sacrifice in order to survive: “Oh, they won’t kill me. Not unless I’m silly enough to resist the other things they’d rather do-liking raping me, throwing me in jail as a runaway, and then selling me to the highest bidder when they see that my owner isn’t coming to claim me.” (48) This ‘street smart’ gives Dana a slight advantage. One begins to question whether Dana is growing accustom to the practices of the time. As the story progresses, it becomes harder for Dana to be ‘scared to death’ in order to return to her home. For instance, after she was caught reading to Nigel, Tom Weylin whipped her for the first time. In the academic textbook called “Cultural Conversations”, it says “Violence requires a situation where it can be exerted, a power relation that makes its use possible”. This shows that Weylin has the power over Dana and the other slaves, and giving the time period they are in, it gives him the right to use violence in order to let them know that they will be punished for anything that they do wrong. Her dizziness set in relatively quickly, and she was sent home. But, later on when she was caught trying to escape to find Kevin, she is whipped again perhaps more brutally. However, she almost accepts the beating: “This was only punishment, and I knew it… I wasn’t going to die.” (176) In addition, the sudden side by side of both times allows for the illustration of the timeliness of discrimination. Dana and Kevin’s present time, 1976, is a decade after the heated battles of the Civil Rights Movement, yet interracial marriages are stilled looked down upon. For instance, Kevin’s sister’s reaction upon learning of the engagement of Dana and Kevin was that she disapproved. She says she doesn’t wish to meet Dana nor have her in her house. She even goes as far to say that her own brother, Kevin, is no longer welcome in her house. (110) However, the racism is not just limited to Kevin’s family, it also applies to Dana’s family. Her uncle says that he wishes Dana to marry ‘someone like him-someone who looks like him. A black man.” (111) This contrast allows for that comparison with Dana’s ‘present’. In her time, Dana refers to the temp agency she works for as a ‘slave market’. (52) In a way a temp agency is the 20th century’s own version of slavery. The workers are at the beck and call of the agency, and the agency sells their services to each company, similar to a slave-selling bloc. However, each slave moves from plantation to plantation with no control over where and when, does not get paid, and suffers indignities and pain incomprehensible to the modern person. Dana, in hindsight, realizes this and withdraws her categorizing the temp agency as a ‘slave market’ (52). This, in turn, sheds light onto the conclusion that the ‘scars of slavery’ have not disappeared, shown symbolically through Dana. At the conclusion of the novel, Dana’s arm is stuck in the past, held by Rufus. Rufus becomes the representation of the long arm of slavery, which reaches out although slavery has long been abolished. As Dana’s scars do not heal when she returns to 1976, the scars of slavery are still present. Some people, on the other hand, think that science fiction does not work for this novel. Madhu Dubey wrote an essay called “Speculative Fictions of Slavery” and in it said that the concept of time travel does not work because it “defies scientific or rational explanation. If anything, the inexplicable nature of Dana’s time travel is underscored, but only to emphasize all the more strongly the veracity of Dana’s experience of slavery.” In other words, since there is a break from narrative realism, in which the novel failed to explain Dana’s access to the past, it does not detract from the reality effect of this past. Dubey also talks about how Kindred, along with other novels of this kind, have a common phenomenon of an actual return rather than a figurative return to slavery. What these paranormal devices of return make possible is “a visceral experience of slavery, and this is the sense in which these novels take a pointedly antihistorical approach to the past.” If historical knowledge is no longer available as direct experience, then the devices of return to slavery in these novels make possible of having an experience that has not quite passed into the realm of history. According to Stephanie Smith and her article “Octavia Butler: A Retrospective”, good science fiction/fantasy “engages the political realities of its time through the remove of fiction, an aesthetic that flies in the face of the still-popular argument among writers and writing programs that poetry and politics should not mingle.” But in this case, Butler uses science fiction with fiction. She combines an imaginery writing element with a serious subject like slavery. The consequences of slavery are still prevalent in our society today, with the continuing battle for civil rights and for affirmative action. It seems that much like Dana, we cannot escape the results of slavery without making a huge sacrifice. Ultimately, time travel lets Octavia Butler convey her own views on slavery, and the brutality of it. However, her main point is that although we have advanced through the last century, discrimination is still a major problem in our society. In order for any major progress to be had, each side will suffer losses, as Rufus’s life was taken along with Dana’s arm. Works Cited Butler, Octavia E. Kindred. Boston: Beacon, 1988. Print. Dilks, Stephen, Regina Hansen, and Matthew Parfitt. Cultural Conversations: the Presence of the past. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001. Print. Dubey, Madhu. "Speculative Fictions Of Slavery." American Literature 82.4 (2010): 779- 805. Academic Search Premier. Web. 4 Dec. 2011. Outterson, Sarah. "Diversity, Change, Violence: Octavia Butler's Pedagogical Philosophy." Utopian Studies 19.3 (2008): 433-456. Academic Search Premier. Web. 4 Dec. 2011. Smith, Stephanie A. "Octavia Butler: A Retrospective." Feminist Studies 33.2 (2007): 385- 393. Academic Search Premier. Web. 4 Dec. 2011.