Initial Thoughts on Kindred

Sunday, March 23, 2014

First of all, Kindred is a different read for me. Unlike the other novel we have read that had time travel (Slaughterhouse-five-), this book addresses much more serious topic--slavery. While at times it seems very clear that Dana, the character who is suppose to represent a person we can connect to (being from “present-day”), is like us, the problem comes to be the time period when this book was written. Kindred was published in 1979 (and set three years earlier, at the bicentennial year 1976), so when Dana goes to research about slavery, she goes to a library. While the readers of today might have thought, Wait, why isn’t she just looking it up on the internet; she can’t, because the internet doesn’t exist to the public in the late 1970s. So at times there is some confusion, because the way that book is written, we have to put ourselves in the perspective of an American in the late 70s.    

One of the things that I don’t actually like about this book is the lack of characters. The lack of minor characters is causing me to fail to actually relate to some of the moments in the book. A good example is when Dana sees Alice's father getting beaten for sneaking into her house. The detailed description provided is meant to bring out the realism, but I don’t know, I just don’t feel connected: “Then the man's resolve broke. He began to moan--low gut-wrenching sounds torn from him against his will. Finally he began to scream. I could literally smell his sweat, hear every ragged breath, every cry, every cut of the whip. I could see his body jerking, convulsing, straining against the rope as his screaming went on and on.” (36)

Obviously, this is an inhumane act, but the story just doesn’t particularly sound interesting to me, probably because we haven’t learnt much about Alice’s father as of now. Another reason for this, I think, is that the book is going way to slow for me. Wheater is the fictional aspects, or the aspects of utmost detail, I am bored with the “slowness” of the chapters. They seem to have a cycle: really interesting beginning, slow middle, and then cliffhangers at the end (so Butler keeps us hooked, but in a bad way).

In the end, we can only analyse the point of the novel. The point of Kindred, from what I can tell as of now, is to witness the social context where an adult man and woman have no rights, as well as imagine the various situations that this economic system allows for. But, with the speed at which this novel is going, as well as the fact that “present-day” is set in 1976, I am simply not able to connect.  

Fate/Free will-Update

I got an idea to describe Billy's fate in class, so I thought I would share it. When a cocunut falls from its tree into the ocean (so the tree lets go of its fruit), then which river it will go in, which land the fruit will be planted on to pulp a new tree (and even if it is lucky enough to survive), is completely dependent on the fruit and its destiny. This is fate. Similar, to this is Bily's case. Fate carries Billy from one time spectrum to the other.  

End Reflections of Slaughterhouse-five

Slaughterhouse-five is an interesting novel, but I liked it primarily because of its new and enriching concept-- never before had I seen an idea of this constant time traveler (time traveler sort of implies that Billy is in control of time, he actually isn’t) and this awe-struck me. Although it was this very thing that had me confused for a long time, I think that that it served well to the purpose of the book. While Vonnegut’s style is disjointed into small vignettes, restraining from a fully coherent and well developed narrative, which at the beginning made it seem to like Billy was crazy. However, as the book progressed, the message was clear that this was how the human brain works-- everybody dreams, daydreams, fantasizes, remembers, and analyses.

I would also like to spend some time talking about the writing style. When I read a book, I prefer to go for fiction because you tend to have a lot of dialogue and not a whole lot of jargon mess to sort through (come on, thats reserved for things like poetry, not books). People write really exquisite and long sentences which I just hate. That is why, when I first read Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, I liked it so much -- short and sweet, and gets the point across. The same thing can be seen in Slaughterhouse-five: while the concept is a bit hard to grasp, the writing is brief, yet moist with irony. For example on page 60 (this is Slaughterhouse-five), when Billy is not able to find the steering wheel, the narrator says, “He was in the backseat of his car, which was why he couldn't find the steering wheel.” The ironical frankness of that is what I enjoy. Vonnegut gets the point across in the quickest way possible, and I love him for that. While I was reading Mumbo Jumbo or Ragtime, it felt like the narrators were these tough, introvert type of people (if I were to sit in a room with them, I would feel lonely), whereas, Vonnegut’s narration is more simplistic, which is why I am able to connect.  

Overall, I think that Slaughterhouse-five has been the most thought provoking book so far this semester, as well as engaging. While I was not able to connect to many of the problems that Billy faced, I was reminded of many proverbs while reading his experiences. For example, when Billy works together with the Germans to escape, that reminded me of the famous proverb “if you want to take refuge by the river, make friends with the crocodile.” So it goes.    

Free-will and Billy in Slaughterhouse-five

In Slaughterhouse-five, free will is repeatedly questioned. Billy tells us, from his experience at Tralfamador, that everything is inevitable -- fate and destiny are already written and nobody can change that. In fact, when we are told of Billy a little bit in chapter two “Billy first came unstuck while World War II was in progress. Billy was a chaplain's assistant in the war. A chaplain's assistant is customarily a figure of fun in the American Army. Billy was no exception. He was powerless to harm the enemy or to help his friends. In fact, he had no friends. He was a valet to a preacher, expected no promotions or medals, bore no arms, and had a meek faith in a loving Jesus which most soldiers found putrid.” Clearly Billy is not a good soldier, certainly not liked by his soldier-mates. He preaches-- to soldiers who don’t even believe in his religion. After learning that destiny is unchangeable, Billy does not care about anything, and spends the rest of “time” analysing minute things that a normal adult would simply not look at.

One way that we can understand this is by the idea of proofreading. What is proofreading, and why do we proofread? We reread our work, after completing it, to catch any errors that we didn’t see the first time, or that we thought were correct, but turns out they were incorrect. These are the terms in which we must understand Billy, he is “reanalysing” the world in a different manner, viewing things from a different point of view, because he has already achieved everything in life. Death or life are no longer a boundation to him, and as he moves through the time spectrum, he is oblivious to the obvious things, and is rather interested in just defining life and what it is to be human. This is why we learn history (literally the story of man; his-story), as to not commit the same mistakes as before.

"So it goes."

Today in class, it was pointed out that the phrase “So it goes” was repeated in the book over 100 times. I would like to take some time in this blogpost to expand on these very small three words but their counter-oppositely major impact on the book as a whole. “So it goes” is a line that we come across on nearly every page, and follows all accounts of death in the Slaughterhouse-Five. As Billy has expanded both his emotional and psychological way of thinking, he has most certainly conquered death, the biggest fear of human life. After viewing his death over and over again, as well as various parts of his life, he is a completely different human being, if even human. His way of thinking has completely changed, and he has started seeing things in very different ways than others. When a couple of his “friends” (he doesn’t really have any friends, at least nobody that he really loves, and even if he does, he doesn’t show it) are shot and killed he thinks “Now they were dying in the snow, feeling nothing, turning the snow to the color of raspberry sherbet. So it goes” (27).

“It” is the heart of this statement, referring to life: Life goes on, many roadblocks come and go on the path of life, but it goes on. This statement helps us show, according to Billy, the unpredictability of war, the inevitability, and its delusions. At the same page he starts with “Three inoffensive bangs,” which means that the Germans are simply doing their jobs-- they are not bad people, they are not terrorists, they are not unrighteous, but rather, they are doing what they have to do. This kind of things happen in war and you can’t get angry at these things. “So it goes”. These things happen because they have to happen.