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.
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.
Well, we do get the uncertain privilege of seeing characters we *do* have a more developed connection with get whipped in later chapters, but I'm not sure that this opening scene really depends on any kind of emotional connection to the man being torn from his bed in the middle of the night and beaten and humiliated before his family by a bunch of thugs who are doing so with the full sanction of the law. It's more of an abrupt introduction to the nightmarish world Dana has been plunged into. For her, of course, there is the implication that this man is her ancestor--if it's Alice's father--but her reaction doesn't depend on this personal connection at all. She is struck by the physicality of the violence itself--the sweat, the blood, the grunting and crying out in pain.
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