Nelson Glendinning

English 130

17 April 2014

Blog #5

            In class we have been reading the book “Kindred” by Octavia E. Butler. A story of a black woman (Dana) married to a white man (Kevin) who both live in the 1970’s. This novel has caught my attention in particular because it deals with the controversial topic of time travel. To my knowledge people have been arguing for years on whether it is possible or not to travel to and from different periods in time. It is depicted in movies countless times like in the series “Back to The Future” a Steven Spielberg film that depicts a young teen and a wacky scientist traveling back in time and are forced to ensure everything stays the same so he can exist in the future. Much like these movies in Kindred she is forced to travel back in time to the era of slavery to save one of her white ancestors. One question that I always seem to ask throughout the book is how she is able to travel to and from the past? What gift does she have that allows her to achieve this? Unlike “Back to the Future” where the two protagonists have a time jumping car equipped with a “flux compositor” that allows them to travel through time. There is a complete absence of any scientific explanation as to how Dana is able to travel through time. The only theme to her time travel is that she gets dizzy right before she is about to jump between times. This is difficult to wrap my head around for many reasons.

            I have grown up watching all kinds of movies and read all kinds of books dealing with science fiction. However, a common theme in all of those books and movies is science. There was always some sort of “scientifically” explanation for the characters ability to time travel (whether they are true or not we may never know). So reading this book is a lot different because there is not explanation for her time travels other that she needs to save an ancestor of hers so she can exist.

            Although I am not quite sure as to why Butler uses time travel I do have one idea as to what her though process might have been behind it. Butlers story tries to display the difficulties of comprehending slavery by bringing someone who was raised in a somewhat less oppressive time, and throwing her into some of the worst human conditions possible. But an author can’t just say that one-day Dana woke up in the past and had to stay there, where is the story in that? No, Butler chose to give the protagonist a gift that linked here and her husband to the past. With each consecutive jump to and from the past there seems to be a social shift in her interracial relationship with Kevin. It becomes more and more evident to Dana and before she knows it she is taking orders from Kevin. Here is an example of this submission, “ ‘turn it off’ said Kevin. I obeyed” (Butler 191). That instance shows the past clinging on to Kevin and that it still exist even with Slavery abolished. So the only conclusion I can come to about the time travel is that it is a symbol that oppression has the ability to time travel and Butler is trying to tell us that it is still all around us.

I recently read a peers paper on Cynthia Ozick’s short story “The Shawl”. The writer was arguing that the mother Rosa was only interested in her own survival and not the wellbeing of her daughter, Magda. I don’t believe this to be true necessarily simply due to the dehumanizing conditions in the concentration camps.  The writer uses the example of Rosa’s daughter standing alone in the middle of the square and Rosa’s decision not to get the child because she will most likely be killed along with the child. Then after Rosa failed to retrieve the child and the child is taken by guards and thrown against an electric fence and kills her and Rosa again decides not to retrieve the child in fear of the consequence of death. The writer believes that Rosa thinks of herself and the consequences that might happen to her if she tries to save the child.

            I understand the writers claim that Rosa is only thinking of herself in the situation because she does not save the child in the end. This is definitely morally wrong in any situation, but I believe that Rosa is not in any ordinary situation. She has been forced into a concentration camp against her will with her fifteen month old child and her nephew. Normally The Nazis would take the child and kill it upon their arrival to the concentration camp. However, Rosa was able to sneak the child in using the shawl to hide it. So from the beginning Rosa is put on edge because she knows she is not supposed to have this child with her. To me have the responsibility of a life is extremely stressful. I was a lifeguard for five years and I have had to jump in and get kids who thought they could swim. Right before you jump in to get them there is always a hesitation where you need to decide: one, If they actually need help, and two, if you are making the right decision to jump in and save them or use one of you tools to retrieve them. This is a drastic downplay of the situation Rosa is faced with but I am trying to relate it to an experience I have had dealing with someone’s life. However, in that situation with todays standards upheld by citizens it is an easy decision for me to jump in and save the child.

            Rosa’s situation does not have the standards that she can follow. In concentration camps they break down any sense of morality you ever had. They make it so you cant stand up for what is morally right, and if you did then you were killed. Now Rosa’s decision is skewed because even if she didn’t have the child she could be killed at any time. So death is evident at every turn in the camps. When she sees Magda standing crying in the middle of the square death was everywhere. There was no chance for survival for the child and she knew it. She knew it from the beginning; the child never had a chance. So if she tried to retrieve the child then she would be killed as well. I believe she retrieved the Shawl for her own self healing because the child was already dead so she ran to the one thing that kept her alive to comfort her as it did for Magda while she had to watch her be killed.

“Will you type those pages for me now?”/“No.”/“Dammit Dana...!” (Butler 109)

I don’t really know what to write about, since we’ve covered a lot in class and discussed the things I had thoughts on. Now, I can only think of one passage that grabbed my attention. In the chapter following her first whipping, Dana flashes back to before her and Kevin got married. Actually he had just asked her to marry him and she thought back to when he wanted her to type his manuscripts:

He [] had asked me to do some typing for him three times. I’d done it the first time, grudgingly, not telling him how much I hated typing....The second time he asked, though, I told him, and I refused. He was annoyed. The third time when I refused again, he was angry. He said if I couldn’t do him a little favor when he asked, I could leave. (109)

At first I wondered why this detail would be included in the story, least of all why Butler would include flashbacks amidst the story (which is already a giant flashback).

To answer the latter, I think it helps connect the past to the present on another level (aside from what Dana is already experiencing by traveling back in time). This conclusion really comes from why she would write this about Kevin, so let me explain.

We spoke of doubling between the two settings in the novel, and I think this passage shows that the doubling goes beyond the characters and into the situations as well. Here Kevin, a white man, feels strongly that Dana, a black woman, type for him and gets upset when she refuses (and basically kicks her out). Then when she returns, he still asks if she would do this for him (see title). So one could argue there’s a part of Kevin that has a bias towards women, and the color of their skin only adds to the conflict (from a reader’s perspective). What’s also interesting is this passage’s placement within the novel. We experience this horrible and violent moment with Dana and Weylin before she leaves, then relive this seemingly opposite moment with her and Kevin before coming back to the “present”. On the surface it might serve as a break for the reader after the climactic events that just happened, but Butler seems to challenge the reader to really pay attention at what is happening in this flashback. Dana just got punished by Weylin for not doing what she was told (to stop reading); here she did not do something that was expected of her and wasn’t punished, but did get in a fight and left.

I’m not trying to compare Weylin and Kevin, just the fact that these two events are similar and that Butler put one right after the other. Remember that later in this chapter (“The Fight”) we also learn of Kevin’s sister and Dana’s aunt and uncle. So, this passage is the first of many subtle comparisons Butler makes between Maryland 1815 and California 1976. Are the times/eras really that different? It’s a bit scary seeing the two worlds tied this way – through Dana’s ancestry, the time travel, her relationship with Kevin – much like how now Dana (and Kevin) have trouble differentiating between their two “homes” and keep comparing the two.

This may sound a bit repetitive, but it’s all I’ve got. I just think this is another good example from the novel that adds to what we were discussing in class.

Work Cited

Butler, Octavia. Kindred. Boston: Beacon Press, 2003. Print.

The Perspective of Time Travel

            What Octavia Butler does in Kindred is break the trope and genre of time travel in many ways. An author or a filmmaker would have to have an actual device to make their character travel back and forth through time. Yet, with Kindred it is almost a physical ability, a trait within the DNA of Dana allows her to jump back and forth to the past in order to rescue Rufus. In the early reveals of this power, both Dana and Rufus lack the ability to explain what the action is, from Dana’s perspective; “I don’t know how it happens-how I move that way-or when it’s going to happen. I can’t control it.” What she knows is little and that she can feel it happening, the sense of nausea overcomes her and she fears what is going to happen. Both Kevin and Rufus witness Dana’s time traveling ability and describe it in similar ways, “(you) vanished. Just disappeared. And the reappeared later.” Rufus goes on to describe the action further, “”Disappeared? You mean like smoke?” Fear crept into his expression. “Like a ghost?”” Although the characters view the physical act of time traveling and disappearing then reappearing in different ways, one thing binds them all and that is fear. The fear of the unknown within the characters is something that is steadfast within the genre. The forward thinking of science or the unknown is common to time travel, but having this kind of intimate form feels fresh and new to a novel. Butler uses this to her advantage knowing that the technique has been used before but not in this way. It creates a more intimate relationship between Dana, Kevin and Rufus. The unknown is also frightful to Rufus’ parents and they clearly can’t handle what they don’t understand. I can only imagine seeing a stranger appear with a child, rescue them and then vanish into thin air. Kindred is doing something special with time travel, how else does it break the rules with the genre and what does it mean for it in general? Should audiences and readers begin to expect more out of these kinds of stories?

Who is to Blame?

When the class was discussing Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man is Hard to Find the question of morality kept creeping into my thought process. We thoroughly fleshed out what it meant to be a moral and good character within the confines of the story. Yet, a question loomed for me, who would be considered the “good” character when looking at the grandmother and the misfit. More so, does the reader’s upbringing really come into play when making this choice? Personally and it sounds terrible to write it but I would have to side with the misfit in the argument. Although this character is a known serial killer and has the entire family murdered in the woods, there is something about him that displays that he knows what kind of person he is and is okay with it. The misfit is comfortable with being honest within himself and to the outside world. On page 128, “my daddy said I was a different breed of dog from my brothers and sisters.” It is this recognition in being different that sets the misfit apart. Coming back to a previous point of someone’s upbringing determining how he or she would identify goodness; my personal stance is that of a person who finds racism to be the lowest of the low, so to speak. The grandmother identifies herself as one of a southern “bell,” she acts higher than might in particular to the poor and that of color. This sense of entitlement is something that identifies the character especially when setting herself apart from the rest of normal people. An example being when she reflects upon her past romantic relationships, citing the reason she didn’t marry Teagarden due to the fact that he “just brought her a watermelon on Saturday.” Also that she should have due to the fact that he had “bought Coca-Cola stock when it first came out.” Money again is something that the grandmother uses to set herself apart.

            Another topic that was not touched upon during class was that of the grandmother being to blame for everything that went wrong in the context of the story itself. Without the grandmother being present the trip wouldn’t have been planned, the house that they tried to find wouldn’t have been there so the crash wouldn’t have happened, and she wouldn’t have recognizesd the misfit outloud thus leading to the eventual killing of the family. Without her, everyone would have survived but because of her sheer existence