Time Travel is Real
(Title unrelated)
In Kindred, written by Octavia Butler, we follow Dana, a black writer, throughout the early 1800s and late 1900s as she is forced to experience history literally firsthand. During this extremely eventful period of her life, Dana faces physical, mental, and ethical challenges, a raw, unfiltered view of history, and ultimately she changes the way she views the world.
The exact means of Dana’s time travel is left unquestioned and unanswered. This is because the reason has no importance; Butler never explains it because it would only distract from the point of the convention. The purpose of the incorporation of time travel is to attempt to answer a hypothetical question, while also pushing a compelling point about American history. Anyone can sit down and read a history book about slavery, however it is impossible to convey the reality of the full extent of it. Butler knows that not just any reader can relate to a slave; the life of an enslaved person is so drastically different than that of the average person, so much so that attempting to put oneself into the shoes of a slave would be overwhelming and impossible. So, a feasibly real person like Dana is beneficial for telling this story. Dana acts as a buffer between our knowledge of the past and the actual past. Butler does the heavy lifting for the reader by posing a hypothetically real answer to “What would I do if I lived in this time period?”. Dana is a more or less relatable person (less so in 2022, however the point still stands), so her reactions to experiencing history help the reader to answer the question, while presenting raw history in a unique manner.
In a way, Butler is breaking down the presentation of history, as to make it as simple as possible for the reader to take in and interpret the book. Instead of asking the reader to react to history, she presents Dana’s reaction to history and makes the reader analyze it. Of course, the reader reacts to the events in the book on their own, however Dana’s decisions and emotional reactions add another layer.
Moving onto the usefulness of time travel as a convention to portray history
One historically accurate aspect that time travel introduces is how a black person could find themselves in a slave state (or even a free state) and be enslaved. Dana was never a slave, untill she was told she was. Additionally, placing Dana randomly throughout time can represent the uncertainty of how safe the next day would be living under slavery. Every time Dana was sent to the past, there was a chance she could be placed in the middle of a dangerous situation. She had no control over this whatsoever, much like how enslaved people felt constant fear, overwhelmed with the feeling of powerlessness.
Your last paragraph I think captures much of the essence of Dana's experience with this whole time traveling situation. In class we talked about how there's a parallel between the slavery system and her relationship with Rufus (he as the master is in trouble/ needs her/ wants her, and immediately she is pulled from her own life to be by his side), and I think that gets at some of the same sort of themes. I also think that your point about how free black people could suddenly find themselves enslaved (just like Alice was) is yet another good parallel. Good post!
ReplyDeleteButler's presentation has a lot of nuance and I was far more engaged with this narrative than the other texts we have read. It is a lot more intimate and human even if it is entirely fictitious. Because Butler has complete control over the narrative and does not use real characters I think she is able to portray something that may, in some ways, be even more real than the facts. We can relate to this experience a lot more than a textbook.
ReplyDeleteI like the description of time travel in this novel as "unquestioned and unanswered"--as Dana puts it early on, "I'm not sure it matters what we think." I wrote about this topic on my own blog, but I see this as a metafictional aspect of this narrative: a conventional historical novel achieves this kind of time-travel without comment. The narrative just begins with the setting as 1815 or whatever, and the world being depicted features historically accurate details that enhance this illusion of the reader being transported to an earlier time. There's no announcement to prepare the reader: "This narrative is NOT set in your present day. Be prepared to adjust your perceptions accordingly." Likewise, Butler just yanks her protagonist out of the present and drops her into the past, much as a conventional historical novelist does with a reader. No "answers" are required. (And it also, as you note at the end, evokes aspects of real slavery, where people were indeed snatched from a familiar time and place and transported to somewhere completely alien).
ReplyDeleteTime traveling is what makes the this book post-modern in my opinion – the reader is expected to ask "which world is it, and what needs to be done." rather than "how can I interpret this world." I really like time traveling books, but this one is different because there is no detailed explanation for why time traveling happens.
ReplyDeleteI like your point that we react to Dana's reactions as much was we react to what's happening in the novel. I agree that this makes the reader better able to connect with slaves at the time period.
I agree with your point on time travel. If Butler had gone into too much detail about time travel and the mechanism behind it, it would've taken away from the story and made it much less impactful and interesting. It would also make the book feel less real and make it feel almost "silly" for lack of a better term. The ambiguity behind the time travel is a positive to the story across the board in my opinion. Great post.
ReplyDeleteHello young man. Great post! I really like how you incorporated discussion into your post by talking about the reasons for Butler's decisions when writing the book. I also agree with you that the reason for the time travel is irrelevant to the point of the book and it is much more important to focus on the feelings and emotions expressed by the connection to the present day.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I was curious about the time travel and anticipated an explanation at the end of the book, I'm really glad that Butler didn't talk about it, because it was clear that Dana didn't know what was going on, and the randomness of it's timing was important to build suspense and Dana's fear. When I was first reading the book, I often questioned why Dana didn't buy a gun or something to protect her with, since technology is far more advanced in the 20th century, compared to the time she travels to. However, thanks to the randomness of her time travels, she doesn't know if she'll be able to make it anywhere.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree that to be as effective as possible, Butler had to leave the time travel unexplained. Even still, it was frustrating to have no explanation. I wonder if Dana had tried to figure out exactly how the time travel worked if she could have brought better weapons or better materials with her back to Rufus' time. Or possibly, she could have brought something important back to the 20th century. Great post!
ReplyDeleteWhen I started the book and even when I ended it, I was confused about how the time travelling actually worked and was trying to find an explanation for the inconsistencies (why Rufus did not time travel with her). However, your post has put the whole time travelling phenomenon into perspective for me. It really does not matter at the end of the day, because this is not a science fiction book. It is a narrative that is a reflection on the struggles of slavery, and trying to explain the details of time travel would have made it seem unauthentic. Great job!
ReplyDeleteGreat job! I was also so confused by the time traveling at first, but like you, I reached similar conclusions. Butler didn't want us to be distracted by the science and physics and technicalities of time travel; there are already endless sci-fis about the time loop and butterfly effect and whatnot, but wanted us to focus on her characters, their interactions, the story. Kindred is not a sci fi, after all, it's a very complex and profound novel about the struggles of slavery and effects on a modern African American woman.
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