What Makes Kindred So Powerful?

     As soon as I started reading Kindred it had a quick impact on me: the way I view the era of slavery in the United States, and also the way that I understood the story. It made me think a lot more about how people during the time thought about slavery. This is a large contrast from what I have learned in school because in school I learned mostly about what happened and the course of events due to what people thought of slavery generally. What is left out is feelings people experience from day to day due to the oppressive system; feelings are rarely discussed and never in much detail. Kindred emphasizes social perception and communication on an individual level which helped me understand more about what really happened during those times.

    I think the most important feature of the novel that helps the reader connect to the story and understand how people feel is that it connects to present day. It starts with the prologue; at the beginning, you read about a situation in a hospital and a possible case of domestic abuse. Those things are very familiar to anyone in our society and we become instantly curious about how Dana got in the situation an are empathetic for her. Dana thinks rationally as a person from our time and it makes the reader understand how she will likely perceive other situations. Later, when she goes to Maryland for the second time, it becomes clear that Dana is experiencing something a black person may have experienced in 1819. For me, this was really powerful because I kind of realized that as a slave or even a free person, people felt constant fear and discomfort of what could happen to them because they had no control over their lives. This was something I hadn't really thought about much before reading the novel.

    The other feature of the novel that shows the reader what it was like to be alive during the time is the dialogue between the characters. Dialogue literally does not exist in textbooks, so it is a completely new way of understanding history for most readers. I kind of expected slave masters to view their slaves as financial assets and mostly just talk with overseers and make sure that everything was going well financially and that work was being done. Instead, it seems that people like the Weylins knew all of their slaves decently well and knew them as people somewhat. Overall, for me I think the connection to present day and the use of dialogue were the two main thing that made the book so impactful for me.

    

Comments

  1. Eliza D. TerzievApril 20, 2022 at 6:15 PM

    Absolutely, I think that Kindred's biggest strength is in its ability to add faces, people, and relationships to the vague narrative about slavery we all already know. Your point about slave and slave master interactions stood out to me because I remember being surprised by that as well. Starting from Rufus and Nigel being playmates as children and going all the way to the rape so many women were threatened with or endured, the intimacy of the system struck me as something I had never quite realized the scope of before. Great post.

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  2. MitchellApril 21, 2022 at 10:36 AM

    In a related point, I think it's crucial that Butler chooses to set her historical narrative in the early nineteenth century, fifty years or more before Emancipation. Morrison in _Beloved_ is specifically contemplating lives on "both sides" of Emancipation, and her timelines are in 1854 and 1872 for that reason. But Butler makes a point of not allowing Dana to console herself with the thought that the people she meets will be free at some point in their lives--of course, people in 1854 don't know that Emancipation is ten years away, but Dana as a time-traveler would, and this might affect how she views the situation. To negate this "historical" perspective, Butler immerses her in a time where people must live day to day with no hope that the system will end or change.

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  3. JanakiApril 21, 2022 at 1:50 PM

    Hi, I definitely agree with you that this was a good change from a lot of traditional literature we read about slavery that looks at slavery as an institution rather than a terrible experience that so many people have gone through through the perspective of one person. Your point about dialogue is important, because the interactions between enslaved people and between them and the slave masters give a lot more detail about the true brutality of slavery. It was pointed out in class that it's really ironic that right after the Civil War, segregation was started although black and white people had been living together (sometimes in extremely uncomfortably intimate situations) for a while. This book really shines light on that, like Rufus and Nigel literally being buddies until they become men. Nice job!

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  4. SAhmad DastApril 22, 2022 at 9:16 PM

    Like you mentioned, I think that Dana's inclusion in the story is what really sells the entire setting. Having someone who thinks like us being thrown into a situation like this helps cement how different the time period and conditions where to our own. In addition, the time jumps and Rufus' development into a grown man gives the reader a much better understanding of how the environment of that time period shapes someone into becoming a slave owner.

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  5. Brooks HuApril 24, 2022 at 6:03 PM

    I agree, this book was incredibly unique in that it threw a character from the present (technically recent-ish past) into the far past. Sometimes, I'd imagine what I would do if I were in the past, but I never realized how complex it would be, and the book paid incredible attention to detail. One thing I thought was particularly interesting was the accents – Dana always had to say she was from New York, and everyone thought she talked weird. Like you said, dialogue doesn't really exist in textbooks, so it was interesting to explore this detail.

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  6. TeoApril 24, 2022 at 7:47 PM

    I think giving characters that we can relate to and giving the slaves a story and allowing the reader to see them as human is the most important aspect. Just stats or facts can't encapsulate what it was actually like in the plantations. I also think that Dana being from more modern times shows how different times were during slavery compared to recent times and shows just how strong you had to be to survive as a slave. Great post!

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  7. Emily SMay 13, 2022 at 11:26 AM

    honestly i wouldnt say i thought domestic violence at first- but it does really hit you with the "what the heck happened??" before you get into the story. I really agree with your point about dialogue standing out to you- its not something that a textbook posseses. maybe we should add that to our list of differences between history and fiction. dialogue really is what gets the reader to connect with the characters- allowing them to sympathize to the story. it kinda is what makes kindred so powerful. good blog post!

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  8. Tracy LiMay 20, 2022 at 4:53 PM

    Really interesting post! I think that the time travel aspect of the book really drew me in, and how it was a unique form of time travel -- i mean, it was just the plot device, not the focus. Watching the terrible cruelties of slavery and how they affect a modern black woman and white man was just such a complex, unique, and profound situation like no other book. It was a very powerful read.

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