Time Travel in Kindred
When I first heard from other people in class that Kindred had a lot of time traveling, I was preparing myself for a somewhat futuristic sci-fi novel. I was obviously wrong, but I also wondered why Octavia Butler would use a device like time travel to begin with if she didn’t intend on emphasizing it. I wondered if there was any other less obvious purpose.
Most importantly, time travel forces slavery to be treated as a reality. When reading retellings of slavery, it doesn’t feel that immersive. Most readers today haven’t gone through or witnessed anything comparable to the atrocities committed during slavery which creates a bit of a disconnect. The reader is still able to comprehend the weight of what happened, but it doesn’t feel real. By placing Dana as a person from the modern era directly into the time, it feels like the reader is navigating with Dana. We hear her thoughts as someone not from the time, and all we know is what she knows. By positioning Dana and the reader in the early 19th century, it becomes easier to understand the situation’s emotion compared to what we would understand without time travel. If Dana just read a journal written by Rufus or something similar, it wouldn’t have even close to the same level of intensity.
From a reader’s perspective, I was a bit disappointed that Butler didn’t pay much attention to the process of time traveling. Between chapters, Dana doesn’t really have a dramatic transition between time frames, rather, she sort of just falls unconscious and wakes up after time traveling (with life-threatening situations preceding it), “Something landed heavily on my back and I screamed again, this time in pain. Everything went dark. Home. I couldn’t have been unconscious for more than a minute” (Butler, 138-139). After she wakes up, she barely dwells on it at all and continues through the story. The time travel sort of just happens. As I read through the book, however, I realized that this was likely purposeful. I think Butler’s lack of attention to the more fantastical elements of the story subconsciously brings the reader’s attention away from it. There isn’t time to really question what happened or why. It forces the reader to focus their attention on the questions the story asks about slavery. Also, by paying little attention to the weirdness of the time travel’s existence, it creates a sense of normalcy, and it makes the reader focus on what happens as a result of time travel over why it exists to begin with.
I’m honestly glad that Kindred didn’t read super fantastical. If there were too many weird elements to the book, it probably would’ve taken away from the book’s intensity; a lot of the real plot elements would’ve felt less real if the book took place in a fantasy world. I think Butler intentionally struck a balance between science fiction and reality, intensifying the story while still grounding it in reality.
Hi Sandaru, I agree that Dana kind of abruptly just accepted her fate of time traveling. It at first felt a little weird, but it was quickly forgotten as the more important plot elements were introduced. I also enjoyed the concept of not being able to control the time travel and having it happen at inopportune moments. Having Dana directly immerse herself into slavery allows the reader to project themselves onto her character as they explore the different systems in place.
ReplyDeleteHi Sandaru, I was also initially surprised by Dana's lack of reaction to the sudden time traveling. Although, I agree that Butler did that intentionally. Drawing the reader away from the fantastical elements of the novel allows us to focus solely on Dana's experiences. A key part of what Butler is attempting to achieve with this novel is forcing the reader to imagine the unimaginable. If there had been a bigger emphasis on the time travelling aspect, the plot itself wouldn't have felt as real or intense.
ReplyDeleteHi Sandaru, I do agree that Dana seemed awfully calm when it came to her first time travelling experience, and she kind of just learned to accept it, her fading in and out of times. Her not being able to control the time travel did add on to this idea, which makes me believe this is why she became so calm with the idea, cause really, what could she do. Nice job!
ReplyDeleteHi Sandy!! I also wondered why Butler would use time travel, but I really liked it in this book. I thought that it added a creative aspect that made slavery seem more real when a fictional character from a different time period is experiencing it. Good Job, King!!!
ReplyDeleteHi Sandaru! I agree with you on how Butler's use of time travel makes the reader more immersed and the novel more focused. I think Dana being from the 1970s adds to the immersion because the reader is also from a very different time, and can connect to her more compared to if she was a character from the past. Great post!
ReplyDeleteHi Sandaru! I agree that if the aspect of time travel was any more sensationalized in Kindred, it would have taken away from the thing that makes the novel so special. I think the fact that the time travel isn't in Dana's control, and the fact that she is rarely ever just "visiting" the past, but rather building a life there for months at a time, makes the slavery narrative much more immersive. Great post!
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting to consider the role of time travel in making this historical novel more "immersive" than it might otherwise be: if we typically like to imagine some kind of distance between ourselves and the people depicted in a historical novel, especially one set during slavery, this novel presents Dana as an "avatar" for the reader, and we are compelled to imagine not just the nightmare of slavery more generally, but the more specific and terrifying nightmare of being our modern progressive selves AND being forcibly and involuntarily transported back to a period where none of our values or ideals matter at all. We follow Dana as she becomes more "immersed" in this period, and we see how impossible it becomes for her to just "act" and not actually BE immersed. "Immersion" is such a good formulation for her experience, as the initial brief visits to the past can be treated as anomalies, something she just has to survive and get past, but once she is spending *months* in the past, and only hours back home in the present, she has become *immersed*. There's no better illustration of this effect than when Dana finds herself thinking of the Weylin plantation as "home" when she returns.
ReplyDeleteSandaru! I like what you are saying about the use of a main character from the 1970s viewing the social structures of slavery. I think it is one of those things that we are always viewing history as a separate thing to our lives. Historical events like the titanic, the black plague, or WW11 are the most loved because they are similar to true crime and have some sense of horror that makes people feel safe when they read about them. Then, when a 1970 "safe" character is forced back into the past with no way forward, we take it more seriously as a real thing that affected real humans. They had no way out of it like Dana has no way out of it, and we aren't able to read the book in the same way we read historical sources since we are unable to take a step away. Great post!
ReplyDeletehi sandaru! What stood out to me about your blog was your section about how you were disappointed with some of the decisions butler made about the transitions between time travel. I agree with you that it just kind of "happens" in the novel and while there were some moments I felt confused because everything suddenly changed, your blog changed my idea about the purpose of that. I really liked your discussion about how the fantastical time travel draws attention away from itself to let the main point about slavery shine brighter. I think thats a difficult thing to do in a novel, and since I, and probably almost every single reader, just immediately accepted that time travel was a thing, it works extremely well. Great blog!
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