So far, I have loved Kindred. It has been the easiest and quickest read of all the books I have read in this class this semester. Slaughterhouse-Five is still my favorite so far this semester, but Kindred ranks up there as a close second. The writing style isn't nearly as unique and complex as Mumbo Jumbo which makes it easier to comprehend and more enjoyable for me personally. The characters are developed in a very logical and straightforward way which makes them easy to follow and get to know. Kindred is a very plot driven novel and the plot is very different from any book I have ever read. So far this semester, we have been introduced to various books that play with our understanding of time and place. In Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut jumps from one time or event in his life back to another with flashbacks and flash-forwards. He may be taking a nap on a train someplace in Europe during World War II and then suddenly he's back in the States as a young child. In Kindred our notion of time and place is further complicated with the "time travel" that Dana and Kevin experience as they go back more than a hundred years to a pre civil war Maryland plantation.
The time travel dynamic is very interesting and I personally feel like it really goes along well with the class title; History as Fiction. Someone in class raised the point that this book is less historical fiction than any of the other books we've read so far this semester. I forget this persons entire argument for saying that but I remember it had something to do with how much this book felt like any other novel they might have read in a normal english class. Anyhow, I happen to disagree. The Antebellum South and slavery as a whole is a very important topic in most U.S History classes. It's obvious that Butler had to do a lot of research to make sure she depicted the slave/owner dynamics accurately. In a way, reading this book would be a great history lesson because of how much it shows the intersection of power, gender, and race issues of the time period. The fiction part has to do with the "time travel" and the obvious reality that the characters aren't real and that there is no way Dana could possibly be trapped in this time.
I agree that Butler did a really great job laying out the racial/gender power hierarchy of the time, and because of her immense research, I believe it does give a pretty accurate representation of life in the Antebellum South from both a black and white perspective. I especially like how while Butler could have easily portrayed Rufus and the "plantation owner" stereotype in a horrible light, she does make the reader find some sympathy in his situation.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, Butler does "succeed" in her history lesson, like you said, especially because her book has reached such a broad audience. Many of the complaints in our class have been that Kindred has followed a too "traditional" and "popular" "boring" plot line rather the much more post-modern divergences from literary "normality" that the other books in this course have explored. Although a lot of the writing/plot elements in Kindred really bothered me from a character standpoint, I think Butler really does a fabulous job trying to show the reader what it would actually be like to live in the ante-bellum South.
ReplyDeleteOne difference between this novel and others on the syllabus is that "history" in Butler is general--she doesn't deal with specific events and characters from history, and the blurring of history and fiction is less pronounced in this way. She treats the social/economic/political institution of slavery as a historical fact, and populates the historical context with fictional characters. There's no indication that the specific people on the Weylin plantation every existed, but they *could* have. The novel is an extensively researched reconstruction of a historical context.
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