Dana's Gradual Loss of Distance with the Slave Era in Kindred

(The images are from the really cool Kindred Graphic Novel!)

Dana's Gradual Loss of.............. Distance with the Slave Era

I have to say, that after completing Kindred, this book stands as probably my favorite one that we've read in class thus far! The suspense, twists, thrills, the development of the characters, an intriguing--yet still mysterious--applications of Dana's time travel were all things that just kept me hooked on this story. I cannot overstate the amount of times that I took just a small little peak ahead after stopping at what was assigned, simply because I couldn't handle the curiosity that came after the cliffhangers! There was even the visceral point in which when Dana sends herself back so abruptly that it literally made me audibly gasp at like 1 o'clock in the evening

So, as the title implies, I wanted to briefly talk about the ways in which Dana is losing distance with this time-travel to the past. I'll go into these more in-depth when the time comes to write our Kindred essays, but the moments I'll be mentioning are ones that particularly stuck out to me. 

We know that from the beginning of the story, Dana carries an initial sense of distance from the era: She carries knowledge about influential event and what will happen, prominent figures of the time, etc., and besides, when she first jumps into this period she's able to return relatively quickly. But, I feel like that wall between her and the antebellum era intially gets shattered after two points: One where she is inches away, witnessing a slave beating, and the moment where she had almost been assaulted by a patroller. She acknowledges after the latter occurrence that: "I don't have a name for what happened to me. I don't feel safe anymore."

 

When, she notices that she's more than just an outside spectator-- someone actually experiencing these events in real time-- that is precisely when her concept of separation between the period begins to shift.

In the visit following that breakthrough (The Fall), that's the first visit where she--and Kevin--experience a substantial amount of time on the Weylin plantation. Dana brings up that her and Kevin are just "actors"--albeit bad ones--- that are just biding their time, waiting to go home while humoring the real people a part of their history. But that "act" gets broken and Dana's distance of the past narrows as she and Kevin see children playing their auction "game." Kevin in this scene is carrying maybe a little too much distance from this time since Dana lays into him about minimizing the situation and "reading into it too little." Then we can hear for Dana herself say to Kevin that with situations such as this, she cannot keep maintaining her distance no matter how much her knowledge of 1976 is "cushioning" and "shielding" her.

Dana's loss of separation gets to a point where she begins calling the 1800s period and the Weyline house "home." Really, she's been spending more time in that period helping Rufus than she has in her actual, new house she's moving into back in the present.

There are so many moments in the story where Dana loses more and more of this distance (which I don't want to mention yet because I still have the essay to write) and it all builds up to Dana's next grim realization in 220, which calls back to her monologue in The Fall. That she had stopped acting. There now stood no distance between past and present. But in a way, I think that maybe this realization is what slowly builds her resolve to rebuild that separation, to stop making excuses, stop normalizing the horrendous behavior, and bring herself to kill Rufus Weylin.

Before I end this blog I think it would be a neat thing to point out that another thing that illustrates Dana's lack of distance. We all know that fear (of death) is what brings Dana back, but as she grows more accustomed to the tragedy and horror surrounding her, she loses her fear to the point it takes very drastic measures for her to get sent back
On her very first visit,  she fears for her life when faced with a shotgun, and is sent back. In fact, Dana gets so frightened by a bunny ruffling through the bushes that it almost triggers her return.

Skip later on in the story where she experiences the coffle with Tess, and the enslaver has shotgun is pointed in Dana's face. All she replies "I'm just here to say goodbye to a friend." She doesn't have that same fear as she did before. She's getting accustomed to what's occurring. Another thing would possibly be how she was sent back upon being brutally whipped by Tom Weylin, but then in subsequent visits where she's whipped either by Rufus or Evan Fowler, she isn't sent back. The aftermath of Evan Fowler whipping--or about to whip her--was even a fake out for the readers! She passes out, and who is it she wakes up to? Not Kevin, but Rufus as she's still in the 1800s.

Let me know your thoughts about the ways Dana loses her sense of distance, it's really interesting to me and I can't wait to write more about it in the essay!!

--Willie