Kindred as a Fiction

Since the beginning of the semester we have asked ourselves what history and fiction mean in relation to each other, and where the fine line of differentiation lies. Continuing this search for knowledge, we embark on our literary journey with Kindred pondering over the question of how the form of fiction is significant in bringing the atmosphere of 19^th century slave life to an audience. In short, the answer would be that Octavia E. Butler specifically chooses to write a work of fiction with the purpose of creating the most meaningful and vivid account of the racist society the book is centered on. As opposed to a historical text, she can truly draw the emotion into play, rather than string together a narration of cold hard facts and numbers. The power of fiction is interestingly actually hinted at within the novel itself when Dana is reading to Rufus. As Dana dives into the story of Robinson Crusoe, she thinks, “As a kind of castaway myself, I was happy to escape into the fictional world of someone else’s trouble.” The entire scene is covered in a sense of pleasure on the part of both Dana and Rufus, and they become lost in a world other than their own, relating to the idea of heterocosms we have discussed in class. Their enjoyment of Robinson Crusoe is pretty cool since as I was reading I felt it was a parallel to how we, as readers, are pulled into the fictional story of Kindred.

The Prologue opens the novel in a distinctive fashion by jarring the reader with an emotionally and physically painful event. At the same time, the narrator is in a haze that clears only at the start of The River, and it is not until then that Dana recognizes/acknowledges our (the readers) presence. There are high levels of significance in the Prologue because we are aware of the fact that it is actually the end of events, in other words, the close to Dana’s story. However, by presenting it at the beginning, Butler manages to immediately notify readers of the stakes at hand, and the tensions present. By illustrating a physical injury of Dana, we are assured that the time travel throughout the novel is not a distant nonrealistic means of transportation. Instead, it beckons the reader to join the journey of Dana who is experiencing the time travel in a very active way herself. Consequently, everything Dana goes through, we go through (to some extent). Butler does a superb job in using her Prologue to set the mindset of readers for the rest of the book clearly. So basically her fiction takes full advantage of the opportunities a fiction provides in creating enhanced experiences and understanding for the audience.

One of the moments where I really felt the power of fiction was when Dana was watching Alice’s father getting whipped in the woods near his cabin. Dana narrates, “I could literally smell his sweat, hear every ragged breath, hear his cry, every cut of the whip. I could see his body jerking, convulsing, straining against the rope as his screaming went on and on.” Such imagery would not be possible in a standard history text, but is used effectively by Butler. The suspense of the event as Dana is watching from a hidden location ties in with the mindset Butler offers the reader to take through the Prologue, and the result is that we feel the heat of the moment with Dana. Not long after in the passage, Dana stressfully contemplates how she has never seen anything like what she is seeing at the moment of the whipping, and even compares her new understanding to her old understanding based on modern portrayals by television.

In a way, our emotions and perspective on the subject of the ante bellum South shift as Dana’s understanding shifts. Butler is aware of this, and ultimately that is a primary reason why Kindred is presented in the form of fiction. 

Lack of Free Will

The reason why I enjoy the Tralfamadorians so much is that they provide Vonnegut with the opportunity to let his messages across of his thoughts about the world. The space view is really a bird’s eye view on humanity, and the Tralfamadorians are Vonnegut’s vehicle to let readers know what his thoughts are on life. Concepts are easily introduced through the Tralfamadorians, such as the absence of free will.

While on Tralfamadore, Billy learns that the people of Earth are the only beings in the universe that believe in such a thing as free will. In addition to the view of the characters, the narrator seems to orchestrate the novel in a way to indicate that the course of events are not directed by free will anyways. We, as readers, get the sense that the Tralfamadorians are all-knowing when they say things like “That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim.” Vonnegut depicts them as superior in knowledge, and so for the purposes of the novel at least, we can take the word of the Tralfamadorians that the idea that there is no such thing as free will is established. In fact, the very event of Billy traveling to Tralfamadore is evidence to the dynamic of the absence of free will in Slaughterhouse-five. Tying into the concept of non-linear time, Billy knows that he will be captured by the aliens and taken to another planet…yet he does nothing about it, perceiving the future as a given. Also his time spent in the zoo is symbolic in showing that he can do nothing about his predicament (predicament might not even be the right term because Billy doesn’t seem all too bothered by it). His controlled setting show that he is not the one making the calls for his own life. It is also interesting how cyclical time and the lack of free will work nicely together, because characters and readers alike know what is going to happen ahead of time, and everyone knows how the future is equal to the truth and is not going to change.

Details not directly related to the Tralfamadorians are in the novel to further add on to the idea of no free will. The often mentioned repetition of “so it goes” is one of them. There are several implications of the phrase, and one such usage is the indication that life moves on whether you like it or not. It flows to its own will, and doesn’t pay attention to the will of individuals. Another occurrence of free will being denied is the mention of the things that Billy cannot change, including “the past present and the future.” Vonnegut most definitely incorporates these snippets of repeated ideas in combination with the Tralfamadorian claim to say there is no free will.

As a last note I wanted to express my curiosity as to whether or not all of the messages Vonnegut gets across to readers through the Tralfamadorians are his own thoughts. So in this case, does Vonnegut himself believe that free will doesn’t exist? And if so, is there some greater importance he intends to send with that claim as a theme in the novel?

So it goes.

Although “interesting” may not be the most specific, complex, unique, custom-fit word to describe literature, I feel that it is appropriate and would like to associate it with the opening of Slaughterhouse-Five. Interesting. To start off the novel, Vonnegut offers a very autobiographical perspective in chapter 1. He is unusual in the way he combines the first chapter with what could be read as a preface to the novel, and calls himself out on the writing process and quality of his work. To add on to that, he employs an almost overly casual style applied to a serious topic, the effect of which can be interpreted in few ways, and the most popular in 4^th hour was a unanimous sense of authority assigned to Vonnegut. And if he really didn't go through all that he claims that he did, then he plays a character well because I am definitely believing what he writes. His non-affected tone puts him in a place for the reader to view him as genuine man and not some self-proclaimed expert that may or may not be delivering the right message. Even if he doesn't deliver the “right” message, we can still take Vonnegut seriously because it is his experience and insight to something he went through.

In addition to his writing style, the little fact that he keeps promises adds on to his credibility. What I mean by this relates to when he was on his visit in 1964 to see O’Hare. He sensed that Mary O’Hare was not on good terms with him, and when she exploded with a moment of criticism to the narrator (Vonnegut), she furiously objects to her expectation of Vonnegut writing a book on the glorious aspects of war, which, in her mind, don’t exist. Not long after he makes a promise not to have “…a part for Frank Sinatra or John Wayne” which satisfies her. He also promises to name the book “The Children’s Crusade,” which he did, even though it is not the primary/well-known title. This partly lets me conclude that he will also keep his word to not portray himself or war as a whole as something that should be celebrated or encouraged.

A large part as to why his tone is considerably overly casual is that he breezes by mentions of death and other atrocities. To make matters more interesting, he adds the phrase “so it goes” after each death. I take this as Vonnegut’s continuous reminder and commentary on how cruel this world is, and how he has become accustomed to it. Along the same lines, it is also a way for him to show how he believes that each death is just a speck in the big picture of this world, and time will move on, specifically, it will move on in a cyclical fashion. This theme of how he characterizes time is incipient early on, and he ties it in with the phrase “so it goes” as explained on page 27. The Tralfamadorians are people that don’t think of time linearly, and each time someone dies they say the phrase. Vonnegut adopts this meaningful phrase and mutters it by habit each time someone’s life is ended; reason being that the person who is no longer living is fine in several other moments, just not the one of the present.

One of the songs introduced in chapter 1 is about a figure Yon Yonson, and it enforces the idea about cyclical time in Slaughterhouse-Five:

“My name is Yon Yonson,

I work in Wisconsin,

I work in a lumbermill there.

The people I meet when I walk down the street,

They say, ‘What’s your name?’

And I say,

‘My name is Yon Yonson,

I work in Wisconsin…’”

The repeated nature of this song make this excerpt one of many examples of how Vonnegut recognizes time cyclically, which is strongly connected to the often used phrase “so it goes.”

I really enjoyed the way chapter 1 was closed. Vonnegut describes the story of Sodom and Gomorrah as he narrates what he was reading through at a motel. When the city is destroyed, people die: first use of “so it goes.” Then Lot’s wife looks back and instantly crumbles into salt which triggers the second use of the phrase. Following the story, Vonnegut plays with the aspects of the Sodom and Gomorrah story by generalizing that people shouldn’t look back, and he continues by commenting that he won’t look back again since he is a pillar of salt. Personally, I read this as his hinting to the fact that human nature is naturally imperfect, and just as he casually remarks about all the deaths, he does so about our world and people. Applied to his concept on time and vast world, he implies that the way of humans doesn’t matter. I just thought that the ending of the chapter was neat, and he tied together the aspects I mentioned here in my blog post into a tight end, which functions as the beginning for the story of the novel.

The Egypt Story of Chapters 52

When Papa LaBas bursts into the room of the gathering with T Malice and Black Herman, he arrives with a purpose to expose Hinkle von Vampton and Hubert “Safecracker” Gould, and he even wants them arrested. Some such as the Guianese art critic demand an explanation before any such action is carried out, and the story that is provided in response oddly begins 1000s of years in the past in Egypt. Readers can very easily be puzzled and it seems like the Egypt story is entirely random at first. The way Papa LaBas answers the art critic’s demands are so unexpected that as a reader I was thrown off and was anticipating and hoping for the moment when clarity would strike once again. To my surprise, at the end of the narrative a direct explanation bringing the story up to date by tying it in with Hinkle’s interactions with the book and such was provided, and so through this confusing story, I was left without confusion. When I reached page 191 and sighed with relief, my initial thoughts connected the end of a Sherlock Holmes short story to the closing of the speech of Papa LaBas. Watson always has some sort of sense as to what went on, but Holmes delivers the details that make up for all missing reasoning. I feel like Reed places the reader in Watson’s shoes in some ways and lets LaBas towards the end to be our Sherlock Holmes. Interestingly enough, later on in this past week our class discussions gravitated towards comparing Mumbo Jumbo to a detective story through the Panel Presentations.

For me personally, the weirdest part of the speech Papa LaBas gave was the inclusion of Moses. His story line was probably the farthest it could ever be from the Bible story I am used to. From his overall immature and overly anxious qualities to some more specific disturbing scenes, Reed definitely stretches the mind of any Christians (or Bible readers) that take on this novel. In our class so far, we have expanded our understanding of literature by blurring the lines of history and fiction, pointing out that histories are just interpretive collections of events woven together just as fictional works are. So I guess we could technically call the narrative a history, but to be honest, my mind does associate history with factual material, and therefore there is a biased part of me that does not want to categorize this story of Moses a history based on my background of reading the story of Moses according to the Bible. On the other hand, to the characters in the scene of chapters 52 it is just taken for granted. The art critic for example looks past the question of whether LaBas is speaking of a history or just making stuff up, and rather makes sure he has his facts straight on things such as Hinkle’s age in the story. Basically, the art critic is not questioning the possibility of the story, but instead whether or not LaBas is lying.

There is a lot to be said about the story itself and its significance. In general, throughout the novel Reed is often playful and seemingly random on the outer most layer, but the messages and questions he raises should not be missed. Here the Egypt story may seem out of place and strange but there is so much to take from it. One such aspect of the story is the relationship between and roles of Osiris and Set, which works as an application to the larger Jes Grew movement throughout the novel and is symbolic. Osiris is described as a god who loved nature, agriculture and dance. Set hated all of these things, and at one party told the guests to “cut out that racket.” When Osiris went on his trip around the world, Set took the time to try to snuff out the popularity of Osiris. It is pretty clear that Osiris represents or is the father to the Jes Grew movement according to the history presented by Papa LaBas. Set represents and is the embodiment of institutions and organizations as a whole that repress thriving culture. Even after Set murders Osiris, people celebrate his “living Spirit.” So it evident that the cycle of repression towards growing culture throughout history, specifically in Jes Grew of Mumbo Jumbo, is portrayed by the tension between Osiris and Set, and their story and its importance does not just end with the murder.