Kindred: A timeless novel about human life and time
Butler’s choice to tell a story of slavery through the eyes and experience of a modern woman is not only powerful due to its relatability, but also in the way it brings up impossible moral dilemmas which couldn’t otherwise exist. Both Dana and the readers are forced to grapple with the effect of the past, how intrinsically connected history and modern events are. Throughout the novel you have to ask yourself if the present is worth the atrocities that happened in the past, and furthermore, is one life more valuable than another? Dana is consistently forced to decide between her dignity or life and others. She has the knowledge that her life in the 1970s is considerably better than the life of anyone in the 1800s. Dana kills Rufus when he violates her, but she enables Rufus to repeatedly rape Alice. Her self preservation causes her to separate herself from the other people on the plantation: not in the sense that she is playing a role or from a different time, but in some underlying way...
