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Chapter 1: The River
Explanation and Analysis:
Kindred combines aspects of fantasy, science fiction, and neo-slave narrative, or a modern fictional work set during the era of slavery. In the novel, Butler employs time travel —a convention most often associated with science fiction —in order to examine racist violence in the United States in the decades prior to the Civil War, but she does not try to explain how or why Dana travels to the past. Instead, she allows the nature of Dana’s time-skipping to remain a mystery. A scene in which Dana returns from her first trip to the past establishes the novel’s unique combination of elements from these different genres:
I was kneeling in the living room of my own house again several feet from where I had fallen minutes before. I was back at home—wet and muddy, but intact. Across the room, Kevin stood frozen, staring at the spot where I had been. How long had he been there? “Kevin?”
He spun around to face me. “What the hell … how did you get over there?” he whispered.
“I don’t know.”
“Dana, you …”
He came over to me, touched me tentatively as though he wasn’t sure I was real. Then he grabbed me by the shoulders and held me tightly.
Previously, Dana was standing with her husband, Kevin, in their apartment in Southern California in 1976. After falling dizzy, she finds herself in a completely new environment, where she saves a young boy from drowning and is then threatened by the boy's father, who points a gun at her. Suddenly, she finds herself back in her apartment, to the confusion of Kevin, who cannot make sense of what has happened and touches Dana as though to confirm that she is “real.” Later on, Dana will learn that she traveled to Maryland in the early 19th century, traveling both back in time and to another part of the country. Butler, then, uses typical elements of fantasy and science fiction in order to depict the lives and experiences of those who were subjected to the violence of slavery in the United States.
Related Themes:
