Although Kindred is labeled as Science Fiction and African American Literature, its powerful and disorienting narrative of historical recovery and remembrance transcends boundaries of genre. Akin to Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day, which also deals with the same themes of loss and memory, Kindred initiates a conversation between the present and the past by physically transporting the main character, Dana Franklin, from 1976 to 1815. The blurring of time as narrators jump physically and mentally between the past and present causes the destruction of a linear cause and effect. There is instead a loop-like feeding of information along with a feeling of not only remembrance but also discovery. The present and past are no longer connected by a single direction but is instead complicated by the instability of the past. Moreover, the site of historical reinterpretation moves according to the author’s choice of formal narrative techniques. Ishiguro uses metafiction to reconstruct the past and give Mr. Stevens perspective on the present while Butler riffs on a variation of metalepsis to portray Dana’s unique limbo.
The process of revisiting the past for Stevens involves interweaving in several streams of consciousness into one coherent explanation and rationalization for his past thoughts and actions. Such a case occurs when he muses on Harry Smith’s socialist and draws upon “an instance that comes to mind”(Ishiguro 194). He subverts the denigration of the lords who mock him for his political ignorance into another personal affirmation and invites closeness into this view by using second person narration as if “great affairs will always be beyond the understanding of those such as you and I” is a widely held opinion (Ishiguro 199). Stevens at the beginning of this memory is on very sure and firm footing. He has held this opinion for so long that it is not so easily dislodged. So when he dives further and further into narration, he attempts to engage the reader in rhetorical and pointless efforts of validation. He needs the reader to also testify to the purposeful of his life so that the artificiality of the construction is built on more than his own subjectivity. However, the acknowledgement of the inherent bias in the story imparts a sense of Steven’s need to concretize history and move past the instability of memory. His remark “It is hardly my fault if his lordship’s life and work have turned out today to look, at best, a sad waste – and it is quite illogical that I should feel any regret or shame on my own account” (Ishiguro 201), can be seen as a desperate ploy to regain footing of the present after a reconstruction of a previously known past has failed. His confidence shaken, Mr. Stevens now only desires to affirm a sense of self.
Dana Franklin also desires to retain a sense of self while in a, literally, constantly changing world. Instead of being self-conscious, Kindred does not seek to explain the process of time-travel nor does even question it. It is accepted as a process of preserving lineage and a matter of Dana’s responsibility. However, while there is the same impression of history’s fragility, the feeding of information from the past to the present does not do the same work as in Remains of the Day. Stevens looks back and fills in the cracks of errors and “triumphs” with justification of his actions and validation of his current continuing actions and thoughts. Dana is caught between preserving an abhorrent history and her lineage or the destruction of herself and her family. The same line of inaction and agency continues through both of the novels as Stevens remains paralyzed by his choices and Dana is forced into paralysis for the sake of self-preservation. What marks Dana with further distinction is her floating state between worlds. Karen in her glossary post on metalepsis described it as a “space between nesting matroyshkas” or as “the world of the telling and the world of the told” (Gu). This is comparable to Dana’s movement between the present and the past and her interaction with 1815 as both a possibility and a foregone fact. “We weren’t really in. We were observers watching a show. We were watching history happen around us…We never really got into our roles. We never forgot that we were acting” (Butler 98). The world of 1815 is an expired world that Dana is reliving with all of the expectations and mannerisms of the present day. To survive, she must become apart of the slaves but never quite forgets her falsity. As someone who is actively involved in daily plantation life yet still preserves the partition of modernity and history, Dana is a paradoxical agential intrusion onto a “told” world that demands inertness and inaction. The site of historical interpretation is moved entirely into the past and somewhat into the physical realm as Dana sustains several severe injuries include the loss of an arm. While the possibility of changing the past occurs, Dana is bound even more than Stevens and so is rendered into another space between agency and impotence. “It was so hard to watch him hurting her – to know that he had to go on hurting her if my family was to exist at all” (Butler 180). The instability of the past still influences her present self but the physical closeness of the past and the continuing inability to change it causes Dana to seek self affirmation in other ways. She rebels but within the social confines of the world. Her sense of self is gradually eroded as she spends more time in the past and realizes “How easily we seemed to acclimatize. Not that I wanted us to have trouble, but it seemed as though we should have had a harder time adjusting to this particular segment of history – adjusting to our places in the household of a slaveholder” (Butler 97). The question of whether character remains constant or is influenced by outside forces can be analyzed further through Butler’s characterization of Rufus and the odd duality of Dana and Alice.
Work Cited
Butler, Octavia E., Kindred. 25th Anniversary ed. Boston: Beacon Press, 2003. Print.
Ishiguro, Kazuo. The Remains of the Day. New York: Knopf :, 1989. Print.
Narrative and Memory 