Hard to navigate

One of the many things that I disliked about Kindred was the (physical) structure of the book. While flipping through the pages to find passages to reference for my response paper, I had a really hard time finding my desired passage.

One obvious reason that this book is hard to navigate is that there aren't any changes in text size or font or any pictures like Mumbo Jumbo had.

Another is that I couldn't really form a chronology of the events of the book in my head. Maybe it's just me, but with the weird slave-and-master dynamics and time traveling made the entire story a blur in my head. When did Dana try to escape? When did Alice try? What age was Rufus after Dana time traveled for the third time? (what even happened when she time traveled for the third time?)

Perhaps each page looks the same to me because Dana adds her own interpretation of anything that happens, which clogs up the page and makes "landmarks" less visible (by landmarks, I mean long dialogues, large paragraphs, short paragraphs, anything that stands out visually that leaves an impression in your mind, so that you can find it easily for response papers).  I felt like someone looking across the treetops and not finding a break in the forest.
 

The entire book basically takes place on the Weylin plantation, and therefore the text doesn't vary much throughout. There aren't any new characters' names that pop up as "landmarks", or capitalized town names or words in all caps. Names of characters are mostly first names, no last names. The names are the same, and each time Dana time travels, the same people are at the plantation. The chapters begin at varying spots on the page, and don't always start at the tops of pages.

I guess I had a hard time searching through the novel, but maybe it was just me. I was hoping to find an online version of Kindred so that I could use the Ctrl+F feature.

Slaves to a system

In class discussion of Kindred, someone said that everyone in the book was a slave to the system of slavery on the Weylin plantation. To us, outsiders, the concept of slavery seems alien, and as Dezy had said, like part of a dystopia. However, to the people living in antebellum Maryland, it was just a part of everyday life. Tom Weylin unemotionally whips the slaves because that was what was expected of him as a slave master. Unlike Rufus, who receives anti-slave propaganda from Dana, Tom Weylin doesn't know of anything other than the system he lives in.

But aren't we slaves to a system even now?

It got me thinking about how people in the future would view us. I'm almost positive that they'd see us as slaves of the capitalist, consumerist system in America. We know nothing other than spending and buying the more attractive items. We are educated about the third world, and even when we visit these places we never really understand them. We are taught to treat everyone equally and with respect, that everyone has a right to do whatever they want to do, as long as it's within the law.
If these people from the future looked back at us, they would look at our factory farms and polluted seas and say, "They're just slaves of the consumerist system". The people of the future might be vegans who live emission free.


This got me thinking about how aliens would view us, humans on earth. They may say:
"They're just slaves of oxygen."
"They're just slaves of the vocal communication system."
"They're just slaves of their own physical bodies."

My point is that there are so many points of view of a system of living. Tom Weylin was raised in the 19th century and so he went along with slavery. If American society has changed so much that just 150 years after slavery, we are now nondiscriminant to other races (Okay, actually far from it, but in theory we are (I think)). Who knows what we'll be going along with in the future. But because of our attention to the study of history, I am sure that we will never repeat slavery. 

Showing vs Telling

One thing that I dislike about Dana's role in Kindred is that she gives the readers too much information. Not like she gives too many details for each scene, but more like she thinks in the book what we, as readers, should be picking up on. She tells more than she shows, which I guess is one aspect of a first-person narrator, but I dislike it because it allows me to wait for her interpretation of events in Kindred and sit back and tune out while the events are actually happening (I don't mean actually sit back but it allows me to pay a little less attention to the plot).

One of the things that Dana makes unnecessarily obvious for the readers is the similarities at we are supposed to notice between characters in Kindred. One example is on page 231, where Dana is arguing with Rufus.

     "You watch your mouth," he said.
     "Watch yours."

Then later, when Dana is talking to Alice on page 235:
     "You want my help, Alice, you watch your mouth!"
     "Watch yours," she mocked.
     I stared at her in astonishment, remembering, knowing exactly what she had overheard.

Dana makes this connection very clear to us, while in most books and movies that I've encountered, these similarities are supposed to come naturally to the reader. If a phrase in conversation has some significance, Dana makes sure we know it.
Another example is when Dana compares Rufus with his father on pages 214-215:
     "You walk away from me, Dana, you'll be back in the fields in an hour!"
     ...
     He sounded more like his father than himself. In that moment, he even looked like his father.

Now, if Dana showed us instead of told us how Rufus resembled his father, I would be much more interested in the story.  I recall Dana drawing subtle comparisons between Kevin and Tom Weylin earlier in the novel, but as the story unfolds I feel like Dana is making connections too obvious, and not giving us readers a chance to figure out anything ourselves.