Kindred

Kindred, so far, is proving to be a very intriguing book. I am already completely invested in all of the characters, and find myself flying through the book because I want to find out what happens. While I was reading the assignment for today, some ideas were running around in my mind, and here they are!

One observation I had came in The Fire section after Dana has knocked her attacker unconscious and feels dizzy. At this point in the story, we are so absolutely caught up in Dana's struggles and in her life in 1815 that we forget that she actually has a way to get home. We are so worried, as she is too, that her attacker will regain consciousness and kill her for what she has done to him. We're so invested in the scene that it's not until we connect her feeling of fear and dizziness to her time travels that we realize she's going home, and that she is no longer in any immediate danger.

I thought this was brilliant on Butler's part. Not only is she setting the historical scene so well and accurately that we feel like we're there with Dana, but we are so far there that even in the context of the book, we forget that she has the ability to return to where she really belongs. Once she does, we are jolted out of 1815 and back into the book's present, and we feel the same relief she does at being safe and at home.

Something else that I liked was Butler's characterization of Kevin. He seems to be very quiet and un-emotive, but Butler made it clear that he cares about Dana. My favorite line was "[h]e gave me a look that I knew wasn't as malevolent as it seemed" (13). I know people fairly well whose actions resemble this look, and it takes a while to realize that they aren't just mad all the time, it's either that they don't express emotions easily, or something about their face makes them seem upset when they're really just zoning out into space.

I thought that instead of portraying Kevin and Dana as a lovey-dovey couple and showing that they care about each other that way, Butler shows it in Dana's understanding that he's really not upset even though he looks it. This tells us that they know each other well enough to read each other's emotions even if they're not immediately evident. Butler shows us their feelings in other ways, for example, Kevin doesn't express melodramatic concern for Dana when she returns home, which some people might see as him not caring about her. However, when Dana wakes up, she has been cleaned up and has a stocked up kit bag tied to her waist in case she were to disappear in the middle of the night. I can imagine Kevin sneaking around the room trying not to wake her, and preparing all of the things for the bag so that she would be safe on her travels. That, to me, shows the great deal of affection and a deep level of caring that Kevin has for Dana, even though it's not showy.

Anyway, I cannot wait to get to tonight's reading assignment and find out what happens next!

I'm not judging.

So, now we're done with Slaughterhouse Five, and I realized I basically only have one post on it, which made me sad, as this is definitely my favorite book so far. So, this post will be a little disorganized, but I'd like to share some of the things that I've been thinking about now that the book is over, and after the discussion we had in class today.

To refresh everyone's memory, today we talked about what effect that one guy's discreditation had on Vonnegut (if any), when he cited a death toll somewhere around 100,000-200,000 when it was really more like 20,000-40,000. I started to think about this, and I came to the conclusion that it's not Vonnegut's moral responsibility to put out some kind of annotation or anything to correct the error. Vonnegut cited the number 100,000 (or whatever it was). That is how Slaughterhouse Five was written. That was the effect it created, and it was created from what was going on at the time. It is what it is. So it goes.

Your moral stance on firebombing is going to be the same whether or not you know the death toll or not, and it may only shift slightly depending on whether or not the city actually was active during the war effort. I feel like nothing else really matters. The way that the information is presented surely has an effect on how we view the information, but I don't think it is our job to fact check every single piece of information that we encounter in our lives. That would be impractical. I don't mean we should take every "official" view or "expert" opinion to be the truth at all times in every situation. I mean that an "official view" like a death toll of 100,000 has to be trusted, and is really all you have, until you hear anything differently.

I suppose what I'm saying is there's nothing inherently wrong with keeping to an "official" view of history. It's just that if other information arises then you need to take it into account and decide what you think "really happened." If one can.

I'm not sure how that related to what I was saying earlier, but it was a little jarring in class to hear the official view bashed so much just for being the official view. It's like saying you were going to do what the government says to do anyway, but now that they're telling you to do it, you're not going to do it. That's just stupid and impractical, because if you're views were already that way, why should it change just because "the man" is telling you to do it?

Anyway, I liked Slaughterhouse Five and I thought it was one of the most thought-provoking and engaging books we've read so far this semester. I connected with lots of Billy's struggles; being consumed with the things in your past and afraid of the things in your future, meaning that you won't enjoy any of the things in between. In any event, things work themselves out and everything is fine.

So it goes.