Don DeLillo's Libra strikes me as being a really promising book. It has the same tone as Mumbo Jumbo in that you're not always quite clear as to what is going on, and the narrator is kind of vague and mysterious, but it has narrative content that reminds me of Kindred. I am much more engaged in this story because I feel like things are actually happening and I can relate to the characters, which always makes me more interested in the story.
While I didn't always like the blatant postmodernist-ness of Mumbo Jumbo, Libra doesn't make me as angry when it says vague things and releases important information without any warning. I think this might have something to do with the subject matter, because I am really interested in the CIA and in politics and international relations. I really like thinking about conspiracy theories, so a book that is going to provide a back story for one of the most conspiri-cized events in history is really exciting.
I like how DeLillo switches back and forth between Lee's past and his narrative, and the retired CIA operatives and their personal story. This book seems really exciting and I can't wait to get into it!
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Monday, April 9, 2012
final thoughts on Rufus.
While this in no way will encompass everything I've come to think about Rufus (because I don't think such thing is even possible), I just wanted to give my last impressions about the boy we've watched grow up throughout Kindred, especially focusing on the last scene that he is with Dana.
Throughout the book, I couldn't help but liking Rufus. To me, he was a generically good guy who was merely a product of his culture and society, thus making him do bad things. This could just be wishful thinking, benefit of the doubt, etc., but I'd like to think I'm right. Moving on, I always felt bad for him when he did bad things because I felt as though he was just acting out. He drew a gun on Kevin and Dana because he didn't want them to leave him. Instead of knowing how to express himself and explaining his emotions to make them understand how much he needs them, all he can think to do is threaten them to stay.
Another example of this poor expression occurs with Alice. I believe that Rufus actually loves her (or at least believes he loves her) but just doesn't understand how to express it in a way that she will understand and that will make her love him back. He wants her, he loves her, he gets her. The rape and all the acting out associated with Alice is all part of a misguided attempt to win her trust and her love. Rufus loves his childhood friend, he just doesn't know how to show it.
With regards to the last scene, and Rufus's attempt to rape or seduce Dana, all I see is desperation. Here is a man who has been abandoned by people he cares about through his entire life. We hear about his nightmares that Dana will leave and not come back, or will return but not save him. In this final scene, we Rufus devastated by the death of a woman he actually loved, and the confusion of loving his half black children, yet also owning them, and the subsequent contradictions associated with slavery.
I feel sorry for Rufus, and it is because I see all of this desperation that, in the end, I like him. I pity him a lot, but I think that rather than him being a genuinely bad person, he is more a product of his awful society.
Throughout the book, I couldn't help but liking Rufus. To me, he was a generically good guy who was merely a product of his culture and society, thus making him do bad things. This could just be wishful thinking, benefit of the doubt, etc., but I'd like to think I'm right. Moving on, I always felt bad for him when he did bad things because I felt as though he was just acting out. He drew a gun on Kevin and Dana because he didn't want them to leave him. Instead of knowing how to express himself and explaining his emotions to make them understand how much he needs them, all he can think to do is threaten them to stay.
Another example of this poor expression occurs with Alice. I believe that Rufus actually loves her (or at least believes he loves her) but just doesn't understand how to express it in a way that she will understand and that will make her love him back. He wants her, he loves her, he gets her. The rape and all the acting out associated with Alice is all part of a misguided attempt to win her trust and her love. Rufus loves his childhood friend, he just doesn't know how to show it.
With regards to the last scene, and Rufus's attempt to rape or seduce Dana, all I see is desperation. Here is a man who has been abandoned by people he cares about through his entire life. We hear about his nightmares that Dana will leave and not come back, or will return but not save him. In this final scene, we Rufus devastated by the death of a woman he actually loved, and the confusion of loving his half black children, yet also owning them, and the subsequent contradictions associated with slavery.
I feel sorry for Rufus, and it is because I see all of this desperation that, in the end, I like him. I pity him a lot, but I think that rather than him being a genuinely bad person, he is more a product of his awful society.
divide by 2 and add 7..?
One thing that I was wondering as I was finishing Kindred is what effect Kevin's five year separation from Dana had on their relationship. For Dana, this separation was only several months, but we have several references from Butler that this time lapse has aged Kevin significantly. He was already older than Dana to begin with, and my musings led me to wish that Butler had given us more insight into their relationship once they returned to the present day together.
Kevin is already about ten years older than Dana (if I remember correctly), and this additional span of five years that he's stuck in the past without her merely adds distance between their ages. This is a pretty significant age difference, but Butler never seems to let on that anything has changed between them. While Mr. Mitchell did make the point earlier about Butler letting on to a potential "generational gap" between the two in certain situations, nothing else is every said about their age gap, even though, if I were in their position, I think it would affect me a lot.
For one thing, Kevin has now experienced a lot more than Dana has. Dana, while she's been having kind of a rough time of it, has only experienced life on the Weylin plantation. Kevin has had to make a way for himself and live by his wits up North, and we can see that what he's seen has changed him. I wonder that this would not make him jaded and cynical towards present day, and even to Dana. In some ways it does; springing to my mind is when he makes the reference to the woman he saw dying in childbirth, and this memory being spurred by a commercial on television. There we see the effect his experiences have had on him, but it doesn't show up in his relationship with Dana at all.
For me, the story would have been enriched by Butler's letting on that the couple has some issues between them to work out, perhaps having to do with their increased age disparity, or perhaps by Kevin's new experiences. As I saw it, there was an unrealistic (if this term is even relevant with a book like this) amount of calm in their relationship. I doubt that after not having seen your wife for five years that you would immediately adjust to her again, and that your only problem would be adjusting to your new house. Somehow that doesn't strike me as the natural course of things.
However, never having been in this situation, I wouldn't know for sure, but I would have liked it if Butler had given us a little more detail with regards to this aspect of Dana and Kevin's relationship.
Kevin is already about ten years older than Dana (if I remember correctly), and this additional span of five years that he's stuck in the past without her merely adds distance between their ages. This is a pretty significant age difference, but Butler never seems to let on that anything has changed between them. While Mr. Mitchell did make the point earlier about Butler letting on to a potential "generational gap" between the two in certain situations, nothing else is every said about their age gap, even though, if I were in their position, I think it would affect me a lot.
For one thing, Kevin has now experienced a lot more than Dana has. Dana, while she's been having kind of a rough time of it, has only experienced life on the Weylin plantation. Kevin has had to make a way for himself and live by his wits up North, and we can see that what he's seen has changed him. I wonder that this would not make him jaded and cynical towards present day, and even to Dana. In some ways it does; springing to my mind is when he makes the reference to the woman he saw dying in childbirth, and this memory being spurred by a commercial on television. There we see the effect his experiences have had on him, but it doesn't show up in his relationship with Dana at all.
For me, the story would have been enriched by Butler's letting on that the couple has some issues between them to work out, perhaps having to do with their increased age disparity, or perhaps by Kevin's new experiences. As I saw it, there was an unrealistic (if this term is even relevant with a book like this) amount of calm in their relationship. I doubt that after not having seen your wife for five years that you would immediately adjust to her again, and that your only problem would be adjusting to your new house. Somehow that doesn't strike me as the natural course of things.
However, never having been in this situation, I wouldn't know for sure, but I would have liked it if Butler had given us a little more detail with regards to this aspect of Dana and Kevin's relationship.
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Full Circle
During today's in-class writing, Mr. Mitchell made a comment about how the book comes full circle. We basically know what happens at the end because we've read the beginning; we know that Dana's arm is trapped, and that she and Kevin both make it home, to their time, safely. Or as safely as can be expected under the circumstances. I have always liked this literary device of wrapping a book up by starting it with the end and ending it with the beginning, so to speak, and I think in Octavia Butler's case, Kindred definitely benefited from it.
The main reason I liked the use of this "full-circle" concept is because the rest of the book, by nature of its content, is so hectic and confused. There is a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, lots of nausea, lots of danger, nervousness, and anger. There are seldom any calm moments, and the very laws of time are broken by Dana's time travel. Given this, I think it's really comforting to begin at the end, to know that both Dana and Kevin are alive and at home by the end of the book, just to keep in the back of your mind while you read about their struggles in the 1800s, and to know that everything will be fine eventually.
When Butler ends with Dana's loss of her arm, even though we're technically brought back to the same point as we began, as readers, I feel as though we've gotten somewhere. At the beginning, we have absolutely no idea what Dana is talking about. At the end, we understand it perfectly well, and it doesn't seem strange to us at all that she got her arm meshed with a wall on her last time travel trip back home. I really feel like this ending bringing us back to the beginning ties up the book nicely, and puts it all in a neat package that you can understand, if not well, at least a little better.
I liked Kindred a lot, and I think this was a really practical and coherent way to end a book that could have had a really vague ending under different circumstances.
The main reason I liked the use of this "full-circle" concept is because the rest of the book, by nature of its content, is so hectic and confused. There is a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, lots of nausea, lots of danger, nervousness, and anger. There are seldom any calm moments, and the very laws of time are broken by Dana's time travel. Given this, I think it's really comforting to begin at the end, to know that both Dana and Kevin are alive and at home by the end of the book, just to keep in the back of your mind while you read about their struggles in the 1800s, and to know that everything will be fine eventually.
When Butler ends with Dana's loss of her arm, even though we're technically brought back to the same point as we began, as readers, I feel as though we've gotten somewhere. At the beginning, we have absolutely no idea what Dana is talking about. At the end, we understand it perfectly well, and it doesn't seem strange to us at all that she got her arm meshed with a wall on her last time travel trip back home. I really feel like this ending bringing us back to the beginning ties up the book nicely, and puts it all in a neat package that you can understand, if not well, at least a little better.
I liked Kindred a lot, and I think this was a really practical and coherent way to end a book that could have had a really vague ending under different circumstances.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)