In Kindred, Butler has done a wonderful job of creating nuanced characters, both white and black, who are extremely difficult to typecast or to put in a box. In particular, her success in producing ambivalence in the reader is evidenced on our conflicting views concerning Kevin.
Kevin is complicated; the environment of the antebellum South doesn't turn into a white supremacist, but when he does have moments that make us wonder. One of the examples that I underlined while reading was when Kevin muses about how the 1800s would be "a great time to live in," and how it would be fascinating to "go West and watch the building of the country," a sentiment which Dana finds to be totally naive. Butler also purposefully draws connections between Kevin/Kevin and Dana's relationship in 1976 to Kevin/Kevin and Dana's relationship in the 1800s. He becomes offended when she won't type for him, he wants her to move in with him and become dependent (think about what would happen if she DID move in with him and then refused to type), and he is physcially compared to both the patroller and to Tom Weylin. But on the other hand, Kevin doesn't completely align himself with the white planters. We find out in last night's reading that Kevin was helping slaves escape to freedom, and he had distanced himself from the Southern whites enough to be run off the plantation after the Denmark Vesey scare.
I think the key to understanding Kevin is inferring his attitude towards race. Somebody at some point (I forget who, perhaps Tom Weylin) said that Kevin "doesn't seem to know the difference between black and white." While on the surface level, I think that statement is to be read in the context of Kevin's 21st century racial conceptions being vastly different than those of the early 19th century, it also serves as a commentary on Kevin's racial conceptions, period. That is to say, Kevin gives off the air of being kind of color-blind; he's not a racist, but he fails to acknowledge that there are differences in the experiences of people of different races. We get this idea again when Kevin fails to understand why his family might have a problem with marrying Dana. He just doesn't get it.
I hypothesize that the apparent changes we see in Kevin once he reaches the antebellum South aren't changes at all -- his more concerning attitudes have always been there, but it took an extreme environment to bring them out; they weren't evident in 1976. Part of what Butler is doing with the character of Kevin is exposing that there are issues with attempting to simply "not see color." I would imagine that in 1976, a decade after the Civil Rights Movement, this sort of oversimplification as a "solution" was more common than it is now, and Butler is attempting to detract from it.
Thursday, March 31, 2016
Friday, March 11, 2016
Rationalizing"Embers" and "Slaughterhouse-Five"
The most recent reading from the packet, "Embers: Will a Prideful City Finally Confront its Past?" Packer confronts the metanarrative that the bombing of Dresden was largely a unjustifiable, extraneous act of war on the part of the Allies, as Dresden had supposedly no military significance, and challenges the city to acknowledge it's historical significance in the stories of one of the greatest horrors mankind has experienced. In regards to Slaughterhouse-Five, Packer insinuates that Vonnegut contributes to a misguided "moral [equation]" of Dresden and the Holocaust by quoting dubiously acquired statistics and casting the Germans as largely sympathetic characters:
For many readers of Irving and Vonnegut, the bombing of Dresden scrambled to order of perpetrators and victims in the Second World War and came close to establishing a moral equivalence. Vonnegut's narrator goes even further: because "there hadn't been much publicity," he says of the Dresden raid, "not many Americans knew how much worse it had been than Hiroshima."
Of course, I severely doubt Vonnegut intended to make any of these points. But as readers of fiction, it's our job to critique the author's standpoint and to not simply accept his claims because it is 1969 and we love antiwar novels during the Vietnam era, so I'm glad that these sorts of criticisms of the mentality that comes from Slaughterhouse-Five are presented. But I don't think that Slaughterhouse-Five should be read as a commentary on the actual events of World War Two. Vonnegut clearly isn't very concerned with historical reality -- he inserts flying saucers and time travel into his narrative. In fact, the image that sticks with me from Slaughterhouse-Five is not the relatively sparse (for their importance) descriptions of Dresden post-bombing, it's the image of the ragtag American P.O.W.'s standing in front of a group of ill-trained, poorly-equipped, unfit German soldiers. Vonnegut sought to prove a much more basic, human point about the complete lack of glamour in war. Unfortunately for him, the only way he knew how to accomplish such a task was to focus of Dresden, which is a complicated bit of subject matter from the historical perspective.
Of course, we shouldn't give him a pass, but I think the most problematic aspect about the Nazi-originated metanarrative of the bombing of Dresden is that, somehow, Dresden was less deserving of being bombed than any other European city -- that because it was supposedly an art, not war, center, we should have preserved it. Vonnegut steers clear of making any sort of political statements about the merit of the bombing of Dresden. He does call it by its pet name, "The Jewel of the Elbe,"and in his first description of the city, and he does sing it's beauty. But that's not because of Dresden, it's because he's been on the front or in and internment camp for an undisclosed amount of time, and even Vonnegut's awe is explained away with "the other other city I'd seen was Indianapolis, Indiana." So, Vonnegut takes the focus away from the specifics of Dresden as a victim of war and chooses to zoom in on an individual experience of the war in order to make a larger point about the horror of war. And that spares his from some of Packer's criticism.
For many readers of Irving and Vonnegut, the bombing of Dresden scrambled to order of perpetrators and victims in the Second World War and came close to establishing a moral equivalence. Vonnegut's narrator goes even further: because "there hadn't been much publicity," he says of the Dresden raid, "not many Americans knew how much worse it had been than Hiroshima."
Of course, I severely doubt Vonnegut intended to make any of these points. But as readers of fiction, it's our job to critique the author's standpoint and to not simply accept his claims because it is 1969 and we love antiwar novels during the Vietnam era, so I'm glad that these sorts of criticisms of the mentality that comes from Slaughterhouse-Five are presented. But I don't think that Slaughterhouse-Five should be read as a commentary on the actual events of World War Two. Vonnegut clearly isn't very concerned with historical reality -- he inserts flying saucers and time travel into his narrative. In fact, the image that sticks with me from Slaughterhouse-Five is not the relatively sparse (for their importance) descriptions of Dresden post-bombing, it's the image of the ragtag American P.O.W.'s standing in front of a group of ill-trained, poorly-equipped, unfit German soldiers. Vonnegut sought to prove a much more basic, human point about the complete lack of glamour in war. Unfortunately for him, the only way he knew how to accomplish such a task was to focus of Dresden, which is a complicated bit of subject matter from the historical perspective.
Of course, we shouldn't give him a pass, but I think the most problematic aspect about the Nazi-originated metanarrative of the bombing of Dresden is that, somehow, Dresden was less deserving of being bombed than any other European city -- that because it was supposedly an art, not war, center, we should have preserved it. Vonnegut steers clear of making any sort of political statements about the merit of the bombing of Dresden. He does call it by its pet name, "The Jewel of the Elbe,"and in his first description of the city, and he does sing it's beauty. But that's not because of Dresden, it's because he's been on the front or in and internment camp for an undisclosed amount of time, and even Vonnegut's awe is explained away with "the other other city I'd seen was Indianapolis, Indiana." So, Vonnegut takes the focus away from the specifics of Dresden as a victim of war and chooses to zoom in on an individual experience of the war in order to make a larger point about the horror of war. And that spares his from some of Packer's criticism.
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