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Things are NOT black and white

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Essential Question:

What is the main purpose of Octavia Butler's "literary experiment", Kindred?

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NPR Essay: The UN Racism Conference
**Fishbowl discussion topics:
1. Peck-order bullying
2. Hierarchical tendencies
3. Unavoidable empathy

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NPR ESSAY - UN RACISM CONFERENCE
By Octavia E. Butler

Listen to Scott Simon's interview with Octavia Butler.

Several years ago, when I was about to start a novel, I thought I might get some mileage out of the idea of a civilization in which people somehow felt -- that is, they shared -- all the pain and all the pleasure they caused one another.

The point was to create, in fiction at least, a tolerant, peaceful civilization -- a world in which people were inclined either to accept one another's differences or at least to behave as though they accepted them since any act of resentment they commit would be punished immediately, personally, inevitably. Eventually, though, I chose not to write about such an empathic society. I wrote instead about a single empathic woman who suffered from the delusion that she shared other people's pleasure and pain. She was not a particularly peaceful woman, but she did have to consider the consequences of her behavior more than other undeluded people had to. After all, delusional pain hurts just as much as pain from actual trauma. So what if it's all in your head?

In my novel, unavoidable empathy worked fine as an affliction, but popular, painful sports like boxing and football convinced me that the threat of shared pain wouldn't necessarily make people behave better toward one another. And it might cause trouble. For instance, it might stop people from entering the health care professions. Nursing would become very unpopular. And who would want to be a dentist in such a society.

So much for fiction. But in real life, what would make us more tolerant, more peaceful, less likely to need a UN Conference on Racism?

Nothing.

Nothing at all.

I say that, remembering childhood, remembering the schoolyard, remembering being a perennial out-kid. At school I was always taller than the rest of my class, and because I was an only child I was comfortable with adults, but shy and awkward with other kids. I was quiet, bookish, and in spite of my size, hopeless at sports. In short, I was different. And even in the earliest grades, I got pounded for it. I learned that five- and-six-year-old kids have already figured out how to be intolerant.

Granted, I speak from my own experience, but it's a familiar experience to anyone who remembers the schoolyard. Of course, not everyone has been a bully or the victim of bullies, but everyone has seen bullying, and seeing it, has responded to it by joining in or objecting, by laughing or keeping silent, by feeling disgusted or feeling interested....

Simple peck-order bullying is only the beginning of the kind of hierarchical behavior that can lead to racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, classism, and all the other "isms" that cause so much suffering in the world.

Several years ago I wrote a novel called Dawn in which extra-solar aliens arrive, look us over, and inform us that we have a pair of characteristics that together constitute a fatal flaw. We are, they admit, intelligent, and that's fine. But we are also hierarchical, and our hierarchical tendencies are older and all too often, they drive our intelligence-that is, they drive us to use our intelligence to try to dominate one another.

More fiction? Maybe.

But whatever is the source of our intolerance, what can we do about it? What can we do to improve ourselves? Of course, we can resist acting on our nastier hierarchical tendencies. Most of us do that most of the time already. And we can make a greater effort to teach children to resist their hierarchical impulses and beliefs and to channel what they can't resist into sports and careers.

Will this work? Well, it hasn't so far. Too many people will not, perhaps cannot, do it. There is, unfortunately, satisfaction to be enjoyed in feeling superior to other people.

Back during the early 1960s there was a United Nations television commercial, the audio portion of which went something like this: "Ignorance, fear, disease, hunger, suspicion, hatred, war." That was it, although I would have added, "greed" and "vengeance" to the list. All or any of these can be the catalyst that turns hierarchical thinking into hierarchical behavior. Amid all this, does tolerance have a chance?

Only if we want it to. Only when we want it to. Tolerance, like any aspect of peace, is forever a work in progress, never completed, and, if we're as intelligent as we like to think we are, never abandoned.

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NPR ESSAY - UN RACISM CONFERENCE By Octavia E. Butler Listen to Scott Simon's interview with Octavia Butler. Several years ago, when I was about to start a novel, I thought I might get some mileage out of the idea of a civilization in which people somehow felt -- that is, they shared -- all the pain and all the pleasure they caused one another.

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*In his critical essay, Robert Crossley describes "the route [Butler] pursues to her readers' heads is through their guts and nerves, and that requires good storytelling, not just a good set of issues."

*Dialect: Butler uses dialect to distinguish between characters as well as time periods.
*No frills: Butler uses short and tight language. The pages are not soaked with adjectives and adverbs.
*First-person point of view: Butler uses first person with many flashback moments. Because of the reader's connection to Dana, we do not see slavery as we do in a history book, but we are forced in the midst of a slave system.

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Complexity of Substance--Topics and themes 

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Complexity of Substance--Topics and themes 

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*ENSLAVEMENT is not only a physical limitation, but also a mental struggle. There are many different types of slavery, including mental and physical. The physical slavery is obvious in this book. Individuals such as Nigel, Luke, Sarah, and Carrie are physically enslaved. But what about those characters who are mentally/emotionally enslaved?
VIOLENCE breeds violence. Dana sees violence first hand during her visits to the 1800s, leading Dana to take matters into her own hands after sitting idly by for too long.
*FUTURE generations are doomed if present generations do not learn from the past. Dana is quoted as saying, “People don’t learn everything about the times that came before them,” I said. “Why should they” (Butler 63). This quote shows Butler's ability to demonstrate harsh lessons using irony.
*POWER can cloud the judgement of individuals who believe they are doing what is best. Power is seen throughout Kindred. From power struggles between Dana and her great great grandfather, to struggles between slaves (both field and house), power clouds the judgement of all characters involved.
*THE COMFORT OF STATUS QUO keeps individuals from rebellion. It is not the threat of emotional or physical violence that keeps slavery going. Instead, it is an individual's "disquieting disposition to accept the status quo" that allows for these atrocities (Butler).

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*"I lost an arm on my last trip. My left arm.  And I lost about a year of my life and much of the comfort and security I had not valued until it was gone" (Butler 9).
A changed character--Butler shows Dana's metamorphosis from a complacent woman of the 1970s filled with security and safety, to beaten-down and awaken young woman in the prologue.
A character's shame--Butler thrusts a modern-day black woman into the Antebellum South to demonstrate the constant shame Dana feels by easily giving in to the culture in which she currently lives. Unfortunately, even with over 150 years of education on her side, Dana fails to stand up for herself throughout most of the book--leading to one of Butler's major themes--the natural instinct to fit in deters people from standing up against what is right.
A character's contradictions--Other characters throughout the novel shame Dana for being an "Uncle Tom" and "mammy" archetype throughout the story, uncovering deep seeded issues in African America history.  Dana is even called "white trash" by Sarah, another slave, because she has an education and thus reminds Sarah that her education was taken from her before it even began (Butler 95).

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Complexity of Language-- First-person point of view:

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Complexity of Language-- First-person point of view:

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Is our narrator reliable?

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*Other stylistic elements--A graphic novel of Kindred was created by Damian Duffy. I pair this with the text and use it during heightened moments in the novel to show physical representations.

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*Architecture--En Medias Res--Latin for "into the middle of things." Kindred is written using en medias res. The narrative begins somewhere in the middle.

*Organizational device--Butler always begins her chapters with the protagonist going back in time (1800s) whenever her ancestor (a great great grandfather) is in danger. The chapters consistently end with the protagonist being pulled back to present-time (1970s)