The American Icon

Not really touching on Libra, but more commenting on John F. Kennedy's legacy in America as a whole. Assassinated in 1963, it always strikes me how much of an emotional reaction his name seems to invoke still more than 50 years later. Often seen as the harbinger of a prosperous and optimistic new time in America, his untimely death shattered the dreams of many Americans who continue to hold onto the belief that his life could have turned around many of the darker events in American history that later ensued. Despite not being in office long enough to make too much of a change in the lives of the average American citizen, JFK remains one of our most beloved presidents. Though his assassination definitely aided in creating a bond between posthumous JFK and the American public, we are obviously deeply sympathetic of his premature death, there must be other reasons for his feverish popularity. Maybe it was the way he was ushered into the white house, the first democrat to win the election in a long time, or maybe it was just the way he exuded charisma, he was, after all, notorious for his extramarital affairs. And though we may associate Kennedy with an image of youth and vitality, he had actually ben suffering from a plethora of illnesses from childhood, all of which he treated with an incredibly extensive drug regimen. To me it seems his lesser attributes have always been brushed aside in order for us to have in JFK what we seek most in a leader, a hero. Though automatically we may associate heroes and leadership with war heroes whose stories of sacrifice we hold up to the highest esteem, the American public has always sought also sought a sort of wild, virile, yet magically inspirational hero to lead us. In Kennedy the country almost found what we had wanted, but only for a few short moments before he too was snatched away.

Final Thoughts on Kindred

I touched on this issue in my reaction paper, but I found that what stuck with me most after finishing Kindred was a question more than a lesson or any sort of complete thought. I was forced to contemplate how much of who I am, or who I think I am, is just a direct a result of the environment I was raised in. I never really thought about who I could've been without a social context to define me; how can you be a good person if there isn't a set standard to be compared to? So the question still begs to be answered, are we who are because of our inherent natures, or is the bulk of how we act determined by the culture we grow around? What even is an inherent nature? With Dana's case, she is a progressive, independent woman in the 70's who then is forced to act behave and live like a slave in the 1800's. As time passes, she eventually stops acting altogether. She acclimatizes to her role as a slave because those are the circumstances she is dealt, and what she gradually grows to think of as 'normal'. Of course her exposure to the modern world still garners strong reactions towards the "diseased" mentality behind institutionalized slavery, but Dana herself unwittingly becomes an unquestioning part of the system as she spends more and more time in the past. As she assimilates into the community of slaves on the Weylin plantation, the lines between Alice and Dana blur when we begin to view them together in similar situations. Alice acts as a parallel to Dana in the antebellum south, and we consider the possibility that Dana might have been exactly like her, in thoughts and sentiments, if she had been born and raised in that time period. Alice too, in other circumstances, could've grown to be just like Dana. I guess it seems like a very simple observation that most people have given thought to, but before reading the novel I never really realized just how much weight our environment plays in shaping us as individuals. Me personally? I'm a pretty flexible person that can bend in a lot of directions, and I definitely think that different situations could have fostered completely distinct Tanisha's. So strange to think about who we are without background conditions to explain for it.

The Evolution of Rufus Weylin

When we first encounter Rufus Weylin, he's small, nonthreatening, and innocent. Dana, who claims to not even like kids very much, is almost immediately fond of him, and seems unquestioningly set in her resolve to protect his life. Hoping to influence him into thinking outside of the norms of his society, it is a slow betrayal for the readers and Dana to watch Rufus grow into the mold of the men of his time. The level of complexity to Rufus's character comes from our inability to place him as inherently bad or good, his actions almost always still manage to evoke the smallest slivers of sympathy. Initially still unmarked by the horrors of the institutionalized dehumanization, as Rufus grows older he becomes more set in the way of his father before him. Growing up he treats Dana as an equal, if not a superior, who he acknowledges as more knowledgeable than himself. He seeks her advice and never belittles her, paying her an amount of respect that he does not even award to his mother. As time goes on he begins to treat Dana more and more like how he views other slaves on the plantation. He increasingly begins to resort to violence as a means to achieve his ends, and takes advantage of his position of power to leverage decisions to work in his favor. Ultimately Rufus becomes completely indoctrinated into the slavery ideology, and when confronted by Dana about a slave sell, he responds reflexively by calling them his property. Still we can't help but feel the tiniest bit of conflicted emotion when we see him carry out his horrendous behavior. With his repeated rapes of Alice, we are reminded of his 'love' for her, with his disregard for his mother, we think of the abandonment he felt, and with the eventual attack on Dana we might even for a split second think of the grief he must be suffering from the loss of his family members. Ultimately there is no justification for the sheer abhorrent nature of his actions, but we are left considering the fact that he is a product of his time and environment, and are still swayed by our attachment to the child we knew him as.