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.

Questioning Sanity

Billy's state of sanity is a question that seems to keep coming up time and again in our discussions. At first I really considered the question, but then, especially after the pair of panel presentations today, I realized his mental stability really isn't essential to what we as readers take away from the novel. I hesitate to class anyone as 'mentally unstable', and I think we collectively as a society are reluctant to throw that term around. It's hard to put that label on someone when they aren't a threat to themselves or society. If Billy has a way of thinking that deviates from the norm, does it really need to be addressed? Like we pointed out in class, several of the characters in the book seem to have their own fictionalized version of themselves, each to a certain degree detached from their realities. Getting at a question that was posed earlier in class today, I would argue that it is inherent in human nature to use our imagination as a means of escape. Even the way we look back on things are affected as individual human memories are some of the most flawed accounts of personal history. Imagination is our natural form of escapism, and ultimately through this Billy is able to confront his most painful memories from the past. In a roundabout way while skirting around the events at Dresden, Billy is forced to recount it and come to terms with it in a way that still feels surprisingly comfortable. Maybe it's because I know I personally tend to block out painful memories until I feel strong enough to revisit them, but I can relate to Billy's more unique line of thinking as a coping mechanism. I wouldn't question his mental stability, but at the end of it, his sanity really doesn't matter.

On the Tralfamadorian novel

Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five is often described to be an "earthling approximation" of the Tralfamadorian novel. While some may agree with this comparison, I found that my knee jerk reaction was a definite no. Sure as I spent more time thinking about it I was able to convince myself into seeing the similarities, but for the most part, the resemblance just doesn't strike me. Written in fleeting bunches, each clump describing a singular moment, Tralfamadorian novels are non-linear and lack a narrative. According to the text "there isn't any particular relationship between the messages", though they are strategically selected by the authors for effect. The appeal of this writing is found in how these distinct pieces all conglomerate together to give the reader insight into the beauty of life. Slaughterhouse Five, I feel, is an extremely poignant piece of work, but achieves this through different means. Despite the time warps and the jerky chronology of plot, there is an identifiable overarching story line that Vonnegut introduces the readers to.  I would also assume that without any relation between one message and the next, Tralfamadorian novels would not be able to sustain a central protagonist, and maybe not even include recurring characters throughout the text. In Slaughterhouse Five, Billy Pilgrim really acts as our sort-of anchor throughout the series of events, and I can't imagine a rewriting of the novel without the primary focus we have on Billy and his perspective. While both Slaughterhouse Five and Tralfamadorian novels may manage to have the same impact on readers, I wouldn't think to lump them together in the same category. Kurt Vonnegut's work remains, I believe, a still very human piece.

For the love of free will

The discussion we had in class on Friday about the differences in how humans and Tralfamadorians perceive, (or I guess believe in) free will really got me thinking about free will on a personal level. Growing up the way we have (especially with the huge sense of entitlement that is usually associated with our generation...) it's been hard to think that we have anything but free will. Class, race, economics and gender always play a role in how our opportunities are limited, but for the most part, I still think we all are led to believe that as citizens of the world, we are capable of achieving anything. At the same time, how we believe in the metaphysical, or even just destiny, can be hard to reconcile with the fact that we have free will. How can the idea of free will peacefully coexist with ideas of predeterminism? In my mind at least, it can't. I still have no idea which or what I believe in, but I find it much harder to have an optimistic view of the world when I know that everything in my life has already been predetermined. Should I be motivated to do anything if everything that's meant to happen will already happen of its own accord? That mindset is also too oversimplified a form of thinking as far as predeterminism goes, and this is where the Tralfamadorians have the upper hand. I guess we've all been conditioned for too long to quietly accept that absolute free will is a social construct. Why is it so painful for an individual to relinquish their free will? I guess in a way it feels like giving up your claim to your own life.

Mumbo jumbo--nonsense?

Having grown up hearing the phrase mumbo jumbo used frequently with the connotation of meaningless, I never thought to look into the etymology of the expression as it seemed so insignificant. The word itself seems to come from jumbled origins, with its clear roots lost to American culture over time.  An 18th century entry in the Oxford English Dictionary lists mumbo jumbo as "...a grotesque idol...said to have been worshipped by some tribes. Mumbo Jumbo is an object of senseless veneration or a meaningless ritual.". This obviously dismissive treatment of African culture may have been representative of the views that led to our eventual colloquial use of the phrase.  According to Reed, or the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, mumbo jumbo comes from a Mandingo word that literally translates to "magician who makes the troubled spirits of ancestors go away". Other sources, however, claim that mumbo jumbo stems from the Mandingo word maamajomboo, which refers to "a masked dancer that took part in religious ceremonies". Whatever its true meaning may have been, it seems more or less certain that it arises from the Mandingo language. Further research informed me that Mandingo isn't actually one concrete language, but a sort of family of languages (including Malinke, Maninka, and Bambara) spoken across western Africa. From learning this I realized just how extensive my ignorance of African history and culture truly is. This may have to do with the fact that I don't consciously go out of my way to seek more knowledge, but I think is mostly owed to the fact that American schools have almost entirely kept African history out of their curriculum. Despite the sheer number of African "immigrants" that were made to find new lives in America, their cultures were forcibly stripped and stolen from them, and did not get a chance to live on into the mainstream. Dehumanization was a tool used for years in antebellum America, and in the process a rich culture was lost and tossed aside as mumbo jumbo.

Setting and changes in viewpoint

After the panel presentation on Friday, I was left with a lot of realizations about the way in which I consume books. I became aware of the fact that how I read Ragtime in class almost definitely would have been different from how I would've read Ragtime as a random novel on my own time. Whether we like to admit it or not (and I know for a fact that that's something most people don't like to own up to), our likes and dislikes are always somewhat tied to our environment and how other people perceive things. In a classroom setting where I am essentially forced to analyze, reread, and contemplate each chapter (I'd even go as far as to say each passage), it becomes so much easier to appreciate the literary value of a book. That, combined with all the other voiced opinions in class, helps to solidify my budding curiosity into a full fledged interest for the book. On the other hand, wolfing down a novel on your own time provides a completely different experience. When I enjoy a book, I can't help but read through all of it in the shortest time frame possible. In doing so I miss out on a lot of the subtleties that would've otherwise contributed to the book's overall wow factor. When I am not immediately enthralled by a book (and this might have to do with our generation's ever-shrinking attention spans), I abandon it out of disinterest. It seems more and more now that a book either has to provide cheap thrill and action, or a solid recommendation from someone whose taste I trust, for me to really bother finishing it all the way through (let alone appreciate it for its full value...).