Kindred-The River

In the novel "Kindred," by Otavia Butler, I focused on the section titled "The River" starting on page 12, ending on 16.  I understand that the rest of the class is reading "Beloved" by Toni Morrison, and I see some parallels in content.  The overall supernatural essence that emerges in this chapter is definitely similar to the supernatural, ghostly, elements that emerge in "Beloved."  To put focus back on "The River," I would like to speak about the traumatic encounters in this chapter.  In this chapter, there is a description of a lady vanishing before her husband’s eyes to a river where a drowning boy was.  She didn't question it much, but she jumped straight to save the boy.  Upon her arrival, she appeared back to her house in front of her husband’s eyes, and the situation affected him traumatically in a way that made him want to repress the whole thing.  Though he had questions, this supernatural situation simply scared him.  His encounter with the unfamiliar made him question reality, an example is on page 16 when her husband talks about her vanishing, and being gone for just a few seconds, when she thought she was gone for a few minutes.  The two of them talking about the situation made them both sound crazy.  On page 17 they converse about the panic, and the fear of the unexpected situation. 

            This is comparable to “Beloved” when the Beloved vanished into thin air.  In a way it made me wonder how real the lady from “Kindred” was that vanished, but I haven’t gotten far enough to deeply inspect it.