Robby McElhaney-Kindred

Since I read Beloved in a previous class, I am reading Kindred by Octavia Butler. I mean no offense to Beloved, but Kindred has managed to suck me in much deeper and faster in the first few chapters than Beloved ever did. Both books share similarities as neo-slave narratives with elements of spirituality, but Butler’s take on the genre is one that is truly unique and intriguing. The book follows a modern black woman, Dana, who is involuntarily sent back in time to the antebellum south. Each time she travels back in time, her stay grows longer and more dangerous. The part that struck me most in this first section was in a scene where Dana is hiding and witnessing a slave being whipped only feet from where she crouched. She describes the horror of the scene as she struggles to hold down her lunch, watching this man try his hardest to absorb the pain in silence. “Then the man’s resolve broke. He began to moan, low gut wrenching sounds torn from him against his will. Finally, he began to scream” (Butler 36). I’ve never read or watched any scene where a contemporary character was forced to sit and observe one of the many horrors of American slavery while the victim was close enough to smell his sweat. We as a society are so desensitized to scenes like this when we read them or see them on a movie screen. But how would we cope with witnessing it first hand like Dana had to? How would we cope knowing that in the near future it could be us strapped to that tree taking lashes to our back?