Kindred blog
Does Dana leave a positive impact?
Throughout
Kindred, the author continuously portrays Dana as a benign protagonist who
tries to help as much as she possibly can. In the beginning, I’d even venture
to say that Dana has an air of superiority over these slaves, gradually fading
as the narrative unfolds. While Dana means well, this novel shows us how even
well-meaning individuals are not immune to the pitfalls of institutionalized
racism and can ultimately help maintain the status quo. This book highlights
the fact that fixing this broken system takes much more than one person since
no matter how progressive they may seem, this singular person can ultimately
cause more harm.
At
the start of the book, I believed that Dana makes a positive impact on the
plantation by saving Rufus and teaching him about what life is like in 1976.
Dana is trying to help mold Rufus into a better person. Inadvertently, Rufus’s
takeaway is a messed up version of love with Alice. Rufus’s skewed perception
of love creates a toxic and abusive relationship with Alice. Despite Dana’s
well-meaning intentions to improve Rufus’s character, her actions inadvertently
contribute to the ongoing cycle of violence, exploitation, and
oppression.
As
the story goes on, Dana becomes less and less influential. She has a grasp on
Rufus in the beginning, but the power is gone once Rufus (accidentally) pits
her interest against Alice’s. Dana can no longer be an unbiased arbiter due to
her personal goals, but she can’t tell Alice about this since it could end
Dana’s life if Hagar isn’t born. This shows how Dana is painfully human and
still has to put their self-interest before Alice’s feelings. It illustrates
the limitations of her actions within the past.
Dana’s
inability to enact meaningful change also stems not only from her lack of
power, but also from the threat of her own safety. Despite her best efforts in
challenging the system, Dana has to find a way to balance resistance with
survival which hinders her ability to change. Dana also realizes that though
she has multiple critiques on systemic racism, they are useless in a society
where her main concern is to survive. Dana shows us how meaningful activism
usually requires safety and privilege that she does not have and its challenges
to implement activism in the system.
In
the end, Dana finds herself increasingly powerless in the plantation. Despite
her best efforts to navigate the oppressive system and protect people she cares
about, we ultimately realize the reality that her actions, no matter how
well-intentioned, cannot destroy the deeply ingrained structures of racism and
exploitation.
Hi Mason, nice post. What I came to realize while reading Kindred was that Dana wasn't really combatting Rufus' beliefs, but combatting the system he was stuck in that he can't escape. Rufus is convinced of her ideas (and tries to follow them, even if in hurtful ways), but can't help living in a time period where her ideas are completely unacceptable. The issue isn't really Dana versus Rufus, but Dana versus the system Rufus represents.
ReplyDeleteI wonder, on the flip side, whether Dana's net positive impact would have been positive if she had not killed Rufus. The bulk of the net negative impact that she leaves comes from most of the slaves in the plantation getting sold out after Rufus's death. However, as revealed in Dana's conversation with Carrie, Rufus is racially progressive when compared to other slave masters at the time (and he, indeed, frees his children at last)--much of this could be attributed to Dana's influence on Rufus. Putting this all together, if Dana had chosen to subjugate herself to Rufus at the end and live at his plantation, which was, in the 1820s standards, relatively "preferable" (sorry for not finding a better word), perhaps she would have had a positive impact on the enslaved people at the plantation.
ReplyDeleteHello Mason. How are you doing? Your analysis here is quite interesting. I am inclined to agree with your base explanation but am highly convinced that Dana towards the second half of the book was a significant net negative for others on the plantation. I think her influence quite possibly increased, as after the passing of Tom Weylin her connection to Rufus was more influential. Dana was able to do some good from this position, but seems to have had much more harm done through the selling of multiple slaves. It is possible though that Rufus would have sold many more if there was no one to attempt to 'correct' him. Thanks Mason!!!
ReplyDeleteI think that you could argue that Dana had a temporary positive impact at the Weylin plantation through her mere act of keeping Rufus alive for most of the book; and the novel says as much. I forget who talks about it but it's mentioned that if Rufus and Weylin both end up dead then families will get broken up and people will get sold. Although Dana does kill Rufus eventually I think you could argue that there may be a temporary positive impact, even though that positive impact is found through helping a slave owner.
ReplyDeleteI really liked what you said about meaningful activism requiring safety and privilege. As modern readers who look back on history, we might claim that we would make better moral choices. In reality, we are all just one person in a society, and it's very difficult to go against status quo. I think this goes to show how the time traveling aspect of the novel helps modern readers better engage and understand the impacts of systematic rascism as we see Dana going from trying to influence Rufus to trying to survive.
ReplyDeleteOne way that I like to think about the outcome of Dana's efforts to positively influence Rufus and his views is through the lens of "systemic" versus individual/personal racism. Some traditional views of racism tend to present it as a character flaw in the racist person themselves--so we get people accused of racist actions or words testifying with sincerity that they "don't have a racist bone in their body." But "racist bones" maybe aren't what we're actually talking about when we talk about racism: the *systemic* view of racism would say that the personal feelings of the racist individual are irrelevant. Their *actions* within the system are what matter, regardless of whatever qualms or moral misgivings they might harbor. Within the system of slavery, the question of whether the slaveowner "hates" the enslaved people is irrelevant--we need to focus on the interconnected institutions and laws and customs that hold the system in place.
ReplyDeleteWe see this contrast with Rufus: his *feelings* for Alice can be described as "love" (and there is some justification at least for the fact that, unlike his father, he has strong feelings for one individual Black woman and is bewildered by the suggestion that he can just "take anyone"), but when these feelings lead him to exploit all of the power and privilege that the system affords him (literally *purchasing* her and enslaving her and compelling her to comply against her will), we get a pretty clear picture of how irrelevant his feelings really are. In the end, he is a product of the system, and he plays out his role (only with more emotional confusion, perhaps, than his father).