Cop Out

The ending to Kindred was bad.  Throughout the entire story Butler succeeded in creating something that was more than just a cliche slave narrative.  I really enjoyed it, both the scenes in 'modern' America and antebellum America.  But the ending ruined it for me.  Flat out, undeniably, ultimately.  There had to be a better way to wrap up Rufus' story than to have Dana kill him.  It's one thing to end a random novel by killing off the antagonist, but in a slavery based story? It's just unimaginative.  It seemed out of character for Dana, normally she worries more about how her actions will affect others than herself.  This isn't to say that I disagree with her choice to kill Rufus, I disagree with Butler ever putting her in that position.  Dana knew that Rufus' death would mean that all the slaves on the plantation would be scattered across the South with complete disregard for family and relationships, Carrie told her as much a few chapters before.

Now with the way that Dana's time travel is set up, one of the two of them has to die.  Otherwise there could be no finality to the story, and the first chapter could never be written with such a sense of recovery.  But it still doesn't have to be Rufus trying to rape Dana and Dana killing him in self defense.  I think it could have been a stronger ending to have Rufus kill himself.  He is such a rash person it would've fit with his personality, and it would have elicited a strong moral questioning in readers' minds about the feelings of slave owners. Maybe Kevin comes back with Dana and there's a standoff, redefining the classic plot of two men fighting over a woman.  But something, something that isn't male slave owner attempting to rape the female slave.  Perhaps Butler was doing something with this that I'm not getting?  It's possible, but at least in my current thinking all the ending elicits is a sense that the author was done with her characters and her story, or that she was on deadline from her publisher.  The problem is that it isn't a metafictional aside with Butler showing us that just like we're ready for the end to come, so is she.  Instead it comes across like a movie that ran out of money and ended on a weak note, fading into oblivion.       

O Captain, My Captain

When Tom Weylin dies in Dana's care, it's a very important turning point both for Rufus and for Dana.  All the times that Dana had come back to antebellum Maryland, she was always able to cure what was ailing Rufus or anyone else.  All of a sudden, she didn't cure someone, and it wasn't just anyone, it was Tom Weylin whom she'd had run-ins with before.  Now realistically there wasn't anything Dana could have done to save him, he had a heart attack, which even with modern medicine is often fatal.  Dana knows this, and deep down Rufus knows it too, but the mirage that she is this guardian angel figure is gone.

Rufus now is forced to see that Dana may not always be there to protect him and the plantation.  Even worse, she can now be seen as a threat.  If she didn't save Tom, why would she save Rufus?  Rufus doesn't know that she's a descendant of his, so seemingly the only thing making sure she saves him is that his father would have tortured and killed her if she hadn't--a thing Tom reminds Dana on multiple occasions.  He knows that when he's in danger of being killed she comes against her will, but once she's there there isn't anything stopping her from walking away from him now.  Rufus has to give in to Dana a little more, because unlike before, she now holds a lot of the cards.  While he's alive and lucid she is still his slave, but clearly he never knows when he'll be near death so he can't take the chance.

For Dana, she's now had someone die on her watch.  As traumatic as it must be, it's liberating too (irony fully intended).  Tom's death gives her the leverage to inspire fear in Rufus of what she's capable of.  It also proves to herself that she can survive in that time with someone's death.  Her parents died when she was young, so she knows what that loss is like, how debilitating it can be.  I think she was living still in a little bit of a fantasy world that nothing was ever going to change around the Weylin plantation and she would always just be getting Rufus out of jams and playing him against his father.  Now that fantasy is over and she's now gained an even stronger position in that time.  Going forward, things will be different, and the unspoken understanding between Rufus and Dana is going to be even more sensitive.