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.
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
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.
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The last chapter and Dana's last visit to the past felt really short. I also had the thought that Butler was on a deadline to finish the book and had to wrap it up somehow. I probably wouldn't express it in quite as harsh terms as you, but I was also disappointed with how the book finished compared to the rest of the story.
ReplyDeleteI agree, I think also that after Dana kills Rufus, Butler doesn't really do a good job of dealing with the implications of that murder. It is murder. And that is a big deal the last time I checked regardless of who is being murdered. Butler portrays Dana as much more physically wounded than mentally and that seems strange to me and frankly unrealistic.
ReplyDeleteI think that, if the premise of the book is that Dana is sent to the past to save Rufus, with the subtext that Dana tries to get him to be more respectful of Alice and the other people who prove to be her own ancestors, it would be more interesting to see Rufus kill himself, certainly. For one thing, Dana already failed at getting him to be nice to Alice. In a sense, him killing himself is another, inevitable failure; Dana cannot possibly protect him from himself. The scene where Dana kills Rufus is interesting for other reasons, but it certainly would have been more compelling thematically as you describe it.
ReplyDeleteI've struggled with how to fit this ending into my general sense of the novel as a historical allegory *about* the need to confront and take responsibility for this aspect of our national history: throughout the book, I see it as Dana being forced to confront the fact that her legacy is not on one "side" or the other, but both sides of the slavery dynamic. This has important historical implications, as black and white Americans tend to have relatives on both sides, and it's not enough to simply denounce the slaveowners as "evil." Okay, so this makes sense throughout the novel, as she is in the position of having to save his life repeatedly--to "affirm" his place in this history. So then what does her killing him represent? Killing off that part of her family history? Renouncing her connection to him and all related responsibility? Cutting her ties to this past once and for all? There is maybe the sense that Rufus is being suicidal here--we know he has just been contemplating suicide, he's wracked with guilt after Alice's death, and he knowingly pushes Dana past her last limit. But this isn't fully satisfying.
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