In Octavia Butler's Kindred, Dana's story is told in three distinct points of time: the present, the past/present, and the past. In the present, Dana lives with her husband, Kevin, in a new house where they're just beginning to settle down. In the past/present, Dana is a slave on a plantation where her ancestors are living. In the past, Dana and Kevin's relationship is laid out through flashbacks that introduce the reader to their life together.
By telling the story this way, Butler is able to pull the reader into each storyline as if it's happening right that moment. The reader can understand Dana's motivations and Kevin's frustrations through their own perspectives on the story.
In a more grounded way, the fact that Dana is tasked with bringing together her great-great-great-grandparents means that not just her future, but her very existence is in question. If she is unsuccessful,...
Unlock This Answer Now
Start your 48-hour free trial and get ahead in class. Boost your grades with access to expert answers and top-tier study guides. Thousands of students are already mastering their assignments—don't miss out. Cancel anytime.
Already a member? Log in here.
she may never come to exist in the first place. This is a classic trope in time travel literature that ups the stakes for Dana.
Dana travels back in time to try to affect the outcome of a particular relationship. She knows the consequences of her actions will be crucial to her own survival and that being a slave will be difficult; she does not anticipate, however, that she must make difficult ethical decisions while existing in the past, or that her experiences in the early nineteenth century will affect her emotions regarding her life in the present. The subtle manipulation of both aspects is key to the effectiveness of the novel overall.
By drawing the reader into Dana’s struggles in her “then” and “now” times, Octavia E. Butler creates suspense. Although we are initially certain that she will survive, we come to realize that she may end the book as a totally different person—and, indeed, she is physically disfigured through the book's events. In turn, we must wonder if the steps she took and the outcome were inevitable. Was Dana simply fulfilling her destiny? Or, in contrast, did she shape the past and thereby create the conditions that allowed her to return to it? Butler skillfully maneuvers readers along diverse paths that seem to support both possibilities, creating a science fiction work that succeeds on historically and socially relevant levels as well.
The use of flashback is very important to this novel. In order to get the plot moving and set up the basic conflict, Butler starts with the action of Dana's first time travel. However, in order for readers to understand the actions of the characters, she has to provide more information. Therefore, she uses flashback to show the development of Dana and Kevin's relationship. Readers are already interested and invested in the characters - now they are able to enjoy learning more about them.
The flashback and the time traveling also contributes to the themes of the novel. Humans tend to think in a linear manner: one thing happens, then another, etc. Therefore, we assume that if an event occurs, it is the result of what happened just before. However, this often isn't the case. For example, at the beginning, Dana saves a boy drowning in the river. The father threatens her with a gun. In a linear timeline, we would have to assume that he is threatening her because she saved his son. However, his violence comes from history of prejudice. Therefore, life doesn't just happen in a line; events, suspicions, behaviors, etc., all overlap and influence each other.