This is the view taken by Salvaggio (1984), who observes that "Butler places her heroines in worlds filled with racial and sexual obstacles, forcing her characters to survive and eventually overcome these societal barriers to their independence. Sometimes her black heroines are paired with white men who challenge their abilities; sometimes they are paired with powerful black men who threaten their very autonomy and existence. And always, the society in which they live constantly reminds them of barriers to their independence." (Salvaggio, 78) This is to make the case that Butler's use of time travel is as a way of reminding Dana not just of her past but of the way that these dynamics remain relevant to the present, even where the conditions of her life have allowed her to assume otherwise. As other black women continued to live lives of inequality and subjugation even late into the 20th century, Dana's previous state of blissful ignorance to the real travails of her ancestors would help to personalize these struggles for her.
Certainly, she has herself freely admitted in the text of the book that she generally wished to avoid any explicit awareness of the suffering which came before her. For instance, in one passage she remarks on reading one of Kevin's World War II books. As she explains it, "stories of beatings, starvation, filth, disease, torture,...
As though the Germans had been trying to do in only a few years what the Americans had worked at for nearly two hundred. The books depressed me, scared me, made me stuff Kevin's sleeping pills into my bag. Like the Nazis, antebellum whites had known quite a bit about torture -- quite a bit more than I ever wanted to learn." (Butler, 117)
This is the perspective which may best explain the reason that Dana was truly sent back into the past. Her desire not to be exposed to the unpleasant realities of her own history are met with this rude intervention, one which dispels her of the illusion that she can be protected from these things. Ultimately, these experiences produce a remarkable appreciation for the iniquities which must be seen as a defining part of America's past and as a lingering reality even for those such as Dana persisting under the modern illusion of redemption.
Works Cited:
Butler, O.E. (1979). Kindred. Beacon Press.
Kenan, R. (1991). An Interview With Octavio E. Butler. Callaloo, 14(2), 495-504.
Salvaggio, R. (1984). Octavia Butler and the Black Science-Fiction Heroine. St. Louis University.
Wikipedia. (2010). Kindred. Wikimedia, Ltd. Inc.
Zaki, H.M. (1990). Utopia, Dystopia, and Ideology in the Science Fiction of Octavia Butler. SF-TH Inc.
