The first time Dana is whipped, she teleports out of the past and back to her “original” time period. She thinks, “I thought I would die on the ground there with a mouth full of dirt and blood and a white man cursing and lecturing as he beat me.” Because Dana thought she would die, she escapes the situation and returns to safety – until the next time Rufus gets in trouble.
But in her next visit, Dana is whipped again when she tries to escape to find Kevin, and this time, she doesn’t teleport anywhere. Her escape isn’t tied to her pain, it’s tied to her perception of danger. And she knows now, after further experience with the Weylin plantation, that her life isn’t really in danger. No matter how much she might suffer, she knows that death is not a likely outcome, and so she remains in the past.
I really like the contrast of these two scenes, because they form a metaphor for Dana and Kevin’s struggle throughout the book – the question of, how long do you need to play a part before it becomes who you are? How long can Kevin play the white slaveowner before that identity is stronger than his 1970s identity? How long can Dana play a slave before that’s what she is?
The longer they are immersed in the past, the more they acclimatize themselves to it – the harder it is to remain aloof and disconnected, and the more they become inhabitants of the 19th century. Dana notes this when she realizes the smell of unwashed clothes and bodies no longer bother her, and when Weylin’s wink makes her feel ashamed of sleeping in the same room as Kevin – the reality of the 1800s is becoming more and more normalized in her head, even if she knows that “technically,” none of this is affecting her real life.
The alternative outcomes to the whipping are another example of Dana’s being acclimatized to the past. Her body has literally become acclimatized to the violence and injustice of the everyday life of slaves in the 19th century. Where before she was afraid of death, now she knows this is “only” punishment. That’s disturbing on a number of levels, but maybe most of all because Butler uses this to show us how Dana is unconsciously beginning to accept the Weylin mindset, the mindset that tells her that just because she’s being beaten and whipped and having her freedom taken away – she isn’t in enough danger to leave.
Slaves lived with this casual violence for centuries of American history – before America was even America. I think by no longer teleporting away when being whipped and abused, Dana has started to realize exactly what that meant.
I think that the parallel between the two time periods, and more exactly the striking differences in what behaviors are "normal". In the same way that Dana is shaped by the
ReplyDelete"slave-like" treatment that she is faced with, Kevin accepts his role as a white in the 19th century with surprising ease. In both cases, I think that it shows how easy it is to follow the peer pressure of what everyone else within society is doing, and I think thats part of what makes the book so powerful.
It's difficult as a reader to see how accustomed both Dana and Kevin are becoming to their "roles" in the 19th century. Although it's easy from an outside perspective to criticize Kevin for how he's become, it also raises the question of how different we as readers would react if we were in the same situation. Dana and Kevin's experiences show how easy it is to go along with what everyone else is doing, even if what everyone else is doing goes completely against what you believe is morally correct.
ReplyDeleteIt is very jarring as a reader to see Dana faced with ever-increasing violence. Her body seems to have physically acclimated to the violence, as she disappears during increasingly intense situations. Her mechanism of returning to the present depends on this, and it makes the novel that much more disturbing. She seems to have emotionally acclimated to the violence as well, as we she has the most visceral responses near the beginning of the novel. Overall, I agree that it becomes easier to be habituated to almost any environment over time - even if it is as disgusting as slavery.
ReplyDeleteIt's frightening to see Dana kind of accepting the violence as the book goes on. Even being sent out to the fields was not enough to send her back. Instead, she had to cut her wrists to escape because violence from someone else was not causing her to fear for her life. She got to the point though where she could not stay any longer and cutting her wrists was a risk she was willing to take.
ReplyDeleteI always wondered how the time travel thing worked. Was it triggered by a biological fear reaction in dana? Like, if her fight or flight activates, a reaction to a death threat, then does that hormonal change trigger her returning to the present? However, this blog post was very perceptive and enlightening. It makes total sense that her fear jumps are an illustration of how easily a person acclimates to their environment, even in such an unfortunate way.
ReplyDeleteYou also did a good job in picking up the other subtle ways butler showed dana and kevin acclimatizing to their environment. Getting used to the smells of unwashed people is a physical adjustment, and it symbolizes the natural adaptation they go through, not only in body but inevitably in mind. Getting used to the smells is just one member of the family, some others being normalizing the treatment of slaves as sexual objects by their owners, and accepting the violence of beatings
ReplyDeletealthough in the spirit of questioning the principle of dana's fear jumps, I sometimes wondered why they didn't happen more often--for example, when alice ran away or every time she almost died. Wouldn't dana have feared for her life in those moments, not directly, but indirectly as a result of never being born? Wouldn't she have felt a wave of existential fear every time she almost didn't exist? I wonder what the mechanics of the magic are.
ReplyDeleteOne more thought--for those eight days when dana was at home and kevin was trapped in the past i was kind of annoyed. There was such a simple solution, kevin just had to threaten rufus's. For the rest of the book I couldn't get over how Kevin never thought to just pick up a shotgun and get rufus alone and shout "I'm going to kill you!" and then Dana would be summoned. That's the obvious fix, right? Come on Kev. Step up your game.
ReplyDeleteI don't think this would have worked because Kevin would never have actually killed Rufus. Kevin knows that Rufus needs to stay alive for Dana to stay alive. So Rufus's life would never have actually been in danger from Kevin and Dana would not have been summoned.
DeleteIt kind of confused me as to why the second time Dana goes through a traumatic whipping she doesn't go teleport back but this entire post is really good at explaining why. It's a really unsettling way of showing how Dana's mental state has changed and is trapping her within this time period.
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