Summary: Prologue
Without explaining what she means, the narrator, Dana,
reveals that on her last trip home, she lost her arm. She says she
also lost her sense of security and about a year of her life.
Kevin, Dana’s husband, found her in the living room, screaming and
attempting to remove her arm from what looked like a hole in the
wall. She was taken to the hospital, where doctors amputated her
arm to above the elbow. The police arrested Kevin, believing him
responsible for the injury to Dana’s arm. Dana told them the injury
was an accident and that it was her fault. The police did not believe
her, but since there were no witnesses, they had no choice but to
release Kevin from jail. Dana says that she could not tell the police the
whole truth because they would not have believed her. When Kevin
got out of jail, he came to visit Dana. They are both confused by
the inexplicable events that have occurred.
Summary: The River
It is June 9, 1976,
Dana’s twenty-sixth birthday. Dana and Kevin, who were recently
married, move into their new home in the suburbs. Kevin has unpacked
his office, and Dana is unpacking books. Kevin comes out of the
office to talk to Dana. He tells her he has writer’s block. Dana
gets dizzy. The room and Kevin disappear before her eyes, and she
finds herself in a grove of trees. In a nearby river, Rufus, a young
boy of about four or five, is drowning. Dana rushes into the water
and drags the boy onto the riverbank, where she resuscitates him.
The boy’s mother is hysterical, and she screams and strikes Dana
while Dana saves Rufus. A man, apparently the boy’s father, appears
and shoves a gun in Dana’s face, demanding to know what is going
on.
After another dizzy spell, Dana finds herself back in
her own apartment. She panics. Kevin grabs her by the shoulders
and demands to know what happened. He says that Dana disappeared for
just a few seconds and then reappeared in a different place in the room.
As Dana tells Kevin what happened, she remembers some added details,
such as the pine trees near the river and the woman’s Southern accent
and strange clothes. Dana concedes to Kevin that the incident could
have been a hallucination or a dream, but she is fairly certain
it was real. She worries that if she returns to the scene, she will
encounter the father pointing a gun at her. Kevin points out that
the father owes her thanks for saving his son’s life. Dana is not so
sure.
Analysis: Prologue and The River
Kindred’s prologue, which takes place
after the action of the novel is largely completed, sets up many
of the novel’s important themes. With its description of Dana’s
amputated arm, the prologue prefigures the extreme violence that
will characterize the novel, preparing us for the physical suffering
that pervades Dana’s adventures in the antebellum South. The prologue
also presents authority figures as unjust and abusive. In an infinitely
milder version of how whites in the novel treat slaves, the police
treat Kevin with self-righteous and unfair suspicion. The prologue
also shows us Dana’s unwillingness to tell the truth for fear she
will be disbelieved and even considered insane, an unwillingness
that persists throughout the novel. Finally, the sense of helplessness
that Dana and Kevin feel in the hospital foreshadows their inability
to control their destinies or even their physical whereabouts. The
prologue is also intentionally abstruse. It makes us wonder how
Dana and Kevin are related, what happened to Dana’s arm, and whether
she is sane. By refusing to provide us with basic information about
Dana and Kevin, the prologue creates mysteries that induce us to
read on.
Unlike many fictional stories about slavery, Kindred is
written in the first person from the perspective of a modern woman.
Dana’s ability to time travel allows Butler to explore twentieth-century American
views about slavery and to provide historical commentary on the
institution and its practices, while simultaneously creating a firsthand
glimpse of slavery in practice. The novel is not a history lesson,
however, and its power derives from the vividness of its descriptions
and the emotional involvement we feel with its characters.
