Butler Doesn't Want You to be a Kevin
Throughout, Kindred, I couldn’t help but criticize Kevin’s worldview and thoughts, although I certainly subscribe to the idea he is an all-around well-intentioned guy. I feel one of the main points of the time-travel experience of Kindred was to try to personalize the horrors of slavery and give contemporary people a feeling for how horrible slavery was and just the scope of the people in affected. Specifically, Butler aims to show how horrid slavery was as a day-to-day way to live. Not just the brutal work, not just the violence, not just being stripped away from their families, but having to wake up in bondage every morning. And I’ll admit, its something I hadn’t thought about extensively before… I knew I wouldn’t like to do manual labor, to be whipped, raped, killed, torn away from my mother, but I just didn’t give so much thought to the idea of never feeling like you are truly your own individual. Just feeling trapped in a box every day, unable to control my own destiny. Kevin doe...