Rufe

It's very hard to say whether I like Rufus or not. When he was younger and more innocent I found myself liking him a lot. He seemed like an intelligent boy who had a silent strength about him who wasn't threatened by having Dana suddenly appear in his bedroom. He treated her with respect despite his upbringing which would give him no reason to respect Dana, even though she is his senior. Even his use of the n-word is arguably excused by his ignorance, though to his credit he does follow Dana's request to call them black people instead. One couldn't help but hope along with Dana that maybe Rufus will turn out different than his father.

When Dana  says "And there was Rufus, swung from his father's indifference to his mother's sugary concern. I wondered whether he was too used to the contrast to find it dizzying." (Butler, 69) I couldn't help but see a similar comparison to Hitler's childhood. Apparently he too had a very strict and abusive father and an overbearing mother who smothered him with affection. I don't think because of the dynamic he has with his parents that Rufus will grow up as messed up as Hitler, but you can certainly see how swinging from being severely punished by his father to hugged and fed cake by his mother can be emotionally confusing.

Then flash forward ten years. We see Rufus getting beaten for trying to/succeeding in raping Alice, yet claiming to love her. But then we see him joking around with Nigel and appearing kinder and more humane than Tom Weylin was. The swings Rufus can go from are about as dizzying as his parents swings. However, Rufus still realizes that the culture he lives him allows him to do whatever he wants to black people with no repercussions, and he takes advantage of it when he gets desperate and feels he needs to that he will threaten Alice and even Dana. Of course, we as the reader may not agree that he actually "needs" to. It doesn't excuse his actions in the slightest, but you out someone in power in a culture like that and you can't be surprised if every now and then they use that power to their full advantage. It really makes you wonder if/how people we know would change if they were put in a culture like the antebellum south.

Kindred Initial Reaction

I am thoroughly enjoying Kindred thus far. As much as I love Vonnegut's writing, it's a nice change to read something a little more grounded. Though time travel is also thrown in this novel, this time it's more believable and has more merit since it's a self proclaimed science fiction book, and I completely trust the sanity of the characters of this novel. With Billy Pilgrim, everything's happening more or less in his head and even in the book people, like his daughter, think he's  crazy. I also find this book easier to relate to since not only is Dana a young female, but the book was actually written in the late 1970s when Butler was in her thirties so her writing style is more what I'm used to from just reading "young adult" books I suppose you could call them.

One thing I thought was particularly interesting in Kindred is how long it takes for us to learn that Kevin is white. I suppose his super light eyes may have been a tip off (since I don't know many non-white people with eyes that aren't brown), and that scene where he asks Dana "Do I really look like that patroller?" since, obviously the patroller is white. It's not until 50-some pages in, through the story of how Dana and Kevin met, that we get a sense of what Kevin looks like, including the fact that he's white. I also think it's interesting that once we learn that Kevin's white, we aren't likely to forget it so quickly; especially once he is transported back to Maryland with Dana. Once he's in Maryland, his and Dana's relationship is completely transformed. He has to pretend to be Dana's master in order to protect her and that must be a really hard dynamic to take on, especially for Dana. We don't really see any tension at all between Dana and Kevin when they're in L.A., but once they're back in 1815 Maryland, that's all that matters to the people there so there's the constant reminder that Kevin is a white man and Dana is a black woman. It really doesn't help anything that Kevin's story involves buying Dana and pretending like he's going to free her when really he's "planning" on selling her in Louisiana and is just sleeping with her now because he can. Having to play that scenario out would be really demeaning since Kevin is her husband.

All in all, Kindred looks like it's going to be a really good read. It'll be interesting to see how this time-traveling experience changes (if it does) Kevin and Dana's relationship.

A Mixing of Novels: Slaughterhouse Five and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

One of my favorite scenes in Slaughterhouse Five was the scene in chapter five where Billy is in the mental hospital. I'm not entirely certain why this scene has captured my fancy, but it's partly due to what his ward-mate Elliot Rosewater brings to the scene. I don't really like Billy Pilgrim much; he's too passive. He doesn't really care about anything, and he doesn't have much of a personality as far as I can tell. Elliot, on the other hand, is a much more interesting character. Especially considering the fact that Elliot Rosewater is actually directly out of another Kurt Vonnegut book that I am currently reading: God Bless You Mr. Rosewater. When I first read his name in the mental hospital scene I thought "hey, that's the name of the guy in the book I'm reading." When Vonnegut mentioned that Elliot Rosewater had also been a soldier and had accidentally killed a fourteen year old German volunteer fireman because he mistook him for a soldier, I was like, "Wait. This must be the exact same Elliot Rosewater. That's kind of odd, why not just make up a new character." Vonnegut just plucked him out of one of his novels and stuck him in another.

Vonnegut actually mixes aspects between the novels God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater and Slaughterhouse Five more than once. It's like Vonnegut's novels exist in a world of their own and he just draws different aspects from it for his different books. Kilgore Trout and his badly written sci-fi is also a part of God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, which I suppose only makes sense since it was Elliot who introduced Billy to his books in the first place. What really surprised me was that the old "woman attempting to have sex with a Shetland pony" picture made an appearance in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater as well, as the porn of choice of a character's fourteen-year-old son. I mean, really, what's so significant about that photo? It's photo description makes it sound more ridiculous/disturbing than actually "sexy", and I'm not sure what kind of point Vonnegut is trying to make by utilizing that image so readily (if there even is a point at all; I suppose Vonnegut could just have a very limited imagination.) It just seemed to me like an unnecessary bit to consciously include in both novels.

Anyway, back to the Slaughterhouse Five mental hospital scene. Neither Billy nor Elliot really enjoy life or have any desire to continue living on earth. I like the way Vonnegut puts it when he's talking about how Billy covers his head whenever his mother comes to visit and he says "She made him feel embarrassed and weak because she had gone to so much trouble to give him life, and to keep that life going, and Billy didn't really like life at all." It's so matter-of -fact and honest. It's not something you would expect to find in a novel (though Vonnegut is full of surprises). None of the books that I have read have really delved into someone just not liking life on earth, yet its totally relateable. I'm sure  everyone at some point has thought that maybe life wasn't worth it. Of course, Billy has a typical, childish, passive reaction to not liking life and just covers his head with a blanket. Elliot pretty much has decided that life is pointless as well, but I really like his way of approaching it. he tries different things and actually does some searching to try and improve his outlook on life. I really like the interaction between Billy's mother and Eliot where he was trying being ardently sympathetic with people to see if that made life more enjoyable. It's such a seemingly genuine interaction, though for all we know Elliot doesn't care at all and is just giving generic answers (as Vonnegut puts it, "loving echoes") and supporting everything Billy's mother says, replying with things like "That's a good thing to do." and "A boy needs a father." It sounds like it could be a very real, and touching conversation, but it's so empty and void of actual content. I can't pinpoint exactly what I appreciate about that hollow interaction, but perhaps it's just the optimism.

I didn't really like Elliot Rosewater in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater nearly as much as I like his appearance in Slaughterhouse Five. In "his" book I suppose you could call it, Elliot is just a really rich heir who drinks, runs around as a volunteer fireman in some tiny little town in Indiana named after his family, and pretty much runs a psychiatrist hotline on the phone in his office to whoever feels like calling him. His family and everyone at the company he's inherited thinks he's insane, his former wife appears to have been emotionally damaged by antics. In Slaughterhouse Five, however, there is less triviality about him and more depth. He seems much more respectable and down to earth, though he may not like living on it.