Pulling Punches
Kevin is an important secondary character in Kindred due to his role as a sort of psychological anchor for Dana during her time in the Past. However, Kevin is (seemingly) not a completely altruistic character, and Butler plants many seeds in his character throughout the story which could have set him up as a twist villain. We see some problematic gender role beliefs in his insistence that Dana write his manuscripts, and at multiple points in her journey, Dana finds it hard to visually distinguish between Kevin and the numerous villainous white men she's encountered in the Past. Dana also criticizes Kevin when he is unable to separate his mythology of the Old West from the truth of the antebellum South.
But Butler never follows through on this elaborate setup, and it is already undermined at the beginning of the novel, in which we see that Kevin and Dana are still in an intimate relationship after Dana's final trip. Kevin's flaws are never addressed past their introduction in the story, and Dana never reconciles with him for his past slights. Kevin even ends up as the "white savior" during one of Dana's excursions to the Past, riding into the plantation as a mysterious bearded stranger to save Dana from her plight like out of an old Western.
For what reason did Butler include these seeds, just to almost entirely ignore them in the plot? One could argue that by not addressing Kevin's flaws, Butler is suggesting that they are inherent in White people, but the writing of Rufus' ambiguous character and Kevin's altruistic character suggests otherwise. Personally, I believe that Kevin's character is just poor writing on Butler's part, and that Kindred falls behind Ragtime and Mumbo Jumbo in its failure to characterize the "young white liberal" character.
Good call, citing Kevin's sudden reappearance on the plantation as reflecting a "white savior" dynamic and also echoing tropes from old Westerns (which is a genre we know Kevin is interested in, given his earlier desire to travel to the "old West" to witness the "mythology"). It's true that Butler sets up a lot of potential to explore Kevin as a problematic character whose latent sexism and maybe racism is exacerbated after living for five years in an explicitly white supremacist culture--she really doesn't try to make him into a "Mother's Younger Brother" figure. Although he DOES spend his time in the past taking great risks, participating in Abolitionist activities and aiding in the Underground Railroad. If there's a "test" given to Kevin by stranding him in the antebellum period, he "passes" the test. And this is consistent with how Dana articulates her worry about how the place might affect him: remember she does say she worries most that HE will say the wrong thing (presumably objecting to some aspect of slavery) and make enemies among the powerful white people in this time. She never quite says that she worries how living at the top of a racial hierarchy might have an impact on him, even if that's the possibility that most readers entertain.
ReplyDeleteIf we look at this aspect of the story through the "role-playing" lens, where Dana starts to think and act more like a slave as she lives in that role for months at a time, it's maybe fortunate that Kevin doesn't have to occupy the role of slave-owner for more than a short time--maybe he would have been affected further. But he's able to reshape the *context* in which he lives in the past, and he goes north in order to be around more like-minded white people. This is a choice on his part--as if he knows on some level how damaging it might be for him to "wait" around the Weylin house for Dana to come back, where he could be more influenced by Tom and Rufus Weylin.
I also think that Butler should have given Kevin a more conclusive resolution by showing how the "seeds of racism" developed once he returned to the present. Perhaps Butler is trying to make a statement about nature vs. nurture, where Kevin represents a white man who hold some ignorant viewpoints but overall has been brought up with solid morals. Rufus serves as the counterexample, a white man who has been raised with entirely unacceptable values.
ReplyDeleteKevin is a very complex character which does add layers to the book, but I have to agree that it's not very clear what the significance of these layers truly are. This blog has really got me thinking of that significance and still I can't really understand how Butler ignoring these major questions of Kevin contributes to Butler's overall work. You may be right that Kevin is poor writing on Butler's part, but I like to believe that there must be some deeper reasoning here that we're missing.
ReplyDeleteGreat post! I wrote about a similar topic as well, as I also felt Kevin could have been a potentially powerful tool that Butler did not use. From the start I felt Kevin was a very basic character, and his lack of significant progression throughout the novel seems like he is a 'filler.' That being said I think there has to be some intention in what Butler does with Kevin, even if it is to show that his Dana's experience in the past is altered by her race (Kevin does not experience the immense hardships she does)
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