I've had a really hard time coming up with something to blog about for Kindred, and I realized last week that it's not simply because I don't like the book. I do like the book, in fact; I genuinely find Butler's writing gripping and the premise of her novel interesting. The thing holding be back from truly engaging with the text, then, is not the plot but the characters; there's really not a single one in the book I actually like.
Generally speaking, I prefer first-person narratives to third-person ones because I like to get attached to a character and follow them throughout the novel. (If you recall from a much earlier blog post, the lack of stationary characters was one of the things I didn't like about Ragtime.) In fact, my three all-time favorite books are all in the first person, so I was reasonably excited that Kindred would be employing this traditional narrative device, unlike so many of the other books we've read this semester.
However, I've been consistently disappointed with Dana's character throughout the novel, which has completely undone the effects of a first-person narrative for me. I have a hard time relating to her and thinking of her as a real, likable person—and if I don't buy into her as a person, then why should I care about her story?
It bothers me how Dana approaches everything so rationally. I get that she's a very smart person, but I find myself looking for a less reasonable, more emotional response from her all the time, which I don't think is too much to ask of someone in her bizarre, out-of-this-world predicament. I can't stand it when she's kind of going along with the 19th century and then she'll take a step back in her mind and be like, "Okay, it's such-and-such a year, which means such-and-such has not happened yet, so I need to be doing such-and-such a thing, and blah blah blah"; it makes me want to slap her on the head.
Perhaps that made-up quotation was a very crude way of articulating exactly what Dana does that bothers me, but I can't think of any other way of describing the action. I guess, if you boil it all down, I'm angry because I think she thinks too much, which sounds like a strange bone to pick with a character, but honestly it's true. It goes hand in hand with her reading so much into everything Kevin does, clearly just looking for ways to liken him to the white supremacists she's met in the 19th century, even if there's not necessarily anything there in his behavior to warrant such analyzing.
Sometimes I just wish that Dana would have a breakdown. I can't sympathize with a character who's so freaking logical all the time—not to mention that her being that way makes it seem like she doesn't need my sympathy anyway, so consequently I'm even less inclined to give it. I think that, for a first-person narrative to really work well (work well in my mind, that is), the author needs to really try to endear their narrator to their reader. Sometimes they're successful in this endeavor and other times they're not, but with Dana I'm not even convinced that Butler's trying to make us like her. She feels very removed, despite the fact that we're occupying her head, and I think that'd be easily changed if her thoughts were just a little less put together and a little more natural-feeling.
I'm not saying a book can't be good if the main character's not likable, but it sure is a lot harder to care what happens in a novel if you don't care about the person to whom it's happening.
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