Assassins

My mind is just filled with too many musicals.

Since starting Libra, all I can think about is the musical by Stephen Sondheim, "Assassins," which tells the stories of the people who both succeeded and failed in assassinating a president. Each of the assassins stories, called ballads, are narrated/sung by a balladeer, who later is revealed to be Lee Harvey Oswald. In the song, "Take a Look, Lee" the ghosts or spirits or whatever of previous and future presidential assassins convince Lee to kill JFK instead of taking is own life. They tell how his name will leave on for years and years, and how he helps them live again. Together, they create history.

It's a powerful song, and with all this talk in class about the various theories surrounding JFK's assassination, I feel I should bring this one up. After all, it's all I've been hearing in my head as we've been reading. That, and the song that directly follows this one, "Something Just Broke," which is about everybody's feelings after JFK has been assassinated. It's the "where I was, what I was doing" song.

You know, it is an interesting theory to think about. The spirits of assassins led Lee to commit murder. Fits right in with all the other theories. However, it does kind of reinforce the idea that Lee was nothing more than a crazed crackpot. Yet, the lines of "Take a Look, Lee" are really powerful. I mean, the assassins aren't wrong. Sometimes the names that live in infamy live longer than the ones that once reveled in fame. It's true that Lee will live on forever, and become a part of history along with John Wilkes Booth and Leon Czolgosz and Charles Guiteau and yes, even John Hinckley. Indeed, Lee, through killing JFK, shapes history more than he thinks. JFK becomes a president forever immortalized as a great man who did wonderful things for his country. Almost all negative views of him are pushed away, such as how any negative views of Abraham Lincoln were wiped away when he was assassinated by Booth. The assassination changes people's perceptions of their presidents, and we can see, from "Something Just Broke," that that perception will have a lasting impact on the entire country.

A Different Time, A Different Life

There's still one question that lingers in my mind after reading Kindred. If Rufus and Alice lived in a different time, say 1976 like Dana and Kevin, would they have been able to have a real relationship? I completely believe that time and environment have a major effect on society. Can a white man and a black woman have a relationship, be in love with one another, marry? Yes, absolutely! But it hasn't always been seen that way. That's not to say that interracial couples didn't exist at certain points in history, it's just that they were looked down upon on society, seen as immoral or wrong. So, because of that, to an extent I feel like Rufus and Alice could've had a fine relationship in a different time. Perhaps Rufus wouldn't treat her as badly because he wouldn't have been brought up in a racist household. Perhaps the relationship would've been less abusive. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps...but some people would disagree with all of my "perhaps." They would argue that to see if the relationship could work in a different time, you have to examine it outside of time.

 By looking at Rufus and Alice's relationship outside of time, we see them as people, and only that. They're not products of nature or products of nurture. We simply see who they are and how they interact. Theoretically, by looking at purely their relationship and love interests, we could set them down in any time and expect the same results.

So. Rufus and Alice outside of time. What do we see?

Well, for starters, it is clear that Alice's heart lies elsewhere. She chose a man other than Rufus: Isaac. Alice and Isaac were in love, and had even gotten married. Alice chose and went to Isaac completely on her own free will, and when she was with him, it never seemed like anything was wrong between the two of them. That relationship seemed to be an equal and loving one. Rufus and Alice on the other hand..the love is forced. Rufus obviously cares for Alice, but doesn't know how to show it, and indeed he never truly learns how to express his affection for her. Alice, in turn, feels out of place in the relationship. There is definite tension between the two, and whether that comes from unresolved feelings or forced romance is anyone's guess. Though Rufus and Alice may have been close friends when they were younger, it is clear that their feelings changed as they grew older.

And yet, I still can't help but think that even if we look at Rufus and Alice outside of time, we're still seeing the effects of their society. For instance, does Rufus not know how to show Alice that he loves her simply because he's never seen a white man express love for a black woman? The entire idea is so unthinkable and socially repugnant to him that it ends up being a very confusing experience for him? And maybe that divide in childhood stemmed from their racial, and thus social, differences. Who's to say that in another time, they would've remained just as close as adults as they had been as children?

Trying to get thoughts like these out makes my head hurt. It's so difficult to separate people from their society, culture, and time period, that I am quite clear of. Whether or not Rufus and Alice could have a successful relationship in another time? That question remains unanswered.

Why Does Everybody Hate Kevin?

Seriously, why?

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who actually liked Kevin. True, he had his faults, but who doesn't? I just felt like everybody was focusing far too much on his negative qualities and weren't looking at Kevin at a whole.

For instance, everbody kept insinuating that deep down Kevin was a racist, that he and Dana had a bad (possibly abusive) relationship, and that that all surfaced when he and Dana traveled to the past. I don't deny that Kevin said some rude things that could be taken as racist, buthe only really said those after living in the past for quite some time. His environment definitely had some sort of an impact on him. I mean, when you hang around a white man's plantation for a while, some things are bound to pass on and stick. I'm not saying that Kevin shouldn't take responsibility for some of his words and actions, but I don't think we should slander him as an inherently bad person and a racist. I mean, even when the guy was trapped back in the 1800's, he still managed to cling on to his 20th-century values, and was able to help lead slaves to freedom. I think that the changes we see in Kevin came about through his interactions with the historical environment and not from some deeply repressed self.

As for his relationship with Dana, I'm sorry, but no. Just no. Their relationship is anything but abusive and I don't really see anything wrong with it. They're a normal couple, and a normal couple has fights, like the one that surrounded Dana typing Kevin's manuscripts. It's little things like that that people just went nitpicky crazy on, trying to use what little evidence they had to insinuate that Dana and Kevin's relationship had never been a good one. But think about it. Think about what Dana and Kevin go through in Kindred. We're not exactly seeing the couple in a normal situation. True, we got a glimpse or two of their normal lives, but for the most part, they're trying to live and cope in an unimaginable scenario. What would you do if your loved one suddenly dissapeared, then reappeared in a different area seconds later, possibly beaten? The travels are certainly a stressor on their relationship, but as I said before with the racism accusations, I thinnk it comes about more from the environment and the situation rather than from some underlying factor. I mean, we never see the couple voluntarily split. True, Dana pushes Kevin away from her, but that's more for his own safety. Neither Dana nor Kevin simply walk away from each other, thinking that this whole thing and the other person is too much to handle. Indeed, even when they are split up, they do everything they can to try and find one another again. Dana and Kevin are clearly devoted to each other, and we see them rushing to each other's  side and trying to do anything they can to help the other in times of trouble. I'll concede and say their relationship isn't perfect, but really, whose is?

To make a long blog post short, LEAVE KEVIN ALONE.

Looking Back

When dealing with historical novels, we are faced with the process of looking back. That is, going back into the past, even if it is only through literary measures, and remembering events, experiencing them even if we had not. It's supposed to be a good thing, right? Even if something in the past is bad, we have to look back on it and remember it so that we can not only get past it but we can also learn about for the future. Isn't that the way it should be? Both Slaughterhouse-Five and Kindred dealt with this topic of looking back,  but their view on it isn't entirely positive or optimistic.

Slaughterhouse-Five directly contradicts the view that we must look back, even on exceedingly painful memories, if we ever want to be healed and able to move on through the view of the Tralfamadorians. They say that instead of looking back on bad times, one should just ignore them and focus only on the good times. There will always be bad moments, they say, so looking back on bad experiences to learn form them and be better off in the future is a waste of time. We also get a sense from the beginning of the book that looking back has serious consequences.We read a brief passage about Lot's wife looking back and turning to a pillar of salt. From this, we get the feeling that maybe it is not such a good thing to look back. Perhaps the past brings about memories that are too painful to be experienced, and that in fact by looking back we lose ourselves and become, well, pillars of salt.

The same idea comes about in Kindred; the idea that looking back is a painful experience and one can sometimes lose themselves in the past. Dana knows this all to well as she literally lost her arm due to her time travel. In fact, a piece of her is stuck back in the 1800's. This powerful symbolism is hard to look over. Again, the idea comes across that even if certain times are important, such as the time of slavery in the U.S, looking back on them is terrible and can often cause more harm than good. We see this for both Dana and Kevin who, besides being emotionally affected by their time travels, are also physically affected, and often for the worse. Kevin has aged five years, though he has only "really" been gone for a couple of days, and has a massive scar on his face to boot. Dana, however, is the more physically affected, from welts and scars on her back from beatings to the loss of her left arm. By looking back into the past, both Dana and Kevin had serious painful encounters, and the experience was such a trying one that it did not let them go. Parts of them were left behind, be it an arm or simply their presence. Once they were there, and then they weren't. Poof. And yet the affect is still the same. And in lookng at the severity of their injuries, it seems that for Dana, whose racial and personal connections to the Weylin past are greater than Kevin's, the experience has a far more lasting impact. Perhaps that means that for those of us who go looking into our own personal past and history, something we have a connection to, we may not like what we find. We may be faced with a harsh truth that is painful to understand, and in trying to understand, we lose ourselves.