Who was Lee Harvey Oswald – Frontline Reflections

One of the things I enjoyed most about the PBS Frontline on Lee Harvery Oswald was how they tried to create as neutral a position as possible while getting many different viewpoints.  I don’t think they succeeded entirely, but it seems very impressive that they did not try to make some “gripping” narrative out of all of the coincidences and facts they discussed.   It was disappointing how “limited” even a recent, amply funded documentary is to get the story out from the original people involved.  Not only are a lot of them dead, but many people, like Lee’s wife, declined to interview with PBS.  Instead we had to hear from her through the “family friend” of the Oswalds who just didn’t seem 100% trustworthy: Part of the essential problem with searching for the “truth” is that different people have different narratives of that same “truth” that seem just as “true” to them – this family friend is recounting what she heard from another person over 50 years ago: just imagine how much that story could have morphed into her own narrative.   It also bugged me a bit how they shot each of the interviewees in the setting the PBS people wanted to have them fit into their own narrative:  For instance some of the FBI guys seem veeeeery untrustworthy, Jack Ruby’s friend is shown smoking in a club, etc. Overall I feel like the PBS documentary provided really useful context for Libra that makes it much easier and more interesting to read.   

The Reality of History in Kindred

Although I did not like the way in which Butler progresses the plot/characters through the novel, I do think that she “succeeds” at writing an extremely compelling look at a part of American history that is too often repressed in many Americans’ minds.   Many of the complaints in our class have been that Kindred has followed a too "traditional" and "popular" "boring" plot line rather the much more post-modern divergences from literary "normality" that the other books in this course have explored.  I think that despite the “cliché” plot/character elements, Butler really does bring history to life through fiction.  

The one scene that really stuck out to me was when Dana sees Alice’s father beaten:

I could literally smell his sweat, hear every ragged breath, every cry, every cut of the whip.  I could see his body jerking, convulsing, straining, against the rope as his screaming went on and on.  My stomach heaved, and I had to force myself to stay where I was and keep quite.  Why didn’t they stop!

“Please, Master,” the man begged.  “For Godsake, Master, please …”

I shut my eyes and tensed my muscles against an urge to vomit. 

            I had seen people beaten on television and in the movies.  I had seen the too-red blood substitute streaked across their backs and heard their well-rehearsed screams.  But I hadn’t lain nearby and smelled their seat or heard them pleading and praying, shamed before their families and themselves.  I was probably less prepared for the reality than the child crying not far from me.  In fact, she and I were reacting very much alike.  My face too was wet with tears.  (36)

Butler could have just written a story in the ante-bellum South about a slave’s complicated relationship with her master, but it is far more effective to have a 20^th century-perspective narrating the events of the 1820s.  It not only brings the reader closer to Dana, but also gives the reader the feeling that they are ALSO being transported back to the ante-bellum South. This approach makes the reader realize “wait this is REAL, this really did happen.”  Even though Butler is creating a completely fictional story, there is no doubt that there were hundreds of thousands (if not more) of instances where a slave would be whipped brutally for not having a pass like in the scene above. 

     We, the 21^st century readers, are like Dana in that we have witnessed tons of violence in the fictional sense, but never have to actually comprehend the consequences of the reality of that violence. Kindred makes us confront that reality and really forces us to understand “this actually happened”.  We all know “slaves had no rights,” but what is it like to actually live with no rights? In this sense, Kindred conveys more historical truth than any textbook would ever hope to.