Jack's Broken Blog

     Before I start the main part of this post, I want to acknowledge that I do know that Octavia Butler makes a deliberate choice to not discuss the logistics of time travel in Kindred  and leaves it intentionally vague because it's not the point of the book, but I still have some questions about it and I think it's fun to think about these types of things.     In the second chapter of "The Fall" in page 58, we learn that Dana can bring things from 1976 to the 1800s whenever she is called to save Rufus because she brings brings both Kevin and a bag of simple necessities. But, this doesn't explain what determines which things in contact with her she brings. For example, she brings the bag of necessities, which she is holding, but also brings Kevin, who is holding her. So, how are the things she gets to take with her decided? It's definitely not the things she wants to take with her, since she was pushing Kevin away and telling him to get away from her just ...

       As stated in the title, Hinckle Von Vampton is barely even an attempt at impersonating a real human. With his immortality, his ludicrous plans, and his overly-emotive expressions, he truly is more of a children's cartoon villain than a real person. This starts in the second chapter in which he appears where, upon being fired for putting the invasion of Haiti in the Atonist newspaper, calmly starts insulting the manager before suddenly reaching for a bronze dagger and attempting to stab him.  Hinckle Von Vampton examines the man. Jowly. A gin-inspired pallor. He glances at the cuff links. A Knight in armor wearing the Red Cross on his breast. ' Where did you find those cuff links?' ' I  found them around the corner on 42nd Street, why?' 'Not only are you a louse but you are a desecrater as well. Death to defilers'  Hinckle Von Vampton reaches for a short bronze dagger and is about to plunge it into the managing editor's chest when other employees...

       The short answer is obviously no.     For a longer answer, Mother, Tateh, and the kids weren't the only ones who "deserved" to survive because not only do I not think I'm in a position to be handing out death sentences, but also even in a literary context there are other characters who didn't do anything wrong enough to be justified in being killed off. The first one of these characters is Sarah, who I don't think anyone could make an argument for why she could possibly have deserved to die, except maybe the fact that she almost killed her baby by burying it alive, but we don't know that it was her that did that. Maybe someone stole her baby and buried it, and even if it was her, she doesn't do anything after her introduction to us that would  warrant a literary death. Even the way she eventually dies is really unfair to her, since she was just trying to help Coalhouse in the biggest way she thought she could and ended up being mistaken for...

       Throughout Ragtime , there are a few historical characters with no connection to the main plot concerning the family. Some of them, like Sigmund Freud and his entourage, appear only for one chapter and do so without interacting with any of the other characters. Others, like Harry Houdini, show up in connection to the main characters once and then go on to have their own side plots that have seemingly no reason for being in the book. This begs the question: why include these characters if they have no relation to the rest of the plot? The answer is simple: they do connect to the plot.      For example, while Freud may not interact directly with the main characters, his trip to America does set up a natural transition into Doctorow talking about the very big wealth division in America at this time, which is a consistent theme of Ragtime . This theme is also reinforced after the appearance of Freud by the following chapter being the one in which Ev...