Findings and Discussion

Findings

• PROLOGUE

Quotations

1. "An accident... My fault, not Kevin's. Please let me see him." (9)
2. "I know, I'm just trying to get used to it." (10)
3. "If you told those deputies the truth... you'd be locked up in a mental hospital." (11)

• THE RIVER

Quotations

1. "To get more ideas. After all, they come to you when you're busy." (13)
2. "I would if I knew what to tell you. Stop hurting me." (15)
3. "I don't know what to tell you. It's all crazy." (15)

• THE FIRE

Quotations

1. "It's the only answer I've got. I was at home; then suddenly, I was here helping you. I don't know how it happens - how I move that way - or when it's going to happen. I can't control it." (23)
2. "Would I be here if the father had seen me?" (39)
3. "Please. Just let me sleep. That's all I need really - rest. The cuts and bruises will heal. I'll be fine. (44)

• THE FALL

Quotations

1. "I'm a joke as far as buz is concerned. he thinks people are strange if they even read books. Besides, what would a writer be doing working out of a slave market?" (54)
2. "Matter of opinion. Look, if you care what happens to Rufus, you'd better go tell his father to send a... wagon for him. He won't be walking anywhere." (60)
3. "Oh, he's human enough. if he were of a little higher social class, he might even have been disgusted enough with your bragging not to want you around. But he wouldn't have had the right to stop you from betraying me. I'm your private property. He'd respect that." (81)

• THE FIGHT

Quotations

1. "Alice, wasn't Rufus a friend of yours? I mean... did he just grow out of the friendship or what?" (119)
2. "We kept quiet about it because it's not legal here." (150)
3. "For what! you were the one I trusted. I did wait until I found out what a liar you were!" (180)

• THE STORM

Quotations

1. "Thank god it did happen. Don't be sorry Kevin, you're here. You'd be stranded again if you hadn't fallen on me." (189)
2. "Right, I've done enough stupid things. How many times have I saved your life so far?" (213)
3. "I would have been killed. You would have had to start taking very good care of yourself." (226)

• THE ROPE

Quotations

1. "Sent me to the field, had me beaten, made me spend nearly eight months sleeping on the floor of his mother's room, sold people... he's done plenty, but the worst of it was to other people. He hasn't raped me, Kevin. He understands, though you don't seem to, that for him that would be a form of suicide." (245)
2. "I'm black, and when you sell a black man away from his family just because he talked to me, you can't expect me to have any good feelings towards you"
3. "But they're young. They need you to protect their freedom." (259)

• EPILOGUE

Quotations

1. "But there was his mother to consider, and he was only twenty five. He probably thought he had plenty of time to make a will." (263)
2. "Because of me. He was afraid that I'd kill him afterwards." (263)
3. "If we told anyone else about this, anyone at all, they woundn't think we were so sane." (264)

Discussion

From the selected quotations, it's relatively clear that the protagonist of Kindred does not use African-American vernacular English as her default register, and rather has a more modern and abrupt standard English register. Although there does seem to be instances of the preterite had, it's more closely identified with the past-perfect tense of standard english because both instances refer to another prior event.

Rather than recounting the features of standard English or falsifying the presence of AAVE features in the quotations - this discussion will revolve around the significance of the absence of AAVE in the protagonist's dialogue; and then will explain the significance of such. 

The protagonist - Edana (or Dana) Franklin is a person of her time. While occasionly struggling to make ends meet through a labor union; she does so out of choice because she aspires to be a writer, turning away from the career path her Aunt and Uncle sugggested - which began at a secretary-level job. 

At this point, it would be helpful to include a hypothesis developed by John U. Ogbu when researching the language use of a speech community in Oakland, CA. Ogbu says that as a child grows up in the African-American community - they are expected to learn standard English as a means of financial and economic success; but are also expected to rettain there AAVE dialects for use inside of the African-American community. (Ogbu, 170) It appears that economic success is something that is within Dana's ability to achieve (purely speaking from the narrative) yet she refrains from the easier path to pursue something she desires more.

From the outside, it seems like Dana has either grown-up speaking standard English or has become accustomed to it; so much so that when she interacts with other African-descended people in the nineteenth century, she upholds her use of standard English. This choice eventually causes much of the enslaved people working on the Weylin plantation to distrust her as someone that has adopted the white man's speech and ways - mirroring the stigma alluded to by Ogbu in his ethnographic language-use research. 

Butler's choice to have a protagonist that exclusively speaks standard English can be taken to mean that she wanted a protagonist that distrupted the hierarchy of power in the 1900s environment. In the book, Dana even acknowledges that it would make things easier to conform to older varieties of english when her ancestor 'calls her back', yet she maintains her dialect to a level that is elevated to a matter of principle; in a way, become a martyr-figure to the belief that she can change how people think in the past - the most of the narrative transpiring between Rufus Weylin and Edana Franklin.