When I began reading Kindred in the context of this course, it made me question why it was selected as one of our texts. I had to wonder why it would be considered a dystopian society, and made me examine what I thought of as a dystopia compared to the facts of American slavery. Among my previous definitions of dystopia: a large majority of the populace has to be oppressed, and there is often some sort of prevention of basic rights on a fundamental level, like reading and free movement. Obviously, upon first examination, the antebellum South is a clear-cut indication of a dystopia. But considering it as such still didn’t sit right with me. If slavery is the only prerequisite for a dystopia, then either dystopia is the main state of human society, or there is something missing from the American South.
I wasn’t sure what it was until I started reading The Handmaid’s Tale. This, I thought, was certainly a dystopia where Kindred failed to deliver. For example, there is a “thought police” which has spies integrated with the population. Dissidents are rooted out and killed, and the people are convinced they are complacent in the machinations of society. Everyone, especially women, is made to fear the government and is forced into a specific place. It’s just as much dystopian as 1984 or The Hunger Games. Or so I thought, until the end when I read the historical notes and interview with Margaret Atwood. The historical notes changed my perspective of the whole story. I was now looking at it as just another period in history, with its own unfortunate aspects, 200 years since. It was just like how I think of American slavery – something to be regretted, and never repeated, but not some sort of all-powerful, intractable authoritarian government.
Unlike 1984 or The Hunger Games, the worlds of these two novels do not exist in a vacuum of either time or space. There is no world outside of Panem, no past or future to Orwell’s Oceania. But where I think the two novels we read for class diverge is that we know they both have a future. Slavery fell 150 years ago, and outside of Gilead the world kept moving. We see glimpses of it. I think these hopeful glimpses of progress keep Kindred and The Handmaid’s Tale, and all other real-world dystopias, from crushing the spirit completely. Unlike under Big Brother’s reign, an end or a border is always in sight, and the dystopia’s grip is never absolute.