So I saw a strange concept happening in regards to both Dana in Kindred and Offred in The Handmaid’s Tale. To me, it seemed that both these characters were extremely static in their lack of development. It was something that frustrated me in Kindred, because how could none of those characters change? To go through a horrific incident like that and come out essentially the same kind of person you were before experiencing slavery first hand seemed like a stretch. However, after reading Offred’s perspective of her own dystopian experience I am beginning to see how the two women did not change. First of all, it isn’t like either of them were “bad” people to begin with. Neither of them necessarily needed a life altering epiphany to become a “better person.” However, it is also interesting to note that both of these women are actually fully grown WOMEN. They are not girls. It seems that because they were adults, the authors felt as though none of these events could alter the women’s outlook or beliefs about life as they were already engrained in them. Had a 10 year old black girl gone back to the antebellum South, she would have been altered greatly. Most likely, the girl would have grown up to be insanely active in black rights during her own time of 1976. Or, on the dark side, she may have been forever scarred and ended up as a submissive person due to her young age during the traumatic experience. For Offred, she had already been married and had a child in a “real” marriage before the overthrow of the American government. She had not grown up with the strange Gilead government, so she was able to see its faults but also understand her limits within that government. A young girl during this would have potentially fought back vehemently, not fully understanding the powers a government holds against its people, especially a totalitarian one or she would have been completely submissive to it and not been interested in the escape and rebellion that Offred got herself caught into. Something else that was interesting to me was the fact that both the authors of these novels were women. Do the authors feel so confident in their own beliefs as women that they feel they no longer need to change or grow? I was not a huge fan of either of the main characters, and I think it is because they both were so static throughout the course of their respective novels.