A Perplexing Prologue

The beginning of any story is very significant. It is in the beginnings that the characters are introduced, the setting is established, and the story begins to evolve. However, on occasion, writers decide to initiate the beginning of a story with a prologue. In these prologues, we the readers are often put into a disoriented and perplexing scene that we must determine for ourselves. Octavia Butler does just this in her novel Kindred, a story about the modern black woman Dana, who travels through time and space to a plantation in 1815. The story itself is quite fascinating; however, it was the prologue that really caught my attention.

The first sentence, “I lost an arm on my last trip home” (9), automatically raises the questions who, what, where, when, why, and ultimately draws the reader in to disorientation to try and discover what is going on. The narrator, whose identity we do not yet know, goes on to explain that she had lost a year of her life, along with “much of the comfort and security” she had not cherished until it was gone (9). Right off the bat, Butler places us into this mystifying situation, in the middle of an obviously tragic situation. This technique, however, foreshadows feelings that must arise later in the text.

As we soon discover, Dana is an odd case of time travel; disappearing from her modern home, she travels back in time to the 1800’s slave era. Because she drops us right in to the story, Butler gives us a glimpse of how Dana must feel; disoriented, confused, and attempting to find out what exactly is happening. Upon further reading, however, we do come to discover Dana’s story, understanding her strange ability to travel back in time to help her ancestors and see what life was really like during the slave era. As we read, though, we must keep in mind this perplexing prologue because, when reread, we come to understand that Dana will eventually be placed in such a dangerous situation while time traveling that she loses her arm. We can then infer that the more she goes back in time, the more dangerous it gets and the more risks she will have to take. The prologue ends with Dana’s husband telling her that he does not know and Dana responding, “Neither do I… Neither do I” (11). Ultimately, Butler is placing us in the position that Dana is in, one of complete disorientation.