Author: Octavia Butler
Title: Kindred
Chapter: Prologue

This prologue is an epilogue, which makes it very interesting. Instead of telling us something that happened in the past before the story begins, it tells us what the end of the story will be. We know from the very start that something terrible and mysterious is going to happen to Dana, the narrator and viewpoint character, but we don’t yet know how it will happen. We just know that she is going to lose her arm in the end.

That’s awful and gross and everything else, but we also learn from this prologue that Dana is going to survive her ordeal. That’s convenient considering she is the one telling us her story, but it also lets us know it is safe to invest our time and interest in her. She isn’t going to desert us by chapter 3. She is alive, even if barely so, at the end.

We also see a theme of loss emerging in the prologue. We find out in the first sentence that Dana has lost her arm, but that sentence is followed by two more sentences that let us know what she has and hasn’t lost:

And I lost about a year of my life and much of the comfort and security I had not valued until it was gone. When the police released Kevin, he came to the hospital and stayed with me so that I would know I hadn’t lost him too. (Butler 9)

There a lot packed into these sentences. We know that her emotional losses will be heavy in this book. We know that she has not lost Kevin, but that Kevin too has suffered emotional losses. “When the police released Kevin,” she tells us, and we know that Kevin has been threatened with a loss of his freedom, and as such, Dana has come close to losing him as well.

Mainly, we find out from the prologue that even at the end of the book we won’t understand everything because Dana and Kevin don’t understand everything, and that is exactly what pulls us in. Personally, when I see that the characters don’t fully understand what’s happened to them by the end of the story, I want to know why, and the best way to find out is to keep reading.

Topics for Research in the Prologue

• Phantom limbs–Dana tells us “I felt as though I could have lifted my other hand and touched him” (10). This indicates that in addition to her emotional adjustment over losing her arm, she is still feeling physical sensations where the arm ought to be. This is a pretty intriguing topic with lots of science behind it. See The Fascinating Science Behind Phantom Limbs (Ted Talk by Joshua W Pate)
  
• Domestic abuse–Though Dana tells us that Kevin has not done anything to hurt her, the police obviously don’t believe her. They believe that Kevin is somehow responsible for her accident, probably in part because they have no other explanation and in part because domestic violence from romantic partners is shockingly common. See Domestic Violence (Intimate Partners Fast Facts from CNN.

Discussion Topics

1. What is your main impression of what this book will be about based on the Prologue?

2. What do you know about Dana and Kevin and their relationship based on the Prologue?

3. Do some research on either phantom limbs or statistics related to domestic violence. Find at least two facts and discuss how those facts help to inform the events that take place in the Prologue.