Time Travel
On each occasion that Dana travels back in time, her stay on the plantation becomes longer: though she is only gone from the present initially ranging from a period of 15 seconds, to several minutes to finally, several hours, she is stuck in the past for first some minutes, then days and months. Dana goes back in time when circumstances surrounding Rufus' survival dictate it, as perceived by him; her travels are also constrained to returning to the Weylin plantation, and not other venues. Conversely, Dana's only means of returning to the present is when she is sufficiently frightened and believes herself to be in danger of dying. It is only after she kills Rufus towards novel's end that her travels cease, but not without a price: on her last trip back to the present, she re-materializes in 1976 with her left arm embedded in the plaster wall of her house. The arm is later amputated to the elbow. Dana also is able to transport objects and even people back in time with her, as is shown when she transports a denim bag of useful items (including a knife, a change of clothes, money, toiletries, and paper) tied around her waist with her, and her husband, Kevin, when he grabs onto her before she vanishes on her third trip, and falls on her during their return later in the
Read more about this topic: Kindred (novel)
Famous quotes containing the words time and/or travel:
“Beauty depends on size as well as symmetry. No very small animal can be beautiful, for looking at it takes so small a portion of time that the impression of it will be confused. Nor can any very large one, for a whole view of it cannot be had at once, and so there will be no unity and completeness.”
—Aristotle (384 B.C.–322 B.C.)
“I, who travel most often for my pleasure, do not direct myself so badly. If it looks ugly on the right, I take the left; if I find myself unfit to ride my horse, I stop.... Have I left something unseen behind me? I go back; it is still on my road. I trace no fixed line, either straight or crooked.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)