Time Travel in Kindred

Reading Kindred right after Slaughterhouse Five creates easy comparisons between the two forms of time travel that we see in these novels. SF takes us through Billy Pilgrim's journey as he is "unstuck in time" and showcases a very different form of time travel in "schizophrenic" episodes that throw Billy to different scenes in his life, randomly and without warning. Time travel in Kindred  has a more "conventional" depiction and shows us Dana, who is thrown back in time when her ancestor is in danger of dying and returns when her own life is threatened. I'm not yet sure which style I prefer, both are very interesting and make for different plot dynamic in the novels. 

One thing that is a really apparent to me as I continue to make my way through Kindred is that Dana doesn't seem to fully comprehend the fact that time passes much, much faster in Antebellum South while she is in the present. For example, the initial period of Dana being gone for a few minutes in the present, lasted weeks in the past. This large stretch of time that passes in the past makes for a disparity in what Dana perceives about the characters of the past and what has actually happened to them. 

This is especially true of Rufus, Dana's ancestor. When Dana first travels back in time to save Rufus, he is a small child and Dana tries to create some good influences so that he has the chance to grow up a little different from the stereotypical slave owner people around him. When she returns, after about a week in the present, 10 years have passed in the past and Rufus is a very different person then. Dana doesn't quite realize this and is a bit put off as to why she seemed to have no effect on him despite the best of her efforts. Then after she leaves Kevin behind and returns (3 days later in the present) 5 more years have passed in the past. This naïveté and lack of comprehension of the true passage of time in the past really us represented by the scene where Rufus pulls a gun on her to prevent her from leaving. 

All of this influence on Rufus that has happened in the time that Dana is gone makes me wonder what has happened to Kevin in the 5 years that she left him in the past and what influences have changed his character.