What "Getting Used to It" Tells Us About Dana, Psychologically

Kindred is the kind of book that makes you question humanity, and ponder ideas you thought you already had sure answers for. One line that has stuck with me was when it dawns on Dana that all the time she’s spent ‘pretending’ in the past has gotten her used to being submissive. That moment hit me in the same way it seemed to for Dana. It left me terrified right there with her, because it shows how deeply the past has broken her down and is getting to her mind. We’re introduced to Dana’s character at start of the novel as a confident and independent black woman, who had no problem speaking up to what she knew to be wrong. We see this when she would correct Rufus’ racist language, plainly set up rules between them, and clap back at Kevin’s murky remarks. But the longer she stays in the Weylin household, the more her survival depended on her staying quiet. She had no other choice than to play the role of a slave, lowering her eyes, biting back her tongue, acting in all the ways enslaved people were forced to act. When she admits to herself that she’s getting used to her role and blurring the lines between pretend and true life, she’s noticing the frightening speed at which her behavior and instincts are adjusting to the horrifyingly violent time period.

Psychologically, Dana isn’t changing because she wants to. She’s changing because her brain is trying to protect her. Her modern identity as a black woman from 1976 becomes a liability in the “pre-Civil War” South. If she argues or questions orders like she would in her time, in the way she knows is right, she risks punishment or death. So without realizing, Dana starts adapting, the same way you’d expect anyone to adapt under a long-term threat. She keeps telling herself that she, at first, is only an observer. And then, that everything she is doing is only acting. We talked in class about how trauma rewires people, and at that moment when Dana finally realizes how much the time period has affected her, the puzzle pieces are coming together and she is literally feeling that happen. When she says to herself, “Once—God knows how long ago—I had worried that I was keeping too much distance between myself and this alien time. Now, there was no distance at all. When had I stopped acting? Why had I stopped?” (Butler 220), she realizes her submissive behavior isn’t just a performance. It begs the question, was she ever acting if no one could tell the difference? It all eventually became automatic, happening before she could even fully think. That is the exact moment in the book where Dana realizes her survival instincts have overpowered her personal identity.

This matters because Octavia Butler isn’t just showing us Dana’s psychological shift; she uses Dana’s break as a basis for a larger point on how oppression sustains itself. Throughout history, many people don’t just follow unfair rules because they’re weak, rather the systems they’re in are built to repeatedly break them down and use their own survival instincts against them. The scariest part is that Dana knows she’s changing, but the damage is already done. We see this happen in a new way, with a more modern character bending to the horrifying environment of the past. It is a new take on something clear as day in many of our history books, showcasing people throughout every era “getting used to” situations they hated simply because resisting was too dangerous. Butler’s writing doesn’t blame Dana’s character. It humanizes her and offers the answer to the ‘What would happen?’ and 'What would you do?' questions if someone from our modern day was sent to the past.