Conclusion

At the end of the book, I wondered to myself what the point of it all was. The two have come to the end of the story, rationalized that it was all real, and now they have to piece their lives together again. Butler doesn't say outright how or if the two are going to live any differently than they did before. I don't know if I see the change, myself. Which leads me to believe that the story was really more of an exposition aimed at the reader. Maybe it didn't matter to Butler what Dana took away from her experience. What we, as readers, take away from it is the real focus point. Hence the use of the first-person "I" form. It's almost hippie-esque: "the journey is the destination, man." I use that phrase a lot and I think it applies here. The two, Dana and Kevin, are essentially back where they started from at almost the same exact time they left and all they have to show for it are the scars. So the lessons learned along the way are the crucial elements not the endpoints.
There were definitely points in this novel that got my ire up. The worst examples were actually not the scenes of physical violence, but examples of the cowardice of the slave owners in their attempts to justify slavery and violence. For example, Mrs. Weylin's offhanded remark about how "impudent" Dana use to be and how someone must have "taught her a lesson" as if she were a little child in need of a spanking.
Another important observation is the growth of Rufus and how he is corrupted by his environment. At the beginning, Rufus calls Dana a "nigger" and then is shocked that she finds the term offensive. He had never thought about it before and he agrees to refer to her as "black" when she tells him to. I wrote in the margins: "Children must be taught to hate, but a desire to get along seems to be innate." Or something like that. Any way, as the years pass for Rufus, he becomes "more like his father." Even Kevin seems to get a little sucked into the comfortable position of superiority as a white male. He thinks that 1814 would be "a nice time to live in." Butler is pointing out the precarious relationship between cultures. We need to watch the state of equality in our own time because we are all constantly jockeying for position in the hierarchy trying to "get ahead". A current example, one especially relevent to us Texans, is the status of Mexican immigrants. Look at the way we tend to view Mexicans as a workforce of a more "manual labor" sort. It's interesting that the "flood of illegal immigration" has not innundated our white collar, managerial occupations. We are far more use to seeing Mexicans mowing our lawns, cleaning up our trash, and ringing up groceries at the gas station. What Octavia Butler taught me is to watch closely that our job hierarchy doesn't become totally based on race. But it scares me today when I hear people say something like "we need Mexicans to do the jobs that Americans won't accept." That to mean sounds eerily like segregationist-talk and we should keep an eye open.