Dana’s Game of Hide and Seek
Dana’s Game of Hide and Seek
Hide and seek is a game familiar to almost every child worldwide. A simple yet exciting game where some players hide while one or more seekers try to find them. The hiders must find clever places to conceal themselves. Holding their breath, switching hiding places, sabotaging others, just for them to be safe- anything to win a simple game. The childhood game parallels Dana's experiences in Octavia Butler’s Kindred. Dana takes on the role of a hider, navigating a dangerous world she barely understands and first and is desperate trying not to be discovered.
At the start of the novel, Dana is violently placed into a past where she is still figuring out how to work and keep herself alive. After Rufus, the young white boy, points the way and leaves her alone in the night, she stands “beside the house for a moment feeling frightened and lonely” (33). She begins walking “across the wide grassy land that separates the house from the fields” (33), aware of shadowy buildings.
The tension of the game is immediately clear as Dana spots movements near the slave cabins. “I thought I saw someone moving around one of them, and for a moment, I froze behind a huge spreading tree” (33). She assumes it is a slave, “probably as eager as I was to avoid being caught out at night” (33). Dana is not only taking the role of a player but is also a spectator to others playing the same game.
Dana moves cautiously around a field of unfamiliar crops, deliberately avoiding the road because “the possibility of meeting a white adult here frightened me, more than the possibility of street violence ever had at home” (33). Unlike a simple game of hide and seek where being found just means you’re out, the fear of getting caught here carries a far heavier weight—it means punishment, violence, or worse-death. Suddenly, dogs bark nearby, bringing Dana to full awareness. “In sudden fear, I plunged through a tangle of new young growth and into the trees” (33), even as she wondered about “thorns, poison ivy, snakes” (33). This had become her new hiding spot.
Dana’s role as an observer hiding becomes quite literal when she witnesses two adults and a child caught by riders. She gets low to the ground and is frozen in fear. “They hustled the man to a tree so close to me that I lay flat on the ground, stiff with fear” (35). Just like in the game, Dana is desperately trying not to be found, while those hunting are set on a mission: find everyone.
The captives are caught trying to escape and the reality of their situation crashes down. The man is punished mercilessly-tied to a tree, naked, and vulnerable. The weight of the moment grows heavier and heavier with each harsh word and cruel laughter around him. The woman beside the cabin has her blanket ripped away and is silenced by shouts and jeers (36). Dana's first instinct is to stay hidden and silent just like in a game of hide and seek when another player is caught, she cannot risk herself being caught. Yet the brutality she witnesses affects her as she inches a step away from just being an observer.
As the whipping begins, Dana’s heart breaks. Nearby, the man’s child weeps against her mother’s leg, but the adults remain silent, swallowed by pain and fear. The man’s screams fill the night; Dana smells the sweat, hears every ragged breath, every cut of the whip (36). She can’t stomach what she’s witnessing, yet forces herself to stay still, trapped in the role of hider. In that moment, Dana shares the child’s tears, her own face wet with emotion. But she cannot afford to be caught. When the patrol moves back toward the road, Dana knows how narrowly she escaped: “If they had gone back exactly the way they came, they would have either gone over me or driven me from my cover” (37).
Dana's instinct to act finally overpowers her impulse to hide. The woman, now unconscious, needs help-Dana cannot be a hider anymore. Rising slowly from her hiding place, Dana steps forward, no longer just a silent witness in this game. When the child, who had been kneeling beside the woman, suddenly jumps up to run, Dana calls softly, “Alice!” The child pauses, looks back-confirmation (37). Dana is no longer just hiding in the shadows; she is reaching out, taking her place in the story.
Dana starts as a hidden observer, quietly watching from the shadows. But she shifts into an active seeker, stepping forward to face danger and make choices. This move—from hiding to seeking—shows her growth from a silent witness.
Butler, Octavia E. Kindred. Boston, Beacon Press, June 1979.
Hi Bincy. This is a really interesting view on Butler's novel. I think that I agree with you to an extent, but to expand on this idea, the game was created by society and everyone living in it are just pawns. The enforcers are obviously the slaveowners, the hiders are the slaves, and it creates a simple but true way of how the 1800s were. But how has the game developed? Do you think that it's really gone today? I like this interpretation and I think that there are a lot of ways you can take this idea. -Mateo
ReplyDeleteHi Bincy, I think this is a very interesting view of the novel. I do see how Dana's life is like a game of hide and seek, though she's being unwillingly pulled into a different time. Besides that point, I do see her and the idea of running away and hiding to stay safe. Nice job!
ReplyDeleteHi Bincy!
ReplyDeleteI would have never thought to draw the parallel between hide and seek and Dana's situation in the 1800s, but I totally see it. You digested a really scary scene and delivered your blog in a gentle way. I also admire how you were able to stick to your point about the hide and seek since there's so much to say about this novel, especially this scene in particular. Great job!
Hi Bincy, I really liked your blog post! I think that a lot the time in Kindred, even outside of this interaction, and especially when her and Kevin travel back in time, she tries to play an observer. I think this is really pronounced when she and Kevin have that talk where she tells him they aren't a part of the time. However, I also feel that she starts to get more integrated, especially when she starts teaching the Nigel and Carrie to read.
ReplyDeleteHey Bincy! This is such an excellent comparison to make and it plays a lot into the discussion we had about when Dana stops acting. In this scene, as it feels more surreal and not really like a game, Dana is stuck in this strange hide-and-seek environment with this petrifying fear of getting caught. As she hasn't really met anyone and has only been there for a few hours, or even "gotten caught" yet, she's still acting. Fantastic job!
ReplyDeleteThis is an excellent new perspective on Kindred, and seeing as Dana is a Black woman in the 1800s, it's no surprise that the idea of "hide and seek" permeates the novel so thoroughly. She's forced to play a deadly, years-long version of it for reasons we never really discover. But you also mention the children's-game aspect of this idea, which is very interesting because it parallels the way that children of slaves (like the ones we see around the "block" behind the Weylin house) are trained in a way to accept slavery through what seems at first like a kid's game but actually hides something far more insidious. I think there are some very interesting comparisons that could be drawn between the experiences of the children and the adults in Kindred.
ReplyDeleteHi Bincy! I really like the parallels in kindred between hide and seek and Dana literally having to hide, just hours after she had arrived in the past. The parallel you make is quite literal due to Dana not being fully realized at that point in the novel that she is not just an outsider looking in, so it may have really just have felt like a game or dream to her. I think the idea of a childhood game being brought up it really interesting because it is a likeness not only seen in the way aforementioned, but also how childhoods are so important in the book, like the time when Dana and Kevin stumbled upon the young children playing a seemingly innocent, but not-so-innocent, game that would ingrain the children with ideas of racism and other beliefs of the time period. This idea could be compared to Dana's experience in the past, playing the part of a slave even though she still feels disconnected from the experience as a whole, but inevitably it will become her reality, just like for the children roleplaying. Great blog post!
ReplyDeleteHey Bincy! It's really interesting how you portrayed Dana's experiences through the analogy of a child's game. Simple and unserious yet carrying a weight unbeknownst to the players. This reminds me of the scene where the slave children were playing the slave sale game. It's also really revealing of Dana's experience that she keeps constantly switching roles from hider to observer, and the two roles continuously blend together. I'm not too sure what you mean at the end when you say that Dana becomes a seeker, I see it more as her becoming a hider who puts herself in danger of being caught by the seeker in order to help the other hiders, until eventually being caught by the seeker and being kicked out of the game forever.
ReplyDeleteHey Bincy! I found this interpretation very interesting! These dynamics are very prevalent in the story but your comparison to a childhood game makes them all the more potent and impactful. It reminds me of the scene where Dana sees the children playing and pretending to be sold: our games in childhood reflect our worldview but also extend and play a role in how we live our lives into adulthood. Great job!
ReplyDeleteHide and seek is an apt analogy for this opening scene, where Dana is literally hiding in the underbrush from the patrollers, feeling that terrifying thrill that she could be discovered at any moment. And we get a similar dynamic later, when she attempts to escape and is trying to hide (again in the underbrush) from Rufus and Tom. But for most of her time in the antebellum South, Dana is unable to "hide"--just as she is caught pretty quickly and easily when she attempts to escape. I'm trying to think of some analogy here between the "children's game" of hide and seek and the very serious, in fact life-threatening "game" that Dana is playing here--it maybe has something to do with the scene where she sees the children play-acting a slave auction. The "lesson" Dana learns through her high-stakes game of hide and seek is that there are terrible consequences to being found: Alice's father was ALSO playing hide and seek, in a sense, and it's very bad news for him when he is caught by the "seekers." The games we play as children, in this novel, orient us to the values of our society. I wonder if the children ever play "escape"--it might teach them some valuable skills.
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