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Popular Culture Review
protect, and she will do whatever is necessary to survive for that child, even if it
means never attempting escape.
When Dana begins to identify with Sarah and the other slaves on the
plantation, she alters the terms by which she defines herself Dana’s experiences
in 1976 were softer and less demanding. As Angelyn Mitchell notes, Dana took
pride in personal strength and independence.If wronged, she defended herself
without hesitation. As a slave in the 1800s, Dana cools her proud persona. She
tolerates abuse and adopts an attitude of compliance. On a return trip to 1976,
Dana’s cousin mistakes her wounds as products of spousal abuse. She quips, “I
never thought you’d be fool enough to let a man beat you.” When her cousin
leaves, Dana whispers, “I never thought I would either.”^^ Since the self is a
product of direct stimuli over time, the more Dana endures as a slave, the more
her attitudes change. Dana adjusts her condemnation of Sarah for a mature
appreciation of the sacrifices Sarah has sustained and the quiet strength she
exhibits towards her daughter and the fellow slaves. Not only does this allow
Dana to understand the institution of slavery, but it also allows her to understand
herself within its context.
Similarly, from the safety of the 21st century, Kivrin condemned the actions
of those living during the Black Plague as weak and cowardly. When the fear
and unreasonableness of the plague confront Kivrin, it takes all her selfdiscipline to stay in the village rather than run away. She adjusts her initial
perception from disdain to appreciation:
The history vids say the contemps were panic-stricken and
cowardly during the Black Death, that they ran away and
wouldn’t tend the sick, and that the priests were the worst of
all, but it isn’t like that at all.
Everyone’s frightened, but they’re all doing the best they
can . . .
When a messenger from Bath delivers a message to the priests of the villages,
Kivrin reads it for the hundredth time, but this time she understands it within a
strikingly different context. The message, which told villagers to confess to each
other if no priest could be found, had sounded arrogant and indifferent to Kivrin
in 2052. In 1348 and surrounded by exhaustion and despair, Kivrin finds the
tone of the message desperate if nothing else.
As Lisa Woolfork thoughtfully suggests in Embodying American Slavery in
Contemporary Culture, only through personal experience can a person
understand the subtleties of meanings and the possibilities of consequences
attached to a particular culture in time.^^ Without having personally experienced
the traumas of slavery and the Black Plague, Kivrin and Dana negatively judged
the choices of ancestors in history. Only after absorption within the past do they
understand each culture’s intricacy and the complexity of choices people had to
make. That Dana and Kivrin appreciate things they once condemned reveals
how little we vary emotionally from our ancestors. When put in similar