Popular Culture Review Vol. 22, No. 1, Winter 2011 | Page 90

86 Popular Culture Review betterment of empowered white supremacists. South African whites would have fit in better in the past, she thinks to herself Tellingly, Dana’s connections between the holocaust, 19th-century American slavery, and apartheid in South Africa expose the cyclical nature of history and reinforce Elie Weisel’s call to remember lest we forget, since a person is as much defined by what she forgets as by what she remembers. Dana’s inability to separate her present self from her self in the past symbolizes the intricate connection we sustain to what has come before. Author Connie Willis organizes Doomsday Book to reinforce the interconnectedness of humans in time within one’s consciousness. The story of Kivrin in 1348 entwines with the story of Mr. Dunworthy in 2052. Told as if they were happening simultaneously, though one occurs 700 years before the other, a comparison of the two times reveals significant parallels. From an archaeological dig of the village to which Kivrin will travel, London of 2052 is exposed to a previously extinct influenza virus. As people pile up and die in the city’s hospitals, people are piling up and dying in plague infested England. Medieval peoples believe the disease to be God’s curse, and nothing has changed in London of 2052. Preachers and laymen read Biblical passages to the infected about God punishing sins through disease. The way Kivrin’s doctor. Dr. Ahrens, sacrifices herself to care for the sick in 2052 parallels the sacrificial resolve of Father Roche in his village in 1348. Though much has changed between 1348 and 2052, humanity’s spirit remains the same. To some extent, both Kindred and Doomsday Book speak of the inadequacy of textual representation to communicate past into the present. Unfortunately, texts remain our primary way of remembering, but book knowledge is not enough to fully understand people in time. To understand the past one must engage with it emotionally. Until Kivrin and Dana form intimate friendships, they remain emotionally distanced from their experiences. Minutes after returning from her first journey to Maryland, Dana’s memory of her adventure begins to fade until it becomes “like something I saw on television. . In spite of balancing themselves between ideas of past and present, one of the most significant factors in the molding of the characters’ identities is the people with whom they come to identify. Dana and Kivrin form deeper connections to people in the past than with those in the present. Rather than being exclusive to any particular moment in time, personal identity becomes an accumulation of emotional connections within one’s personal narrative. Memory of shared experiences is the key to accessing those connections. At first, Dana and Kivrin find it relatively easy to fit into their respective times because both act as observers performing assigned roles. Only when Kivrin and Dana establish community do they stop acting. Kivrin becomes attached to six-year old Agnes, not only because she has been given the job to care for Agnes which establishes her place in the family, but also because Agnes accepts Kivrin without reservation. Too young to question Kivrin’s strange dress