Is there a real you?

In 7^th grade, our ELA teacher showed us a TED talk titled “Is there a real you?”. I recommend you go watch it, but if you don’t have the time, here’s a brief summary:

We think of ourselves as having a personality that is inherent to us, some sort of “core” that, regardless of other people or our surroundings, will always be “us”. But that isn’t quite correct. He makes the distinction between “thinking of yourself as a thing which has all the experiences of life, and thinking of yourself as simply that collection of all experiences in life”. He breaks down the “you” into four parts: memories, desires, knowledge, and beliefs. These four things overlap and combine to make you who you are.

Now I, being a 12 year old, didn’t really grasp the concept very well. I couldn’t really understand how it was possible to not inherently have a personality or a set of convictions without there being a “me” at the core of all of my experiences. I shrugged off the lesson, and basically forgot about it until recently. Now, as a junior in high school, with more of an understanding of life than a 12-year-old, I think I understand what he meant: we are ultimately products of our environment.

As we have been reading and discussing the characters in Kindred, I remembered this TED talk, and decided to apply these ideas to try to analyze the characters in the books. What makes all of them themselves, and how do they change when their environment changes?

So the first example is obviously Dana. Her late 20^th century morals do not blend in well in the antebellum South, especially in the beginning of the novel when she is still getting oriented. For example, on page 25, when she tells Rufus off about using the n-word to refer to her, he clearly does not understand why she cares about this issue, since in his culture, using words like that is more normalized. Here, Dana probably has memories of unpleasant experiences with the n-word, along with a base knowledge that that word is bad, along with progressive ideas of equality and respect. On the other hand, Rufus only has memories of white people using the word freely, and has the base knowledge that his mother and father use it. His beliefs, as dictated by the time, are pro-slavery, and pro-oppression. Although we may look at it as Dana just inherently doesn’t like that word, and Rufus does, their feelings have nothing to do with themselves, but rather the environment in which they were raised. A similar framework applies to things like Dana being averse to calling people “master” and be submissive in general, since that is not the culture she grew up in.

To switch gears, there is also Kevin. When he first comes to the past on page 60, he makes the offhand remark that Dana is his wife. To him, there isn’t anything abnormal about this statement – interracial marriage is becoming more accepted in the 70s. His memories, past knowledge, and belief system all tell him that this is a normal thing to say. For Rufus on the other hand, this idea is disgusting, and he makes that clear. Based on his memories, knowledge, and belief system, interracial marriage is not only wrong but impossible. These ideas, again, are not because they are Kevin or Rufus, it’s because of the society they were raised in.

To further support this idea that a character is based off of their surroundings, we can look at Dana and Kevin after they have spent a long time in the past.  For example, when Dana comes back from the past on page 43, after the patroller was assaulting her, as she wakes up, she immediately attacks Kevin. Before, she had no memories or knowledge of Kevin being violent towards her, but after, she now had memories fresh in her mind about a white man attacking her, and she now had the knowledge of what would happen if she didn’t fight back. Additional experience and knowledge fundamentally changed her response to a situation. Another pretty telling example is after Kevin comes back after 5 years away, and Dana after a few months. On page 191, there is a little exchange that I think illustrates my point:

[Dana switches on the TV]

“Turn it off” Kevin said.

I obeyed.

Here the dynamic of the exchange seems a lot like a slave-master dialogue. Kevin, without explanation, gives Dana a command, and Dana obeys. Before spending all of that time in the past, I think Kevin would have said something like “Could you turn that off please” or even “Could you turn that off, it makes me think of x y and z”. Instead, since he had the memories and knowledge of being a white male in antebellum America, he had grown accustomed to just ordering black people around. The same for Dana, spending time as a black woman in the past shaped her so that she took white people’s orders without question.

            I think one of the points of this book is to examine what makes a person. We have seen how various characters change and adapt based off of their environment, and so it really begs the question – is there anything deeper than just the environment? Is there some core of morals and standards you hold because you’re you, or is it all just imparted on you by your surroundings? I think that, based on this novel, it seems like people are shaped pretty much by their environment, and it doesn’t take a very long stay to completely change a person.

Let me know what you think of this idea, and if you have any other examples of characters being changed by their environment in the comments below!