Text 1: Critic Park argues that Octavia Butler's Kindred uses time travel to make slavery's history viscerally present for modern readers. By thrusting a contemporary Black woman into an antebellum Maryland plantation, Butler dissolves the comfortable distance that historical fiction often preserves.
Text 2: Critic Singh agrees that Kindred collapses historical distance but argues that the time-travel device serves another function: investigating how psychological survival under slavery happens in real time. The protagonist's adaptations — what she learns to suppress, what she dare not — show readers what historical sources rarely reveal.
Both authors would most likely agree that
- A
time travel is an unsuitable device for serious fiction.
- Bcheck_circle
Butler's time-travel device serves substantive purposes beyond convenience.
- C
Butler is not interested in historical conditions.
- D
Kindred is a casual work of entertainment with no thematic weight.
Explanation
Both critics treat the time-travel device as serving substantive aims; they differ on which aim is primary. A is shared. B, C, and D contradict both.