Butler's straightforward style

So a few days ago, Dezy made a blog post about this same topic, and it intrigued me. I commented on it then, but would like to touch again on it here. I am planning on writing a response paper about this very topic, and think that a blog post will help me get all my ideas out there, and develop them further.
To begin with, I will specify what I mean by Butler's "straightforward" style. This refers to the way in which she writes the plot in a very clear manner, where few readers would be confused burrito as to what was happening, unlike say Reed's Mumbo Jumbo. The straightforward style also refers to the way in which Butler makes her points about the antebellum south, 1976, and the world in general. She does this very clearly, almost (and in some cases literally) stating that "In the slavery era, even when they were not being beaten, slaves were undergoing incredible hardships. In 1976, the prejudices clearly known during the slavery era are still around much more than many people would like to admit. And deeply studying the past will affect you as a person, if not physically (although maybe, from lack of sleep or something), then at least mentally, in that you will look at the world very differently." Side note: Are we all slaves to our perceptions of the world? Okay back to the subject at hand. So Butler clearly lays out her plot and her point, which differs drastically in both respects from what I have gotten used to in this class.
Plot-wise, the clearness of Butler's writing is very helpful. However, one downside to having an easily understandable plot is that it makes the reader focus more on the plot than other aspects of the book, such as the points Butler is trying to make. She pities the reader and so lays out her points very clearly as well. I would argue that this is a problem, because she does not let the reader use his or her own judgement in deciding what to take from the story told. I am less likely to trust Butler's judgement on any subject of opinion than my own, and so her clearly telling what the point of the story is makes me take that point less seriously. I can try to ignore that point and use my own unclouded judgement, but the problem is that my judgement has already been clouded, and so I don't know if I can trust even it. In the end, I must, but her decisiveness still plants the seeds of doubt in my mind. Vonnegut I believe does a very good job of letting the reader use his or her own judgement on the topics explored, or at least he influences readers in a much more subtle manner. At the beginning, his character of himself does state something along the lines of "I have told my children to strictly avoid massacres." However, this is told as a person opinion, whereas in Butler's case I feel as if she is telling all of her readers how they should feel about slavery, and I do not wish to become any sort of slave to her views of the world, even if they do seem to coincide with mine.
My overall take of Butler's style in Kindred is that she writes a clear plot, which is nice, but this leads to her also clearly telling her points (or perhaps she writes a clear plot so she can clearly state her points through clearly defined characters such as Dana, who is written in a very flattering light). Because Butler makes her points so clearly, it undermines my acceptance of them.
If anyone thought of different points that Butler was trying to make, please let me know! Also I apologize for the burrito, I just thought it would be fun to add one in the middle of my post.

Dana's acceptance of Slavery and Rufus

On Dana's last couple of trips to the past, it seems like she begins to forget that she is from the 20th century. She feels like she is coming home when she sees the Weylin house. This feeling of complacency and belonging upsets her, because she does not want to be comfortable in such a racist and unequal time. The scary thing about her journey is that she is repeatedly lulled into a sense of safety and well-being, only to be dragged out violently by some horrible thing, such as the selling of Tess or Sam. She has a similar relationship with Rufus, in that up until the very end, every time she gets mad at him she forgives him, and forgets how cruelly he can act. She is sadly amazed when he doesn't send her letters to Kevin, and equally surprised when he pulls a gun on her when Kevin returns. Even as Rufus grows up, Dana sill wants to see him as a small, innocent child, who she still can hope will grow up o be reasonable, accepting, and kind to people of all races. What makes it hard for her o adjust to his growing up spoiled and cruel at a whim is that for her only a tiny time has passed between his two ages, while many years have passed for him.
When she doesn't have Kevin there to remind her that she is acting, Dana seems to become more of a slave, even if only in her opinion. If she had been to fully accept being a slave, then and only then would she have become one. However, Dana forces herself out of this complacency and slavery two times, once by cutting her wrists, and the other when she kills Rufus. I believe that if she had not done those, she would have truly become a slave, and become stuck in that state, with little or no hope of escaping. If she had let Rufus rape her, she would have been a slave both in the loss of her physical freedom, but also she would have been a slave to her fear for the outcomes of the other slaves once Rufus was dead. It can be argued that it is good to be a slave to the well being of others, but that is being a slave nonetheless, and that is something that Dana refuses to become.
Just as Dana is lulled into acceptance of her slave status up until the point that she suddenly and violently stops herself, she is drawn into an acceptance of Rufus and all of his flaws, merely because he has a few good traits, such as letting her teach literacy to people, and having bathed for her before he tries o rape her. As with her slavery, Dana violently and suddenly removes herself from this acceptance of Rufus, just as she is beginning to totally accept him. I would note that Alice has the same reaction, but she kills herself instead of Rufus when she finds she is beginning to be okay with him.

Implications of Prayer in Slaughterhouse-Five

I decided to look more deeply into the Kilgore Trout novels within Slaughterhouse-Five. The one which particularly piqued my interest was The Big Board. It is about two earthlings who are abducted by aliens and taken to a zoo on the platen Zircon-212. There, they are told that the aliens have invested a million dollars in stocks, and it is up to them to manage this so that they can be rich when they are returned to earth. The have a big board in their enclosure with which to view the stock market changes. Of course, all of it is fake, contrived by the aliens to make the humans show intense emotions for viewers of the zoo. To me, there is an insane amount of important and interesting ways to look at this novel and its implications. I am writing my response paper on some of them. 

However, religion also comes into play in The Big Board, and in an intriguing way, although I'm not sure how to work it into my paper. So I will discuss it here. At one point, the aliens tell their human captives that the President of the US has declared it National Prayer Week, and asked everyone to pray. The week before, the humans had lost a small fortune in olive oil stocks. "So they gave praying a whirl. It worked. Olive oil went up." Now at first, as I was reading this, I took the claim that the prayer worked to be Vonnegut's dry, sarcastic, irony. But the fact that the aliens control the stocks does not mean that a hypothetical God did not make them raise olive oil in response to the human prayers. The fact that the aliens are in total control does not disprove God, and the power of prayer. In a less religious sense, the prayer most definitely made the stock prices go up. This is due to the fact that the aliens told the humans about "Prayer Week" so that they would pray, and thereby entertain the audience. When the humans do pray, the aliens reward them by raising the stocks. This is done merely to manipulate the captives emotions, but despite that the prayer did without a doubt work. I think that the fact that prayer can work in such a tangible sense, even in the absence of a God, quite interesting and thought-provoking. Another question brought up is that of whether or not the aliens are gods to the humans. They certainly seem godlike. Controlling everything in the environment, knowing everything about the humans, and even answering prayers. Now I am unaware of all of the implications if the aliens are gods, but it does seem to reveal a lot and lead to a lot of questions about the possible nature of deity a religion. If the humans began worshiping the aliens, would their stocks go up? I think so. How similar is the situation on Zircon-212 like our own? Is what entertains and affects us as superficial as that which decides all of the emotions of the humans on Zircon-212? If anyone has any thoughts about these question I would much appreciate hearing them.