The "Straight Man" in Kindred

Kindred is the novel which feels the least postmodern of all the novel's we've read this semester. It feels like much more of a conventional sci-fi novel, and while it raises questions similar to those raised by many other novels in this course it employs a technique that none of the others do. Kindred has what is often referred to as a "straight man", a term which in sci-fi refers to any character who, for any number of reasons is as much an outsider in the sci-fi setting as the reader and so gives both a convenient mechanism for exposition and allows the reader to relate to someone who is also an outsider in the setting. Neo from The Matrix is a classic straight man, he is unaware that the world he is living in is a fake and so it must be explained to both him and the audience how the matrix functions, and the audience relates to him because they live in a world identical to Neo's matrix.
            Dana and Kevin are both straight men in kindred, we can relate to them because they come from a similar time period and can explicitly discuss many of the things the reader is thinking about when the reader sees the 19th century south. None of the other novels we have read involve a straight man. Slaughter House Five also involves a time travel mechanic but while Dana tries to figure out what's happening in Kindred Billy Pilgrim just sort of is pulled along blindly . The World of Mumbo Jumbo but no one in the novel even bats an eye at the idea of culture war being carried out literally by secret societies.
         I think many of my classmates have found kindred to be their favorite book in the course because it uses a technique which seems much more familiar to them, and which exists to facilitate a more conventional linear plot than many of the other novels we have read.