Analysis Of Kindred By Olivia Butler

As Boss Tweed used to say, “The way to have power is to take it.” Therefore, it is not surprising that the characters of Kindred by Octavia Butler fight throughout the book to gain power from each other. They all use methods ranging from violence to influence to gain even a slight amount of power from each other. Even Alice and Dana who are enslaved women during the 1800’s are able to use their words to influence their owners and the powerful white men in society. Like other black women during this time period, they use their bodies and other unconventional methods to slowly gain power over their owners until they are able to influence them to do what they want. Henceforth, Butler wants to demonstrate to the reader that, even during the antebellum south, enslaved women were able to use their influence, resilience and courage to eventually gain power over their owners.

Multiple stereotypes about African Americans arose from slavery during the 19th century including: The Uncle, the Auntie, Sambo, the coon, and the pickaninny. However, there were other stereotypes, including the Mammy and the Jezebel, that were specifically directed at black women. These degrading stereotypes are illustrated in Octavia Butler’s novel and comic book, Kindred, by attributing female characters with various traits that typically accompany these stereotypes. Thus, this essay will discuss the ways in which each prominent female character either embodied or challenged the characteristics that coincide with those two stereotypes. Sarah is a character who most obviously typifies the Mammy stereotype.

Throughout history, many people have been oppressed because of their race, religion and gender, resulting in the loss of their rights and freedom. Despite the fact that freedom is an inherent rights of any human being, many examples have proven that these rights often require rebellious acts to obtain said rights. Although human rights have evolved over the years, humans still fail to learn from their mistakes, resulting in history repeating itself. Through storytelling and novels, people show depictions of history to honour those who have died and to educate younger generations to prevent unfortunate events from occurring again. In this same vein, Lawrence Hill and Alice Walker display oppression through abuse, structural inequality and gender stereotypes. Although the novels, The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill and The Colour Purple by Alice Walker were written in different time periods and revolved around different cultural influences, each demonstrates the theme of oppression throughout various events.

Have you ever been told that you and a friend are practically the same person? Something similar to this happens to Dana and Alice in Octavia Butler’s novel, Kindred. In Butler’s novel, Dana is a young black woman living in 1976. Next thing she knows, she time travels back to the antebellum South. Dana is given the task of saving her several times great grandfather, Rufus Weylin, from multiple life threatening situations. Along the way she meets her several times great grandmother, Alice, who is a young free black woman. In her novel, Kindred, Octavia Butler compares and contrasts Dana and Alice to show the theme that people will do anything in order to survive. Both Dana and Alice have to become slaves on a plantation, run away for a life of freedom, and tolerate the treatment of Rufus.

Consider the case of Kindred, written by Octovia Butler in 1980, set in 1960 Maryland and 1984 California. A black woman, Dana, was forcefully sent back in time to Maryland. She struggle to handle slavery enforcement, but with the help of Rufus, the white master, she was able to ease her pain with lighter punishments. However, Dana had no choice in the end to kill Rufus because he was becoming his late father whose soul is full of scorn toward the people of color. Her choice had helped the slaves in Rufus home to escape t freedom. Unfortunately, she caused a life that loved her from the bottom of his heart. The decision she mad is with wise judgement that has been written down for the youngs to learn from. All in all, no choice is best, but

Octavia Butler’s novel Kindred is categorized as science fiction because of the existence of time travel. However, the novel does not center on the schematics of this type of journey. Instead, the novel deals with the relationships forged between a Los Angeles woman from the 20th century, and slaves from the 19th century. Therefore, the mechanism of time travel allows the author a sort of freedom when writing this "slavery narrative" apart from her counterparts. Butler is able to judge the slavery from the point of view of a truly "free" black woman, as opposed to an enslaved one describing memories.

Yanked through the folds of space and time (quite literally) an independent black woman must learn to survive in the time of slavery within the Deep South. Dana must recover from the shock of the near instantaneous trip from her East Coast home in 1976, to a slave based plantation more than a hundred years earlier, if she wants to survive. She must withstand the savagery of the “civilized south” while trying to comprehend the bizarre connection to the Welyn Planation’s heir, Rufus.

“It is the law of love that rules mankind. Had violence, hate ruled us we should have become extinct long ago. And yet the tragedy of it is that so-called civilized man and nations conduct themselves as if the basis of society was violence,”(Gandhi). In this quote Gandhi says the main reasons of love and hate are mankind. As well that both control and destroy a human. However, in the end the human chooses the one they will follow. In the outstanding novel Kindred by Octavia Butler. The protagonist, Dana, faces many love and hate situations as she travels back and forth in time. Accordingly, she begins to question whom is to blame for the love and hate crimes. Love and hate are influenced by mankind, both can be controlled and the pair are conscious decisions.

First published in 1979, Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred is a unique novel, which can be categorized both as a modern-day slave narrative, and as a science fiction time-travel tale. In the novel, Butler uses time-travel as a way to convey W.E.B. Du Bois’ theory of double-consciousness. Dubois’ theory is based on the idea that people of color have two identities, both struggling to reconcile in one being. His theory about the complex nature of the African-American experience directly relates to Butler’s use of Kindred’s protagonist, Dana, and her experience time travelling as a modern-day African-American woman, and her experience of a pre-abolition, nineteenth-century slave.

Octavia Butler’s novel, Kindred, is called Kindred, primarily because of the word’s reference to those of one’s family. This novel uses the plot device of time travel which allows Dana to travel back a figure out what her family dealt with and was like in the Antebellum Period. Dana is practically in it together with the people she first meets because they’re her ancestors, even though there’s a large disparity between the culture and politics of the two times.

Authors of fiction often write about the human condition as a way to connect with a broad range of readers. Unlike factual textbooks, fiction gives characters feeling and emotion, allowing us to see the story behind the basic details. In many cases, readers gain a new perspective on a period of time by examining a fiction novel. In Kindred, by Octavia Butler, the near death experiences of Rufus Weylin transports a 20th century African American woman named Dana to the ante bellum South to experience exactly what it’s like to be a slave. Through her day-to-day life on the Weylin plantation, the reader begins to understand just how complex slavery is and how it affects both the slaves and the plantation owners; thus, giving new

This quote is the quote of the book because throughout the book Dana is slowly but surely adapting to slavery. Alice is the one that tells Dana that she will be mammy. Dana believes that means that she has accepted slavery as she comments on another woman, Margaret, saying that she “had accepted the life of slavery because she was afraid. She was the kind of woman who might have been called mammy” (145). Dana notices early on how people adapt to slavery when she says, “I never realized how easily people could be trained to accept slavery” (101). Dana turns from not wanting to be called mammy to being called mammy and doing nothing about it. Dana follows Rufus’s orders so that she won’t get whipped or beaten. Dana even realizes that she is adapting to slavery when she wonders, “Was I getting used to being submissive?” (220). The book shows how easy it is to get lost in slavery and not want to fight back because of the consequences that is this is the quote of the book. The quote shows how much someone can get adapted to

In Octavia Butler’s novel, Kindred, she challenges humanity, moralities, and racism. By sending Dana through time, it highlighted the similarities and differences between characters and symbolic meanings. The theme of this novel is answering the question to “what if” a black woman, raised with rights, had to endure slavery? What tactics would she use in order to survive? Many people cannot imagine the agonies slavery has caused, not only to blacks, but everyone including loss of freedom, family, loved ones and self. The interracial couples in the novel, Dana and Kevin; Alice and Rufus, symbolize a larger issue of segregation that divides of our nation. The antagonist, Rufus, changed throughout his life as Dana tried to teach him

Through this single lyrical, childlike reflection, Strayed manages to achieve a scene more poignant, eloquent, and artful than any of the pages and pages of clumsy, uninspired text preceding or following it. These twelve sentences of stunningly concise, visceral, suadede prose are seemingly the pinnacle of Strayed's writing ability, or at least the few that I found truly enjoyable to any extent (and their rather basic simplicity is entirely indicative of the quality of Strayed's typical work). Here, in a stolen moment of repose during a fleeting foray into civilization, Strayed finally gives form to the feelings of cosmic dissonance and alienation she grapples with throughout the text. Finally illustrated, in pallid, nostalgic tones, is the world-rending, disorienting grief of her mother's death and her father's abandonment, the immersive, palliating world of self-destruction and self-indulgence, the aimless, foreign landscape of her estrangement, and a private, tormented world of depression, denial, and self-discovery that Strayed, left alone to herself, sinks willingly and helplessly into. The scenery of this world, however, is not entirely unrecognizable: a child sinking into bathwater, submerging her head, witnessing ever-present reality and inviolable corporeal fade into meaningless shape and noise.

Alice walker’s “Everyday Use” focuses on a mother, Mrs. Johnson, her two daughters, Dee and Maggie, and their views towards their African heritage. The story centers on Dee’s first return visit after completing her college. Mrs. Johnson and her daughter Maggie are awaiting in the yard in anticipation of Dee’s coming. Dee’s visit was nothing as if her mother hoped and dreamed. Dee has changed completely, she said to her mother that Dee is dead and she changed her name to Wangero, despite of the fact that she was named after her grandmother. Despite of her education, it naturally appears that she does not have an appreciation to her inheritance. Apparently, she has an underlying motive and desire behind her visit. She is the kid who always used to get what she wanted, except it turns out that her mother refused to have the quilts. Dee is spoiled woman who never struggled to get what she wanted in her life, and her personality has an excessive amount of Id, with one-sided ego, and underdeveloped superego.