Analysis Of The Book ' Kindred ' By Octavia Butler

As Dana soon discovers, the reality of slavery is even more disturbing than its portrayal in books, movies, and television programs. Before her journey into the past, Dana called the temp agency where she worked a "slave market," even though "the people who ran it couldn't have cared less whether or not you showed up to do the work they offered."

This time when she comes back she is saves Rufus’s room from burning down. Dana ask Rufus a series of question such as why she is here, what year it is, and why did he try to burn down his house. Rufus replies saying that he is upset that his father has sold a horse that he wanted. Dana also discovers that she is traveling back in time to save Rufus which is her great grandfather. She understands that she needs to keep him alive in order for her to live. When Dana realize what time period she is in she is frighten because it is during slavery. At this point Dana understands that she has gone back into time to experience the horrors of slavery and prejudice first hand. Dana tells Rufus that she needs to get out of his room because his father could come in his room at any moment. So, Rufus tells Dana of a little girl named Alice that lives not far from his house her mother and her are free blacks. When Dana sees them she believes that they are her ancestors. While at Alice’s house she sees physical abuse and she also endures the abuse herself. As Dana fights for her life she faints back into the present. When Dana is back at home in the present time she understands that when Rufus is in trouble and she is called to his side and when she wants to return to the present time she put her own life in jeopardy.

When thinking of successful people you automatically think about how hard people have worked to be successful. In the Outliers book "Malcolm Gladwell" argues that we should look at the world that surrounds successful people. For instance their culture, family, experiences, and their upbringing. Gladwell has made an interesting argument about how people become successful. In this paper, I will be talking about how Bradley Byrne, US Representative for Alabama became successful using some information from Gladwell’s arguments.

A wise man once said “Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacles, discouragements and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak”. (Carlyle) In Kindred the author Octavia butler talks about the persistence of 3 African American women living in the 1800s and shows the obstacles they went through. Butler shows that in order to live back then in the Antebellum South African American women had to persist through the obstacles of white supremacy and slavery.

Often when critics read Octavia Butler’s Kindred, the focus of the novel is often on the bodies of the black people who lived during this era. However, the narrative itself is fascinating in the way it confronts history in order to deconstruct it and rebuild it. Dana’s journey to antebellum Maryland enables the reader to take a new look at characters they though they knew, like Sarah’s role as the “mammy.” Butler’s blending of the Neo-slave narrative genre and Fantasy allows her protagonist to get up close and person with these figures to see how well her “knowledge” of them in 1976 hold up—when she has to live as a slave herself. By closing the time gap and breaking down the disconnect between the generations, the parallels between Sarah and Dana become stark and direct. Butler shows the reader that time is not a unidirectional concept, but cyclical. Much like style is recycles through the years, so is history. Dana and Sarah’s roles are remarkably similar as each woman is barely living in their respective time periods. The survival theme that permeates the novel resonates through the various time periods and closes the temporal distances. By bring the time periods so close to together, Butler is able to analyze the attitudes that modern blacks have towards their enslaved kin. The metaphorical mirror that Butler holds up to Dana’s face forces her to confront the similarities between her and Sarah, and as the reader follows the narrative, they are also looking into a

describes that “He had the kind of pale, almost colorless eyes that made him seem distant and angry whether is was or not. He used them to intimidate people” (13), which doesn’t seem to mean anything to Dana very much in the beginning. However, it isn’t until she goes back in time with Kevin, that Dana realizes her disadvantage in the world and Kevin’s advantage. She must face the everyday fear of being sold into a new plantation and the constant worry that she may actually feel the pain of being whipped. In Kevin’s case though, he found being back in the particular time period as “boring” (find that exact moment) and not having much to do with him. Many people would argue that Kevin is considered a “bad” husband because he feels the need to be in control and overpower Dana. Indeed, he does become

Kindred follows the experience of Dana, the narrator and protagonists of the novel, as she is mysteriously taken out her present day and time and transported to the Antebellum South. Through this experience, she must adapt to the ways of an enslaved black woman, as she confronts the limitations slavery has placed against black people. In order to survive, she must completely change her way of thinking and how she does things. As she focuses on attempting to save her on life, she also has the lives of her ancestors on her shoulder as she must continuously save the life of Rufus. Rufus is the white son of a plantation owner and eventually fathers one of her ancestors.

The parlor wall TV is a wall with televisions covering the walls. Mildred, the wife of Guy Montag, calls the characters on the television her “family,” because she thinks they are. Bradbury is saying in the future, people who have these parlor TV walls, will be too distracted and caught up in the shows they are watching to pay attention to their own families or even the world around them. People like Mildred get addicted to the TV’s interactive ability and as a result, allow for a lack of intellectuality. Mildred, for example, was lacking care and consideration about Guy burning a lady at his job, because the TV was on. Mildred does, discuss the shows with her friends, but it is her way of sheltering herself from her miserable life. Technology,

It is a well known fact that Hitler killed nearly 11 million people in the holocaust, yet few seem to realize that Josef Stalin killed nearly 9 million more in WWII. Many did not know of the horrors until author Ruta Sepetys wrote “Between shades of Gray”. A book about the fifteen year old Lithuanian girl, Lina, who was taken by the secret police along with her mother and brother. This book follows her journey through the real life trauma thousands of others went through. After Lina was taken from her home she was moved to a beet farm in Siberia. Later she and the rest of her family were re-located to a new camp in the freezing cold of the arctic circle. Millions of people died in World War Two. But there were thousands who were forced to keep secret about the traumatic events they lived through in the second world war.

Everyone’s knowledge was basically the same. No one fell above or below average, and I think it has to play with the fact that no one asked why. “Why” isn’t a question in the society that Bradbury created. The inner thoughts didn’t come into play because the society didn’t exactly think for themselves and everything was just spoon fed to them, there was no room or reason for them to ask why, at least that’s what the society thought. All that the society thought about was entertainment, adrenaline, the “need for speed”; they didn’t care about why they needed it or why they did as they did. They just didn’t care why so their knowledge wasn’t able to expand to what we would even call average today. Their society is more based off of entertainment

Millions of people worldwide gather in front of their televisions to experience the exhilaration of watching two men fight for their freedom. Dad have made popcorn for this special occasion while the kids wrapped in their fluffy blankets wait anxiously for the fight to begin. No one objects to the slavery witnessed on the television because the idea of equality for all never occurred in this society. Similar events like slavery in America was not questioned by those who grew up in this institution and is explained in the novel Kindred by Octavia Butler. Her novel expands the idea of how people are influenced by their environment by taking characters Dana and Kevin into the past where slavery is still a bustling trade. In the time these two maintained their presence in the past, their very definition of themselves had changed while engulfed in a different institution. The Stanford Prison Experiment conducted by Philip Zimbardo resulted in similar outcomes with their subjects by placing them into a simulated prison environment. Prisoners inside the experiment played their parts until they morphed into their character and could not break free from this new persona/ Octavia Butler’s experiment in Kindred is similar to Philip Zimbardo's Stanford Prison experiment in which all subjects were influenced by their institution to play the role requested by the people with authority.

Fiction books have helped me know why people are so worried about bullying. I have read a book called The Brave when I was in eleventh grade for a free read that showed me how common and serous bullying can be. It has also showed me that our generation needs to learn to have respect for each other in and outside of school so bullying will start to go away. In books that I have read in school in the past that dealt with bullying were far worse than what people consider bullying today. In most cases the bullying is on a very serious level in books now a days and could cause the victim a lot of physical, mental, and emotional harm from what the characters say and do. Bullying inside and outside of school is very serious in this generation both

Concerning this tragedy, however, the sober mind can comfort itself with the solace that this and earlier examples of their valor will live on in the world and that their death, whereby their errors were swept away through the fervent faith, has won the martyr’s crown. They fought, and, that no one of them should die without retaliating, each made a pile of corpses around himself; but, even so, the number of assailants did not diminish, for it was recruited from the horde. The Turks killed the horses, which, tough not able to gallop, were nevertheless of value in carrying the heavy armor, and the mail-clad Franks, now on foot, were overwhelmed among the thick-pressing enemy as if they were drowned in the sea; they were separated one from another, spilling the vitals from their defenseless bodies. During this engagement the king lost his small but renowned royal guard keeping a stout heart, however, he nimbly and bravely scaled a rock by making use of some tree roots which God had provided for his safety.

Good and evil each have multiple definitions and could be used to refer to many different situations involving people, ideas, products, or places. Depending on which situation someone is referring to, the definition of the term that is used will be altered slightly in order for people to understand the severity of the situation. According to the Mirriam-Webster dictionary, evil is defined as “immorally reprehensible”. This definition would typically be used to describe an action or a feeling that a person possesses which are hateful or sinful. This definition of evil would be the perfect definition to describe the main characters in Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire. The three main characters are vampires who spend their time trying to conceal their urges to bite people’s neck an suck their blood until death has almost fallen upon them, but never until death actually occurs. Louis, Lestat, and Claudia struggle throughout the novel to suppress their urges to kill and battle with their evil desires.

“Better to die fighting for freedom than be a prisoner all the days of your life” (Bob Marley). It all begins with Dana Franklin and everything she has to do in order to both save her ancestry as well as keep love and freedom in her life. It is 1976 in Maryland and Dana Franklin is a black woman married to a white man named Kevin Franklin. One day after moving houses, Dana begins to feel dizzy and faints. When she wakes, she realizes she is no longer in 1976 and must save a boy, Rufus Weylin, from himself every time she went there. Dana is constantly going back to the 1800’s, a time when people with her skin color resort to lives of fear and taking orders, but all Dana truly wants is to have love and freedom. In Kindred, Octavia E. Butler uses Dana Franklin to reveal the strong will it takes to be able to deny fear and realize that there are some things in life worth fighting for.