Analysis Of The Book ' Kindred '

When people think of slavery in history, race is the first factor that comes to mind, however, there are also many ways gender influenced the lives of those enslaved. In Octavia Butler’s novel, Kindred, gender plays a key role in the society that Dana both lives in and travels to. Throughout the concepts of slavery and servitude; not only is race an issue, but the gender gap is wide and very influential.

Only the best tactics and the quickest decisions can insure a win in a fight for survival. Dana Franklin, the main character in the novel Kindred, has what it takes to take on the cruel South and use those qualities to ensure survival. Due to a mysterious and confusing power she acquires, Dana can miraculously travel through time and reach her ancestors during the slavery period. With that power alone, she has to work hard to survive against the strongest, meanest, and craziest people she’s ever dreamed of to ensure the safety of herself and whom she cares. In addition to working hard, Dana has to witness and carry out what horrors fighting and struggling in the antebellum South was like. In Octavia Butler’s Kindred, Dana is seen fighting,

Both free and enslaved Africans were discriminated against in this time period but responded differently towards their challenges. African Americans found ways to cope with their situation one being religious gatherings (Doc D). They sang old traditional African songs and danced. By doing so, they can forget about life troubles for a moment and give themselves a sense of hope that someday they would by free. Some slaves where more violent than other and began rebellions against their white owners. The use of rebellion was inspired to them by the Bible and that God was pleading for their cause with earnestness and zeal (Doc G). Slaves who caused mischief was relocated deeper south where the treatment and condition was even worse. The Fugitive Slave Law forced the North to send back any slaves who escaped to the North in return for a reward. Slaves who tried to escape to the North were also relocated. By relocating them, the chances of escape decreased for them. Even

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.

Octavia Butler’s Kindred is a compelling novel in and of itself. It incorporates the thrill of science fiction, the truth of historical fiction, and the power of a neo-slave narrative to create an unforgettable story. However, Kindred is also impressive on the front of literary techniques and style. A large part of what makes the novel so fascinating is its consistent use of parallelism. In particular, the major parallel between Dana’s experience as a black woman in antebellum America and 20th century America gives the plot depth by debunking the notion that the future is exclusively progressive in comparison to the past. In Kindred, the literary device of parallelism relates Dana’s experience as a black woman in the 19th century and the 20th century on the bases of education, gender, and race, all of which show that the two time periods in

Lastly, violence in Kindred was used to show how the treatment of slaves was used to dehumanize and put down blacks. In a society where a slave owner had absolute power over its “property”, the importance of a slave’s life was greatly disregarded. Butler used this notion and violence to show how in the eyes of whites, slaves were subhuman. Thusly, they had no rights, and received extremely unlucky treatment. When traveling to the 1800’s as a black women, Dana stated that in that time “there was no shame in raping a black woman,

In the novel Kindred, by Octavia Butler, the main character Dana is exposed to the brutality and exhausting existence inflicted on slaves in the 1800’s. Through intentionally suppressive measures, slave owners used a series of methods to control and manipulate an entire race of people into submission. Dana describes this process as dulling and her experiences haunt her as she is slowly broken down. “See how easily slave are made?” (Butler 177) her thoughts say; this is Butler attempting to illustrate how it was nearly impossible for the enslaved people to change their situation and fight for freedom. Contemporary people didn’t understand why the slaves didn’t rise up and revolt against the whites, so Butler puts Dana through conditions that eventually show her and the audience it wasn’t that easy. The slaves were too tired to revolt, too broken to fight back, and too connected to each other to leave; thus giving the repulsive entitled whites the ability to continue their disgraceful contempt for human decency. By means of labor and sensational punishment, family ties, surveillance that included slave hierarchy; dreams of revolutions and freedom were overpowered and even Dana becomes complacent accepting the role of slave.

“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.

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

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

In “The Life and Escape”, William Wells Brown tells his story of being a slave as a young child and his escape out of slavery as he was older. He was a slave alongside his mother and he had witnessed her going through struggles, but could never do anything about it to help her. He came to realize that all he could do was sit back.

Today's children learn and are influenced by their surrounding and environment. Children do not know any better; for them, it’s monkey see, monkey do. Today’s youth are taught to respect everyone of every race. However, back in the time of slaves, children were taught to despise blacks, and that's what most of them did. In the book Kindred, Dana Franklin journeys back and forth to the Antebellum South multiple times to see her past family who are slaves and the owner Rufus Weylin. On multiple occasions, Dana voyages back to the past to help Rufus when he is in danger, so her life does not become corrupt. Each time she goes back, different levels of danger await her. As Dana travels home and back to the past, she witnesses Rufus grow from

Octavia E. Butler uses her novel Kindred, to communicate how influential one’s environment can be in shaping their thoughts and actions. One’s environment is composed of their conditions and surroundings, and the most significant of these is language. The society in which Dana lives differs greatly from Rufus’s society; therefore, the way these characters use and view language differ. Language dictates the way one thinks, and whether or not they think critically. How one thinks is directly related to how one perceives the world and one’s perception is their reality. Even Dana and Kevin, who live in the same time period, perceive the world differently. They may live in the same time period, but their realities differ because of who they are, a black woman and a white man. Butler makes Dana and Rufus’s impact on one another central to story. Rufus sometimes deviates from the societal norms of his time because his environment has been influenced by Dana, who is also affected by her new surroundings. She begins to lose the ability to stand up for herself. Ultimately, however, Rufus does not change his prejudice, bigotry way of thinking, and Dana does not allow herself to succumb to complacency. Butler consciously made these decisions; she wants readers to recognize that while these characters influence one another, they do not do so enough to overpower the more significant aspects of their respective environments, such as language. One’s environment determines how much

Octavia Butler displays her brilliance as a writer by creating multiple, complex characters in the novel Kindred, characters who epitomize real people with hardships, passions, and transformations that reflect the strict regulations placed upon the Southern society in the early nineteenth century. Dana faces many hardships from the moment Butler shifts her back one-hundred and sixty-one years to a time of slavery where she is stripped of her freedom. Rufus’s passion for Alice transitions into a fog, where he is unable to distinguish between love and control. On the other hand, Butler gives Tom Weylin a depth that reflects his actions and directly relates them to his experiences. Together all three characters’ ideas come to a screaming halt, when they are placed alongside each other and without a choice lives in a time of slavery.

Octavia Butler’s Kindred focuses on the perspective of a black female within two drastically different societies ranging from the ideals of colonialism to a society of change and acceptance. Butler utilizes Dana’s position in society to portray the cruelty of slavery and the power that society can have on the ideals and morals of individuals, such as the developing character of Rufus. Throughout the book, the issue of slavery is addressed through a multitude of different themes that span across Dana’s different experiences and struggles. Butler aims to reveal the aspects of slavery from the perspective of Dana in order to emphasize the widespread effects of prejudice upon human rights. In addition, the contrast of societies also