Dana 's Use Of Literacy As A Mean Of Agency Essay

The slaves in the novel seemed to adapt much better to their own slavery than the modern blacks such as Dana did. Slavery was the only life many of the blacks had ever known so it was much easier for them to accept their future than it was for Dana to accept her sudden loss of rights. For Dana to come from a world where the possibilities of African American?s futures were so broad to suddenly lose all of her rights and be viewed as property was almost enough to cause Dana a mental breakdown. Although the slaves did not want theirs lives the way they were, they had somewhat grown accustomed to the idea of slavery and accepted it as their future. It is much easier not

People often wonder about the struggles of slave life, including the fact that it was extremely difficult to become literate as a slave. Frederick Douglass, who was once a slave who learned to read and write, outlines these obstacles and the effects that they had on him in a chapter titled “Learning to Read and Write” within his autobiography. Said chapter reveals Douglass’s innermost thoughts and attitudes towards many things during his time as a slave, including his mistress, slavery itself, and reading. Douglass displays an appreciative and later aggravated tone towards his mistress, an outraged tone towards slavery, and an enthusiastic tone that later becomes resigned and despairing towards reading, exemplifying that tone can strongly influence the portrayal of a topic.

In the excerpt “Learning to Read and Write”, Frederick Douglass talks about his experiences in slavery living in his masters house and his struggle to learn how to read and write. Frederick Douglass was an African American social reformer, orator, writer, and statesman. Some of his other writings include “The Heroic Slave”, “My Bondage and My Freedom”, and “Life and Times of Frederick Douglass”. In this excerpt, Frederick Douglass uses an empathic tone, imagery, certain verb choice, contrast, and metaphors to inform African Americans of how important it is to learn to read and write and also to inform a white American audience of the evils of slavery. I find Frederick Douglass to

On Dana’s expedition she discovers the true significance of freedom when she compares her own life to whos she’s surrounded by in the plantation of Tom Weylin. All the characters had a role that had an impact on Dana, one in specific was a girl named Alice who became Dana’s great-grandmother. Alice did not love Rufus because she was in love with Isaac, but she was owned by Rufus, which was a dimension for the 1976 mind frame of Dana. The author Butler incorporated a personal relationship between Dana and Alice that signalizes the reader on understanding the experiences black women had in the twentieth century, not just that, but a what black women went through in slavery. Alice presents a correspondence between the past and the present, informatory how they empower each other in areas such as sexuality, the importance of motherhood, and definition of oneself

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,

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.

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.

Dana finds herself travelling between her present day life in 1976 and her ancestral plantation of 1815 – two time periods that represent two opposite concepts of her identity as an African-American woman. In the beginning of the novel, Dana’s identity is constructed strictly through the lens of her experiences as a modern African-American woman, and she defines herself solely through these contemporary constructs and experiences. Her experiences of time travel cause her to alter her self-identity from that of the modern woman to one based on her life as a slave in antebellum Maryland, experiencing and overcoming racial and gendered oppression. Essentially, we follow Dana as she attempts to reconcile her historical, fragmented reality. This fragmented sense of self creates a double-consciousness for Dana,

In the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, the dehumanization of slaves often occurs, as white plantation owners view slaves as objects undeserving of humane treatment in order to uphold power and warrant their unjust practices. Limiting knowledge and prohibiting education for African Americans was one strategy common among slave owners, as “it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep their slaves thus ignorant” (17). Due to their lack of intellect, slaves could not recognize the injustices of the slavery system and had little chances of escaping. When Mrs. Auld attempts to teach Frederick Douglass how to read and write, Mr. Auld claims, “A n***** should know nothing but to obey

Throughout the 19th century, there were many racial injustices that continued after Rufus accepted his father’s place. In the case of Rufus, he had to accept that Dana was educated, thus, not being able to control her. In short, he decided to manipulate and threaten the lives of others to gain control of Dana since he knew she would be more compliant. As a slaveholder, he had deprived the people he owned of their rights to education since whites were the only ones worthy at the time. As expert Baldwin suggested, “In this long battle, a battle by no means finished…the white man’s motive was the protection of his identity; the black man was motivated by the need to establish an identity” (73). In order for Rufus to protect himself, he took away many rights from his slaves. Nonetheless, this is why Dana began to teach others how to

As Rufus’s character grows throughout the beginning he explains his sentiments of being a Black man in the United States during time of slow transition between black and white people. When he begins his relationship with a white southern divorced woman, Leona, Rufus begins to beat her and when Vivaldo, his closest white friend, confronts him he begins to act like he doesn’t care and is in his house where he has the power, not them, who are white (55). Rufus begins to show how having white people in his life gives him the satisfaction of having some power over them being

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’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

Although the character of Sofia knows that her resistance will cause trouble, she feels it is more important to stand up for herself, than to bow down to repression of white authority. Had Sofia not fought back, she still would have been punished for cursing the Mayor’s wife. There was no pathway for Sofia to keep her dignity and not offend the Mayor and his wife. In that system, a black person had to remain inferior to whites, and in the South, follow the Jim Crow Laws that enforced segregation. C N Truman describes Jim Crow as “a minstrel show character from the 1830’s. He was portrayed as an elderly, crippled and clumsy African American slave and his portrayal showed all the negative stereotypes of African Americans – the black man with his white master with Jim Crow being thankful for his lot in life.” Sofia goes against these stereotypes as she is a strong-willed woman who throughout the text knows she is entitled to more. The only idea that Sofia follows, is that she unwillingly has a white master, but is never thankful for this.