How Does Octavia Butler Use Power In Kindred

Character’s relationships with power change a lot over the course of Octavia Butler’s Kindred. One of the most important character changes in the book is Kevin Franklin and Dana’s relationship, and how is changed after living in the 1800’s. Kevin is introduced in the book as Dana’s middle aged husband who she met while working in a “slave market”. Both of them are inspiring writers looking to make a life out of their passion. Before both Kevin and Dana are sent back into slavery time their relationship is very normal. Their marriage is very stable, although they go through different problems surrounding power. Kevin is very dominant towards Dana and at times believes he is better than her. Kevin constantly asks Dana to type out drafts of his

Octavia Butler’s indirect use of characterization creates a Motif of protection in 1815 and in 1976. By characterizing Kevin, Dana, and Nigel as Protective according to their personality. Octavia Butler reveals the element of protection needed both in the past and the present, which helps create the cause of white supremacy and results in violence because of the abuse and conflict as it follows. Susan Elizabeth Phillips says: “I finally figured out that not every crisis can be managed. As much as we want to keep ourselves safe, we can't protect ourselves from everything. If we want to embrace life, we also have to embrace chaos.”(Phillips). Knowing protection cannot be given in both the past and the present but can be prevented and prepared for. Susan says “we can’t protect yourself from everything” and this shows the relationship in both Dana, Kevin, Nigel, and Rufus that everything cannot be predicted or foreseen without context clues.

Despite being written in and published in 1979, Octavia Butler’s book Kindred contains messages of racial, gender, and educational equality still ring true. In Kindred, Butler explores not only the issues of race, but those of gender, education, and of how power can corrupt. While race is the main issue of Kindred, it helps to highlight other sub-problems within a race, such as the balance of power, and knowledge. She is able to explore this with the use of time travel as a plot device, and rather than blatantly confronting people for their problems, she uses such characters as Rufus, and Alice, to display those problems. By doing so, Butler is able to paint people as neither good nor bad, but, rather, as human.

The novel Kindred by Octavia Butler is the story of a black woman, Dana, from the 1970s who time travels involuntarily between both life as a modern black woman and life on the Weylin plantation in the early 1800s in Antebellum Maryland. During the novel she interacts with her ancestors and experiences slavery firsthand; she attempts to change her great great grandfather Rufus’s possessive investment in whiteness and tries to protect her friends and ancestors. In the novel we see power and corruption dynamics play out in multiple ways between Rufus and Dana. Rufus grows from a young child oppressed by a demoralizing, abusive father into a manipulative man who gets what he wants through blackmail, threats, and rape. I will be investigating power

In every culture, there are the strong and there are the weak, the oppressor and the oppressed. Sometimes they are of the same race and sometimes not, but they all rely on a difference in power. Socrates, Frederick Douglass, and WEB Du Bois each experience this power differential through the course of their lives. Socrates experiences this through his experience with the jury of Athens and his trial; Douglass through his life as a slave and his eventual escape. Du Bois experiences it through being a black man in the time of Reconstruction and being well of in comparison to other African-Americans at the time. Each man’s unique perspective on equality can illuminate why authority is so instrumental in the development of equality.

Dana 's husband, Kevin also plays a key role in the novel as his treatment of her in front a slave owner (Rufus ' father) varies greatly from what was expected in that era. White people were expected to treat black people (free or not as inferior); Kevin almost always treated Dana as an equal in the novel. He was expected to treat her as Rufus '

Everyone wants to be powerful right? Everyone has different thoughts and ideas, but what is it that makes us so powerful? As sad as it is, what makes us powerful is our class, gender and race theses three little things determine what people think of you. So say your Mayella, she is a white, low class woman. Then there is Tom, he is an african american, low class man. Mayella accuses Tom of rape and abuse but tom is crippled and even Mayella said her father did those things, but since tom was African American and mayella was white, she won the case. It wasn’t fair and it wasn't justice but that’s just how they lived. In a society that judged by race, class and gender.

This also illustrates how Dana believes she can have a lasting effect on Rufus, to steer him away from the ways of his father. However, she only has a limited period of time to shed her 20th century mentality on him. And, Rufus’ change is not gradual relative to Dana, because every time she returns, she finds Rufus years older, and acting that much more like his father.

There are many ways someone can be considered powerful. If they are ‘above’ another race, they can be considered racially powerful. If they can use their gender in an act of getting what they want, they are powerful, with regard to their gender. Another way someone can be powerful is class power, class means a set or category of things having some property or attribute in common and differentiated from others by kind, type, and or quantity. This is when the person uses their class in a way for others to feel bad for them, tricking them into getting what they want. Mayella Ewell from Harper Lee’s novel To Kill A Mockingbird is a young girl that wrongfully says that a black man, Tom Robinson, raped her. She uses her power to make the court and many others to believe that Tom did that to her, but he really did not. He is convicted and soon is murdered in jail, for trying to escape. Because of her power, she is able to put Tom in jail, even though he is innocent. Mayella Ewell is powerful because she is able to manipulate others into believing what she says.

Many are unaware of the effects that race has played in their lives over the years. Some may not understand its implications, but are very oblivious to it. Race can influence such things like attitude and behavior. Nowadays being white or black means something more than just a Crayola color. No longer are they just colors, they are races with their own rules and regulations. People of color have been inferior to the white race for centuries. In their own way Zora Neale Hurston shows this concept in her story “How it feels to be Colored Me” as does Richard Wright in his autobiographical sketch “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow”.

As depicted in, “‘You wouldn’t hurt me until something frustrated you, made you angry or jealous. You wouldn’t hurt me until someone hurt you. Rufe, I know you’” (256). In this quote, Rufus is trying to convince Dana to stay in his time. He is telling her he would not harm her. This shows how Dana has lost faith in her understanding with Rufus in which they need each other too much to hurt one another. It shows that because of Rufus’s impulsive behavior, Dana has lost trust in Rufus to not harm her. This quote shows that Dana and Rufus’s relationship has developed into one of no trust or general ground rules. It has developed as Rufus has aged. As a further matter, not only has Dana lost trust with Rufus, but Rufus has lost faith in Dana to keep him safe. Shown in, “Rufus wasn’t afraid of dying. Now, in his grief, he seemed almost to want death. But he was afraid of dying alone, afraid of being deserted by the one person he had depended on for so long” (257). In this quote, the person Dana is referring to as “The one person he had depended on for so long,” is herself. This quote shows that because of Dana coming and going into Rufus’s time, Rufus has lost faith in Dana. Rufus truly has depended on Dana to come and save him when he was in desperate need, and he

Most student will get in trouble for texting in class while class is in session. I remember a time when I gotten my phone taking away for two weeks because I was texting my friend and not focus on the assignment that my teacher was explaining to the class. I was grounded for a week and couldn’t call my friend of text him for two weeks, but is that better than dying in a car crash because I was texting and driving. Driving and talk on the phone is bad enough, but why is texting a bigger problem in the world. Is it because there’s more accidents because of texting on the phone. It can be worst then drunk driving, or it can influence children to text and drive. Texting on the phone while driving should be banned in the United States to keep this country safe from ambitious drivers.

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.

Power binaries are a prevalent feature in all societies, past and present. One group in power holds the position at the top of the binary and, in doing so, pushes those who do not fit into the group to the bottom, socially and politically powerless. During the 1930’s in America, the most significant binary was the division between whites and people of color, specifically African Americans. (“Historical Context: Invisible Man”). Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man explores this time period through the story of an unnamed narrator struggling to find his individual identity as a young black man in a world that is constantly holding him down. The trials and tribulations the narrator endures and the people he encounters on his journey exemplify how the imbalanced power structure of a racist society will not truly allow even successful people of color to obtain substantial power unless they twist the definition of power itself.

Over the course of the novel, Rufus becomes less idealistic as he learns of corruption and greed when he meets with Mr. Floode and the “Professor.” Mr. Floode exemplifies the willful ignorance of people working at the oil company. “--Our pipelines are vandalized daily, losing us millions... and millions for the country as well. These people don’t understand what they do to themselves…” Rufus then has to explain to Mr. Floode that, “There are countless villages going up in smoke daily… I don’t blame them for wanting to get some benefit out of the pipelines that have brought them nothing but suffering to their lives…” (103). Rufus’ humble roots also compel Rufus to correct Mr. Floode and to try to portray the gravity of the situation in the delta. This scene is a key part of Rufus’ character development because the reader can tell that Rufus has thickened his skin. He is trying to fight for what he believes in by correcting an extremely powerful executive, Mr. Floode. As the novel progresses, Rufus grows from a shy rookie reporter to a reporter so confident in his abilities that he is willing to confront the head of the militia. “Are you calling me a liar, reporter? --No, Professor. I am not. I don’t know you well enough to do that.” (230) The