Kindred By Octavia Butler Analysis

This turns out to be an ironic contrast to life at the Weylin plantation, where a slave who visits his wife without his master's permission is brutally whipped. Perhaps a more painful realization for Dana is how this cruel treatment oppresses the mind. "Slavery of any kind fostered strange relationships," she notes, for all the slaves feel the same strange combination of fear,

The title of this book comes from the inspiring words spoken by Sojourner Truth at the 1851, nine years prior to the Civil War at a Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. In Deborah Grays White, Ar’n’t I a woman her aim was to enrich the knowledge of antebellum black women and culture to show an unwritten side of history of the American black woman. Being an African- American and being a woman, these are the two principle struggles thrown at the black woman during and after slavery in the United States. Efforts were made by White scholars in 1985 to have a focus on the female slave experience. Deborah Gray White explains her view by categorizing the hardships and interactions between the female slave and the environment in which the

Tom Weylin’s sexual assaults on his female slave Tess and selling out her children reflects the miseries of the helpless blacks at the hands of the white population. Though Tess has lost her children, yet she has to comply with the orders and wishes of her white master. (The Fight, X) In addition, Weylin’s consistent whipping on Dana, Tess and Alice also reveals the existence of butchery and domestic violence by the whites. Particularly stripping of the Black women and beating them brutally serve as the black mar on the very face of the white community. (The Fight, XIII) History is also replete with the examples of butchery and cruelties inflicted upon the Black slaves in the USA, northern and central Europe, Russia, Turkey (the Ottoman Empire) and other parts of the world, where sexual exploitations, whipping and torture were the orders of the day. Hence, Butler has portrayed the exact picture of the situation prevailed in the olden past in her novel.

African American women have long been stereotyped, discriminated against and generalized in this country. They have had to face both being black in America while also being a woman in America. African American women encountered and still do encounter double discrimination of both sex and race (Cuthbert, 117). Women like Elise Johnson McDougald, Marion Vera Cuthbert and Alice Dunbar-Nelson all tried to shed light on what it was like to be an African American woman living in the 20th century yet literature often portrayed them as emotional, hypersexual, unintelligent and of lesser worth. The literature highlighted that African American women have to serve both their employer and their husbands and families. They are not supposed to have an opinion or stand up for themselves, especially to a white man. ***Concluding sentence?

During the 19th century, women were generally trapped in their homes and would perform only domestic duties. Society had put them into a role of home keepers and housewives for their families. This role of the 19th century white housewife was portrayed by Margaret Weylin. In the novel, Margaret is a white woman who stays home and has nothing to do but be a wife and mother to her husband and child. Although she has way more privileges than the African American women during her time, she still felt powerless. “But Margaret Weylin still rushed everywhere. She had little or nothing to do” said Dana (Butler, 93). Despite her position of power over her slaves, Margaret still suffered from knowing that her husband was sleeping with the slaves. She had no real respect from anyone, and felt that she had no real role in her household. This led to Margaret finding amusement in

In a time period when women were considered inferior, as were blacks, it was unimaginable the horrors a black woman in the south had to endure during this period. African women were slaves and subject to the many horrors that come along with being in bondage, but because they were also women, they were subject to the cruelties of men who look down on women as inferior simply because of their sex. The sexual exploitation of these females often lead to the women fathering children of their white masters. Black women were also prohibited from defending themselves against any type of abuse, including sexual, at the hands of white men. If a slave attempted to defend herself she was often subjected to further beatings from the master. The black female was forced into sexual relationships for the slave master’s pleasure and profit. By doing this it was the slave owner ways of helping his slave population grow.

In 1619, when the first Africans were brought into Jamestown, Virginia to aid in the production of crops on the farms of Caucasian landowners, a period in our country’s dark history began, and with it a struggle for equality and freedom. For over 200 years, slavery consumed the United States, compelling blacks to long and later fight for the freedom their fair skinned counterparts had stripped from them. Decades later, the oppression of black rights marked the beginning of another struggle; one for basic rights that the black population had been denied. During these struggles, several names would come to mind for their achievements and efforts against racism and slavery, names like Frederick Douglass and Anne Moody. Frederick Douglass paved his own road to freedom while Anne Moody put her life on the line fighting for the rights that she knew she deserved. Although time frames apart, both Frederick Douglass and Anne Moody were able to resist and fight racism due to their thirst for knowledge, the help they extended towards other blacks, and their faith in succeeding despite previous failures.

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” This famous quote is from a speech given by one of America’s most influential abolitionist speakers, Frederick Douglass. Born into slavery, this great American leader led a life many of us would find impossible to bear. After gaining his freedom from slavery, Douglass shared his stories through impressive speeches and vivid autobiographies, which helped America move forward as a country liberated from racial inequality. Although Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave allows readers to understand what life was like for slaves in antebellum America, the most important and relevant lesson to take away from this narrative today is the importance of perseverance. Douglass’s courage to resist and learn paired with his determination to keep his faith and ultimately find himself, is something to which people from every culture and time period can relate.

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.

Octavia Butler’s science fiction classic “Bloodchild” is the coming of age story told from the point of view of Gan. The story takes place on an alien planet the very night that Gan becomes a man. One might expect a highly masculine, ritualistic ceremony or event, but Butler turns the tables. In order to become a man Gan must be impregnated by an insectoid like alien named T’Gatoi. Cages have often been symbolic in literature as a means of subjugation, the cages in “Bloodchild” are imperative to the story in the same way. Through the explicit use of imagery, metaphor, prose and irony, Butler creates a story reflective of the sufferings of American Slavery, of life as an African American woman and causes the reader to reevaluate the way they treat others. “Bloodchild” has won multiple awards including the Nebula and Hugo Awards and an award for best science fiction novelette from the Science Fiction Chronicle (Heifitz). Butler gains literary notability by creating a work so horrifyingly believable, that is reflective of slavery and discrimination, it is a powerful story that pushes the reader to thoughts and ideas that might not have otherwise been explored.

Over the last one hundred and thirty years African Americans have little by little-gained freedom for themselves as slaves and domestic servants. Now as a culture they are legally capable of obtaining jobs and positions in all areas of private and public organizations, (Hayes, A. F., & Preacher, K. J., 2010). This particular ethnic group are known to be instrumental in holding their cultures together through times of constant struggle. They have used rallies, protests, silent marches and received help from volunteer organizations to fight for rights as well as obtain justice in a racist and sexist society. This work explores the troubles African Americans face in Americas society today, through stereotypes and how gender roles as African Americans differ from each other as well as the American population.

Octavia Butler’s Dawn explores a world of the unknown after humans nearly destroy their kind along with Earth, causing an extraterrestrial species to intervene. The protagonist, Lilith, finds herself in a predicament as she is captured and locked in solidarity for a long. The extraterrestrial species that intervenes, Oankali, strip her of her clothes, mysteriously cut her and then tell her it is her role to mother a group of humans and prepare them for a return to Earth. In the novel Lilith is conflicted, she knows she has no control of her body and that humans have been “enslaved” by the Oankali but begins to trust and connect with them, especially Nikanj. Through the relationship of Lilith and Nikanj side by side with Humans and the Oankali, Octavia Butler explores the monstrous aspects of people and acts within the cultures.

Octavia Butler wrote of an advanced alien race far superior than the primitive human. The Oankali had the ability to communicate through a linked neural network of all living things on their ship and share information in a “collective consciousness”. I will show that Butler’s Dawn, described a narrative where a more evolved consciousness like the Oankali’s, is the key to saving the human race from destroying ourselves and our planet in the nuclear age. We will see how this idea of a higher or combined consciousness has played a role in other literature, like the cyber network in Neuromancer, and the controlled consciousness of The Matrix 1999 movie.

Octavia Butler's Kindred is a unique entry to the Slave Narrative tradition. Kindred uses time travel to enable the main character, Edana, who only known as Dana in the novel, to travel back to the slave era to meet a specific branch of her family tree. The science-fiction elements of this novel are the reasons I would classify this novel as a Neo-slave narrative. While it could be debated whether or not the novel could be classified as a slave narrative in any way, its focus on slavery and the trauma that slaves endured help make its case for being placed in the neo-slave narrative genre.