Kindred, By Octavia Butler Essay

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."

Michelle Alexander begins chapter one with what amounts to a critical race summary of how African American were put into slavery by the political elites that made a separation of black and lower class whites after the Bacon Rebellion. After the Bacon rebellion plantation owners decided to ship in slaves from Africa instead of slaves or indentured servants from Europe because they thought that the African slaves would be less likely to form an alliance with the poor whites and the white indentured servants. She

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.

The main conflict of the novel stems from Dana’s transition and how it impacts her relationships, as well as her overall societal perception. The novel examines multiple relationships, but perhaps the most compelling is Dana’s relationship with the Banks family. We are first introduced to Dana through teenaged Carly Banks, daughter of divorced parents Allison and Will Banks. Carly is in the

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,

This theme helps illuminate how black people came to be treated in America both when slavery existed and beyond into today’s society. The theme that black people are disposable bodies within American society. Because of the tradition of treating black people as objects or whose value strictly came from their ability to make profit, the idea of what it means to be black in America is imbedded in the danger of losing one’s body. Although slavery has ended, the racism remains as a violence inflicted on black people’s bodies. Coates is more than happy to emphasize that racism is an instinctive practice.

Throughout American history, minority groups were victims of American governmental policies, and these policies made them vulnerable to barbaric and inhumane treatment at the hands of white Americans. American slavery is a telling example of a government sanctioned institution that victimized and oppressed a race of people by indoctrinating and encouraging enslavement, racism and abuse. This institution is injurious to slaves and slave holders alike because American society, especially in the south, underwent a dehumanization process in order to implement the harsh and inhumane doctrine. In the episodic autobiography Narrative of the

The Unclear Silence How you ever felt the need to hide emotions such as anger, fear, hatred behind silence? In the novel Kindred, Octavia E. Butler uses a motif to show how African-Americans hid their emotions behind silence. A motif is an object or idea that repeats itself throughout a literary work. Silence was a way African-Americans used to get out of trouble or to hide their emotions towards White supremacy. The development of silence in Butler’s Kindred illustrates how the idea of white supremacy dehumanized, and brutalized African Americans in the 1800s, and that the effects of such brutal, and dehumanization are still present in society today.

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.

Secondly, the discrepancy between times moves the drama in the plot along, in particular, Dana’s relationship with Rufus. Once Dana learns that her purpose is to protect the life of Rufus, in order to continue her own family line, she takes on the maternal role. She teaches him the lessons of discipline and respect for others that have been considered the parents role:

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,

My paper is an attempt to analyze the entire era of slavery and its later effects upon the lives of Africans who were brought forcefully to America as slaves and even after its abolition were treated inhumanly. My major attempt is to get an in depth insight of the struggles of these people for their survival in such an environment and the predicament of black women who were doubly oppressed; were the victims of both the whites and black men; and treated as naked savages and beasts, with Alice Walker’ masterpiece and Pulitzer prize winning The Color Purple. I have taken this project with my keen interest because the novel touched me deeply and I wanted to analyze it thoroughly.

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

Common themes found in history and into today’s society are big versus small, new versus old and most prominently majority versus minority. Looking in the past, these themes are seen in the history of the United States, where minority races have been punished and oppressed as seen through the enslavement of African Americans and the internment of Japanese Americans. The hardships of slavery greatly affected their mindset and lasted throughout the rest of their lives. One man wrote to his son “A society which spelled out . . . that you were a worthless human being. You were not expected to aspire to excellence” (Baldwin). Victims of slavery and oppression are no longer seen this way and I began to question what caused this change in perspective.