Octavia Butler Kindred Comparison

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

Language has an effect on everyone; it can be used to help and to hurt others. .In Octavia Butler’s Kindred, Dana, one of the main characters, can time travel back the Antebellum South to different points in her ancestor's life. Rufus Weylin her ancestor owns slaves. Octavia Butler uses Dana’s place in the Antebellum South to show how language affects the slaves and their owners. In Kindred, Octavia Butler uses Dana’s experiences in the Antebellum South to portray the strength of language and it’s ability to empower and celebrate others or to control and manipulate others. In doing so, Butler shows how language can be used to both debilitate and celebrate the slaves and how language can also be used to strengthen the slave owners and to humble them.

In “The Author to Her Book,” Bradstreet is inundated in indecision and internal struggles over the virtues and shortfalls of her abilities and the book that she produced. As human beings we associate and sympathize with each other through similar experiences. It is difficult to sympathize with someone when you don’t know where they are coming from and don’t know what they are dealing with. Similar experiences and common bonds are what allow us to extend our sincere appreciation and understanding for another human being’s situation. In this poem an elaborate struggle between pride and shame manifests itself through an extended metaphor in which she equates her book to her own child.

Another theme that shows human nature is dark and light. One of human natures greatest characteristics is good and evil, which can also be seen as light and darkness. Charles Dickens put light verses darkness in the two main female characters to explain what our life’s upbringing leads to our human nature personalities. In the chapter

Rufus Weylin is an unsympathetic character in the novel and this shows in just how selfish he is and how far he takes things just to get his way. In Kindred Rufus Weylin pretends

Many conflicts has emerged during the time when Dana was transported back into 1776, the period where slaves thrived in the South. Dana was considered a slave due to her slightly dark skin, and therefore she struggled to play the part of a slave, even though her only motive for traveling back in time was to assure the existence of her family lineage by helping Rufus, her white ancestor, survive as he recklessly gets injured, nearing death’s door several times. With the help of her white husband, Kevin, who accidentally gets transported to the past with her, Dana’s life becomes more safe, stable, and secure, until a deadly whip from Tom Weylin caused her to teleport back into her own time, leaving her husband in the traumatic period of history

Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred travels through time, alternating from present to past enabling one to obtain an understanding of what life was like for African Americans in the antebellum south and present day California. Butler incorporates personal events and challenges into the characters and the events that occur within her writing. She was born in Pasadena, California where she resided for the greater part of her life (Octavia). Butler’s parents gave birth to five children; she being the only one to survive infancy. Her father died shortly after these devastations, leaving Butler and her mother to support themselves by working on a plantation. Butler’s mother was a domestic which contributed to the understanding Butler showed towards the

Alice is a very light skinned, black woman who could pass off as white without any makeup. She works as a supervisor of case work in city welfare. She came from the one of the richest Negro families on the West Coast. She is, in Bob’s mind,

In the novel Kindred by Octavia Butler is about courage and reveals that one who is willing to sacrifice their safety for others is a benevolent person and is almost guaranteed, respect, or hatred from the people around them. The book Kindred demonstrates the three rules needed to write a successful book. They are the setting, good imagery, and symbolism. These rules should be the base of any great book.

In “A good man is hard to find”, revelations” and “Everything that rises must converge” by Flannery O’Connor clearly portray a theme of racism based on selfishness, pride and grace. All three main characters undergo a prophecy like moment that eventually leads to the loss of their dignity and selfish attitude and in turn they each achieve grace. This paper will provide a detailed analysis on how all three main characters go from being selfish to eventually self-analyzing themselves and in turn they mature and gain grace and change the way they view others. My investigation of these stories will show how each protagonist had to experience some form of tragedy in order to become self-aware of the way people perceive them. O’Connor presents in these stories how each main character and also in reality people in life need to be brought to a tragic like moment in life that causes them to not continue in the ways they are accustomed to.

In the book “Divergent” by Veronica Roth, the character’s loving and assertive qualities contribute to the author’s message that fight for the things you know are right.

Albert Camus creates a series of characters in The Stranger whose personality traits and motivations mirror those that are overlooked by the average man. Camus develops various characters and scenarios that are considered rude and unpleasant, but because it has become common, society accepts it as norms. Camus incorporates atrocious personality traits of the characters, variety, consistency, and everyone’s fate through the creation of the characters.

Human nature is something that never seems to change. While humans all seem to be different from one another through physical and emotional attributes, their psychological behaviors are all mostly very similar. In the late 18th century and early 19th century, many authors successfully could explain the characteristics of human nature and the effects that it has on everyone and everything surrounding human beings. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Edgar Allen Poe all convey the behavior of human nature in separate ways. These three authors show the curiosity, drive for perfection, and fear of human nature throughout their texts in detail. With these characteristics being prominent in human nature itself, it

When the same person features in the literature of two different stories written by the same author, they often show differences between behavior and description.

Physical power and the sense of being in control is something that is always desired; however, it proves inferior to a more valuable asset: knowledge. Intellectual power is the sole factor that enables us to make logical descensions, differentiate between right and wrong, and most importantly it defines who we are as humans. The value of education is depicted in Octavia Butler’s Kindred, when Dana’s intellect clashes with Tom Weylin’s authority over the slaves. First, the slave owners prominently loathe educated slaves; moreover, they repeatedly hinder Dana’s ability to educate the enslaved. Furthermore, the slave owners recognize the power that stems from education, which is resembled when the slave owners desire to learn how to read. However,