Octavia Butler's Use Of Language In Kindred

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

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."

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

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.

Rufus Weylin; a character first perceived as a young, curious and innocent boy, turns in to an over-obsessive and miserable tyrant. In Octavia Butler 's novel _Kindred_, the book revolves around the horrors of slavery in the United States in the early eighteen hundreds. White characters are given absolute power and control over black characters, and treat them like animals, making them live a long life of misery and unhappiness. As _Kindred_ unfolds, it becomes clear that Rufus turns in to a stereotypical slave owner and abuser. With every trip that Dana makes back to Rufus, there is a clear distinction of changes in his personality. He becomes more evil, over-obsessive and cruel as he gets older. In fact, he becomes very much like his

Only the best tactics and the quickest decisions can insure a win in a fight for survival. Dana Franklin, the main character in the novel Kindred, has what it takes to take on the cruel South and use those qualities to ensure survival. Due to a mysterious and confusing power she acquires, Dana can miraculously travel through time and reach her ancestors during the slavery period. With that power alone, she has to work hard to survive against the strongest, meanest, and craziest people she’s ever dreamed of to ensure the safety of herself and whom she cares. In addition to working hard, Dana has to witness and carry out what horrors fighting and struggling in the antebellum South was like. In Octavia Butler’s Kindred, Dana is seen fighting,

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,

In Octavia Butler’s Kindred, the chapter “The Fall” discusses many scenes when the use of radical experimentation comes into play. Throughout the entire novel, time travel is shown. However in “The Fall,” time travel is shown differently because Kevin joins Dana on her adventures that she really doesn’t want to be a part of but needs to be in order for her to be where she is today. A second example of radical experimentation shown in this chapter is when Dana and Kevin both try to teach Rufus values from their own time. “I didn’t say you were trash. I said how’d you like to be called trash. I see you don’t like it. I don’t like being called nigger either”(Kindred 61). This shows that they are teaching Rufus that it is not acceptable to call a black person a nigger and that he should treat others how he wants to be treated. However, in a traditional slave narrative and back in the 1800s, the whites treated all blacks poorly and called them whatever came to their mind. Radical experimentation is also shown when Kevin and Dana have to adjust to the lifestyle of the 1800s. They have to act as a master and slave in the 1800s. To the Weylins, they

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.

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.

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.

“Speech Sounds” is a short story written by Octavia Butler that follows the adventures of Rye in a dystopian world where a mysterious pandemic severely limits humankind’s ability to communicate. Written in the time period of the late 1970’s/early 1980’s, Rye as a female in a dystopian story is unusual and against the normal conventions for this genre of stories. So now Rye, a woman with the ability to speak, becomes the dominant female character throughout the story. This breakthrough fight against the norms allows Butler to take steps forward in feminist culture through the power of Rye’s character. Through Rye’s actions and dialogue, it is seen that she does not stand for man???????

Slavery in America lasted many centuries until it was finally abolished. Why did slavery seem to last so long? Slavery was the way of living and was a casual lifestyle for people. The book Kindred gives readers an insight on how slavery is in the 1800’s and how many people, even children, are involved in thinking slavery is a normal thing. Was the environment they live in to blame for this or does it just depend on the person?

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

By characterizing Sarah as powerless, Butler shows how women in the past were mistreated. Weylin likes to push his women slaves when he is angry to make them persist through life and make them have something to live for: “Weylin for instance had known just how far to push Sarah he had sold only 3 children left one to live for and protect” (Butler 169). Weylin had to “push Sarah” so that she would do more work for him. He did this by selling what was most precious to her. He left her “one” child to strive in life, so she could persist through her life in the plantation. With the burden of being far from her children, Sarah manages to become a strong woman. Rufus just like his father makes women slaves persist through hardships: “ Sent me to the field had me beaten made me spend nearly eight months sleeping on the floor” (Butler 245). Rufus has Dana beaten and sent to the field, so he can somebody making Dana persists through his anger and the