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The Experience of Characters in Kindred by Octavia E. Butler Essay

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This novel starts off on June 9, 1976, in California with an African American Girl named Dana on her 26th birthday with her husband Kevin and are moving into their new home. Kevin has started to unpack his office and Dana is unpacking books. Then Kevin walks out of the office to talk to Dana when Dana all of a sudden starts to get dizzy and Dana then finds herself in a grove of trees thats in the late 1800’s in the state of Maryland by a nearby river when she spots a young boy drowning named Rufus. She then goes into the river to save the unconscious boy. Once the boy has came back to life and she dealt with his mother she reappears back into her apartment. Several minutes later she begins to feel dizzy again and then disappears. This …show more content…

Alice then eventually kills herself and because of that Rufus also nearly kills himself. Rufus then clings to Dana because she’s just like Alice but he then tries to rape Dana but in doing so, Dana stabs Rufus and kills him. Dana then immediately appears back at her apartment all beaten up.
The writing style that Octavia Butler is very simple. Nothing in this novel is very dramatized or extremely brutal. Although it t does have a few very dramatic and sad at points when it talks about Dana getting beat up and Allice hanging herself. The feeling is very dark and kind of dingy because of all the slavery in this book that the characters go through. This novel has a lot to do with slavery back in the 1800’s. It kind of talks about the life of some African Americans back in the 1800’s and some being worked on the Weylin Plantation. It has a lot of violence and deals with whipping, hangings, rape, and many other brutal actions.
The culture in this books is African American. The African American culture that this book goes through is the life of an African American in the 1800’s. Back in the 1800’s African Americans were treated very differently than they are treated today. Butler focuses on some of the aspects that they had to go through. Such as slavery, rape, and getting abused and beaten. African Americans weren't allowed to do a whole lot. They had to always live in fear.
The tone in

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