The Theme Of Slavery In Octavia Butler's Kindred

This time when she comes back she is saves Rufus’s room from burning down. Dana ask Rufus a series of question such as why she is here, what year it is, and why did he try to burn down his house. Rufus replies saying that he is upset that his father has sold a horse that he wanted. Dana also discovers that she is traveling back in time to save Rufus which is her great grandfather. She understands that she needs to keep him alive in order for her to live. When Dana realize what time period she is in she is frighten because it is during slavery. At this point Dana understands that she has gone back into time to experience the horrors of slavery and prejudice first hand. Dana tells Rufus that she needs to get out of his room because his father could come in his room at any moment. So, Rufus tells Dana of a little girl named Alice that lives not far from his house her mother and her are free blacks. When Dana sees them she believes that they are her ancestors. While at Alice’s house she sees physical abuse and she also endures the abuse herself. As Dana fights for her life she faints back into the present. When Dana is back at home in the present time she understands that when Rufus is in trouble and she is called to his side and when she wants to return to the present time she put her own life in jeopardy.

Alice ultimately has the most power in the book. She might seem like the most powerless character because of her ethnicity and gender, but her resilience and ability to influence others makes her the most omnipotent. For instance, she was abused, threatened, and even raped by Rufus; but her constraint of giving him the one thing that he wanted made her hold the power over him. It all started when Rufus raped Alice for the first time and therefore was almost beaten to death by her fiance. Due to him being a slave Alice and her fiance decided to “just get away,” (119) before Rufus woke up and got him killed but

For example, Dana said, “I had thought that eventually, he would just rape her again,” (162) when speaking about what Rufus wanted to do to Alice. This shows how little power Alice has over Rufus. Alice is supposed to be a free woman, but Rufus makes her become his slave and he forces her to have sex with him against her will. Her lack of power as a slave means she has no say over Rufus and other slave owners, and that they can exploit her however they wish. In addition, when speaking to Dana, Alice said “I don’t care what he wants. If I thought it would make him free my children, I’d try to do it. But he lies! And he won’t put it down on no paper.” (232) Alice had stayed with Rufus and hoped that he would write freedom papers for Hagar and Joe if she pretended to love him, which sadly he did not do. Since Alice did not have power as a slave, she wanted to run away in hopes of giving her children a chance at freedom that she never got. As a slave, Alice did not have much power and therefore suffered in the hands of Rufus and other slave owners who had power over

In Kindred, by Olivia Butler a main character name Dana traveled back in time where she battled the face of inequalities. Danas journey back to the past is to help the readers understand what African-Americans had to experience and what they had to go through as a slave to be a free person. There was a lack of human rights for blacks, blacks were vulnerability with sexual assault and rape. Dana had dealt with her own experiences has being a slave with discrimination from Rufus, rape, racism, and abuse. She had self taught herself about slavery which gave her knowledge to prepare herself for what she had coming.

In Kindred by Octavia Butler, the main character, Dana, travels back in time from nineteen seventy-six in California to Maryland in the eighteen-hundreds. She travels to the Weylin plantation where she realizes that they were her ancestors. Dana experienced first hand the brutality and suffrage that they faced. She too must learn how to survive in a time where blacks are believed to be below white men and considered sub-human. This novel goes into detail and the brutality of what it is like to be a black woman in the antebellum south and have all of her rights taken away.

“She thinks of when she fought a flood…There are some things a bushwoman just cannot do… she cried then.” The woman crying shapes our understanding of her mental strength, after everything living in the bush has thrown at her, being reduced to tears and physically beaten she stays strong. Willing to endure even more the environment can throw at her. Burton also uses flashbacks to add depth to Alice’s character; the flashbacks are symbolic of the decline in her imagination, her willingness to try the ‘impossible’ and a symbol of her conformity. These flashbacks are also a sad reminder of the passing of her father; he was one to encourage the use of her imagination and believing in impossible things. Her current adventure in Underland is very different to the first because she has forgotten to believe in the impossible; once she crosses this barrier Absolum confesses she is again the ‘real Alice’.

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,

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.

First published in 1979, Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred is a unique novel, which can be categorized both as a modern-day slave narrative, and as a science fiction time-travel tale. In the novel, Butler uses time-travel as a way to convey W.E.B. Du Bois’ theory of double-consciousness. Dubois’ theory is based on the idea that people of color have two identities, both struggling to reconcile in one being. His theory about the complex nature of the African-American experience directly relates to Butler’s use of Kindred’s protagonist, Dana, and her experience time travelling as a modern-day African-American woman, and her experience of a pre-abolition, nineteenth-century slave.

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

Dana 's husband, Kevin also plays a key role in the novel as his treatment of her in front a slave owner (Rufus ' father) varies greatly from what was expected in that era. White people were expected to treat black people (free or not as inferior); Kevin almost always treated Dana as an equal in the novel. He was expected to treat her as Rufus '

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

Today's children learn and are influenced by their surrounding and environment. Children do not know any better; for them, it’s monkey see, monkey do. Today’s youth are taught to respect everyone of every race. However, back in the time of slaves, children were taught to despise blacks, and that's what most of them did. In the book Kindred, Dana Franklin journeys back and forth to the Antebellum South multiple times to see her past family who are slaves and the owner Rufus Weylin. On multiple occasions, Dana voyages back to the past to help Rufus when he is in danger, so her life does not become corrupt. Each time she goes back, different levels of danger await her. As Dana travels home and back to the past, she witnesses Rufus grow from

Octavia Butler’s Kindred focuses on the perspective of a black female within two drastically different societies ranging from the ideals of colonialism to a society of change and acceptance. Butler utilizes Dana’s position in society to portray the cruelty of slavery and the power that society can have on the ideals and morals of individuals, such as the developing character of Rufus. Throughout the book, the issue of slavery is addressed through a multitude of different themes that span across Dana’s different experiences and struggles. Butler aims to reveal the aspects of slavery from the perspective of Dana in order to emphasize the widespread effects of prejudice upon human rights. In addition, the contrast of societies also

is a battle that Alice can win, but sometimes as much as you want something, the