What Is The Theme Of The Kindred

This turns out to be an ironic contrast to life at the Weylin plantation, where a slave who visits his wife without his master's permission is brutally whipped. Perhaps a more painful realization for Dana is how this cruel treatment oppresses the mind. "Slavery of any kind fostered strange relationships," she notes, for all the slaves feel the same strange combination of fear,

“I came back for [Alice’s mother], but you’re just like her” (Butler, 42). The patroller had come for Alice’s mother, but instead found Dana. Still he decided she was good enough and proceeded in his attack, in which Dana was almost raped. Women were seen and used as sexual objects, until the man decided when he was over it. They were easily replaceable and thrown around. Weylin had casually begun taking [Tess] to bed, and had hurt her. Apparently, she paid her debts” (Butler, 159). Tess, the slave who took care of the laundry, had to deal with recurring sexual assault from her master Tom Weylin. Since Tess was owned by him, he could do what he pleased to her because she could not fight back. After her grew tired of her, Weylin passed her over to the overseer, without any consideration to her or her health. Rufus pursues Dana even when it was clear from the beginning that Dana wanted no sexual relationship with him. Feeling defeated, Rufus begins to come onto Dana, “so what else do I have to lose?” (Butler, 259). After Alice’s death, Rufus feels as if he has

Neer the very beginning of the novel Dana is experiencing her second return to the past and is greeting her relatives when the father of Alice, her great great… grandmother, is being dragged away because he is presumed to be a runaway slave of the slave master, Tom Weylin. After that mess with Alice’s father clears, the patroller questions Dana as to who she is. When she can’t answer, the patroller drags her out of the home, and she tries to escape with no success. “The man tackled me and brought me down hard. At first, I lay stunned, unable to move or defend myself even when he began hitting me, punching me with his fists. I had never been beaten that way before - would never have thought that I could absorb so much punishment without losing consciousness.” After she is brutally beaten for a while, she scrambles and musters up the strength to bring a limb down onto the man’s head and runs fast and far away from the unconscious man who almost killed her. Although Dana’s tenacity might have come as a surprise to the readers, Butler also does a fabulous job of revealing how Dana is even surprised by her capability and how she can survive through her power as well as her

As depicted in, “‘You wouldn’t hurt me until something frustrated you, made you angry or jealous. You wouldn’t hurt me until someone hurt you. Rufe, I know you’” (256). In this quote, Rufus is trying to convince Dana to stay in his time. He is telling her he would not harm her. This shows how Dana has lost faith in her understanding with Rufus in which they need each other too much to hurt one another. It shows that because of Rufus’s impulsive behavior, Dana has lost trust in Rufus to not harm her. This quote shows that Dana and Rufus’s relationship has developed into one of no trust or general ground rules. It has developed as Rufus has aged. As a further matter, not only has Dana lost trust with Rufus, but Rufus has lost faith in Dana to keep him safe. Shown in, “Rufus wasn’t afraid of dying. Now, in his grief, he seemed almost to want death. But he was afraid of dying alone, afraid of being deserted by the one person he had depended on for so long” (257). In this quote, the person Dana is referring to as “The one person he had depended on for so long,” is herself. This quote shows that because of Dana coming and going into Rufus’s time, Rufus has lost faith in Dana. Rufus truly has depended on Dana to come and save him when he was in desperate need, and he

Lily’s first meeting with the black Mary occurs when she meets the Boatwright sisters: August, June, and May. At that moment Lily feels the nurturing of a mother and a deluge of emotions rain down on her. She could feel all sides of her, favorable and detrimental because “that’s what the black Mary did to me, made me feel my glory and my shame at the same time,” (Kidd 71). Lily, for being barely an adolescent, at first is not capable of grasping the concept of people being both angelic and corrupt. At the beginning of the story she sees T. Ray as the human embodiment of evil. Counter to her initial beliefs, Lily learns that people are not as simple as she wants them to be. This is largely the result of the mothering force of August, which is a more physical representation of what the black Mary embodies. The black Mary illustrates Lily starting to see the world from a multidimensional perspective. In the same manner as the black Mary representing a mother for Lily, she represents a mother-like figure to all the Daughters of Mary. While the other Daughters may not have been missing mothers, the black Mary creates a family-like binding between them, keeping them together throughout even them most poignant times. The black Mary is a mother to all and all Lily wants in the Boatwright house is to be seen as one of them. Ultimately, “they didn’t even think of me being different,” (Kidd 209). This acceptance

Dana realizes pretty quickly that the handwork, rape and brutal punishments that slaves face are far worse than anything she could

Butler first describes the scenery of where she is living by stating she lived in Southern California. She then states that Dana is transported to Maryland in 1815. “I was in a green pace. I was at the edge of woods. Before me was a wide tranquil river... [13]” From this acute description, the reader can imagine that Dana is at a place that is not urban like Southern California in 1976. As the story progresses,

Patton, 1993). Hence, the Mammy in the white household is seen as an intelligent servant to the white family, solving wisely and even god-like every duty she has to fulfill. Unsurprisingly, she constantly balances between the white and the black community, being a spokesman for the black minority (cf. Atkinson 2004, 2). Although the black servant is a slave within a white household, the Mammy is portrayed as being content with her way of living, having a satisfying master-servant relationship and feeling not inferior, but rather seeing herself as a member of the family (cf. Jewell, 1993: 38). In acquiescence with Kimberly Wallace-Sanders, the image of the Mammy has been applied to create an atmosphere of racial harmony within the slave system (cf. 2008: 13). Hence, the role of the Mammy in the late 19th century and beginning of the 20th century is established in effort to create an image of the Mammy contrasting to the stereotypical image of the African American slave, who is inferior to the white

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

Kindred is a novel written by Octavia Butler, it has a unique mix of historical fiction and science fiction. The novel follows the story of Dana, a black woman who travels back in time to the 1800s, as she saves her ancestors from death and lives on a plantation. Dana goes through a lot, but the book doesn’t show much change in her character. Aside from losing her arm, getting scars and getting used to being abused; Dana doesn’t change at all. Her opinions remain the same, she doesn’t have any revelations or show any indication that she learned something from her experiences.

Kindred takes place in two different time periods, on two different sides of America. This makes the differences in the place and time very different. Not only has Dana’s home of California not yet been discovered, but she ends up in the antebellum south, in the early 17th century. When Dana does go back to the early 17th century, she must save Rufus from whatever danger he is in, and then can leave when she is in danger. This often leaves her stranded in Rufus’ time, unable to leave. During this time, she had to either do slave labor, or help Rufus with whatever he needed her to do. However, Dana often bends to what Rufus wants, even if it is bad for others around her. In Kindred, Dana is usually more harmful than she is helpful, as she almost always bends to Rufus' will.

This also illustrates how Dana believes she can have a lasting effect on Rufus, to steer him away from the ways of his father. However, she only has a limited period of time to shed her 20th century mentality on him. And, Rufus’ change is not gradual relative to Dana, because every time she returns, she finds Rufus years older, and acting that much more like his father.

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 '

From the beginning, the house and clothing functions as the daughter has to have cleanliness because people are always watching and will judge her reputation and social class. Kincaid states, “this is how to hem a dress when you see the hem coming down and so to prevent yourself from looking like the slut I know you are so bent on becoming” (17). In this line, the mother gives a clear understanding of why the clothes must be properly taken care of because, no matter what, people seem to be watching the appearance of clothes worn, looked and they will treat someone the way they think that someone should be treated if they are dressed indecent. The mother speaks to her daughter with a commanding tone and never says “please” when giving

Dana?s master Rufus treats her much the same. Once he grows into a young man, he too becomes obsessed with her and makes every attempt to seduce her. He is often kind and sweet but once rejected he becomes enraged and violent. Dana recalls,