Octavia Butler's Kindred: Character Analysis

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By definition, survival is to continue to live in spite of challenging circumstances. Survival is an instinct that everyone has and people are usually compelled to make tough decisions in order to survive. What happens when those decisions could be pernicious to innocent people and even ruin their lives? Octavia Butler explores this idea in her novel Kindred. The main character Dana Franklin is forced to make some complex decisions in order to survive. Dana is sent back in time to the 1800s to help a little boy. She soon discovers that the little boy is actually Rufus Weylin, her ancestor and she must continue to help him in complicated situations throughout his life because without him she will never come into existence. She goes back and forth between the Antebellum South and her home in 1976 and even brings her husband along. In Kindred, Butler uses Dana’s choices to explore the idea of survival and how people handle the difficult …show more content…

Dana‘s character uses many examples to show the reader this throughout the novel. She often has to make these types of decision and is left questioning everything she thought was true. She wonders if death would be better than slavery, frequently in the novel and at the end of the book her thoughts about slavery have changed because she now has some perspective. She questioned whether or not she should kill another human being in order to keep herself safe.How could things have been different if Dana had made some different decisions? There are numerous problematic choices that people will run into in life and must often choose to stay true to their character or do what they need to in order to survive. Octavia Butler does a wonderful job of using her character, Dana, to present this idea to the

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