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Literature reflects society theories
Literature reflects society theories
Portrayal of african american in literature
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The relationship between slave and master. One of the the most complicated, unspoken of relationships in history. The book Kindred by Octavia E. Butler tells a compelling story of the relationship between a white man and an african american woman during slavery in the 1800’s. The tale starts with a woman, Dana, who travels back in time to 1800’s where she meets Rufus a young white boy. Throughout the story Dana learns about slavery through her experiences with Rufus and he eventually teaches her to truly understand the relationship between master and slave. Dana and Rufus’ relationship consists of them both having safety in each other. One of the first times Dana travels back in time to the 1800’s she begins to contemplate why she continues …show more content…
In an occurrence while Dana tries to stop Rufus from selling an african american man from his family, the two have an unforgettable confrontation, Dana said. “Please, rufe. If you do this, you’ll destroy what you mean to preserve. Please don’t… He hit me… It was the breaking of an unspoken agreement between us — a very basic agreement — and he knew it.”(Butler, 238) For the first time Dana’s sense of safety with Rufus is lost. when Rufus betrays her as she has anticipated for a long time, she is filled with fear. Rufus and Dana's relationship for the first time shifts. Before the two had an unspoken agreement to protect each other, but Rufus forgets himself and breaks that trust. He is use to treating the african american people as if they are nothing, he forgets that Dana is the exception. In a final moment in the 1800’s with Rufus, Dana experiences the most fearful moment of her life, while she thinks to herself. “He was not hurting me, would not hurt me if I remained as I was. He was not his father, old and ugly, brutal and disgusting. He smelled of soap, as though he had bathed recently—for me? The red hair was neatly combed and a little damp. I would never be to him what Tess had been to his father—a thing passed around like the whiskey jug at a husking. He wouldn’t do that to me or sell me or . . .“No." A slave was a …show more content…
She learns the relationship of slave and master during slavery was complicated. Without Rufus to teach and guide her through this experience in slavery Dana would have never truly understood what she went
The book Kindred is about a women named Dana, a present day African American women. She ends up traveling from California, where she lives with her husband Kevin, who is Caucasian, back to the antebellum South. Dana only goes back in time when Rufus needs her help and each time she is there she seems to stay longer. Rufus is a white slave owner son. Slavery had previously existed throughout history, in many times and most places. What does it mean to be a slave or an enslaved person? To be a slave is to be owned by another person. Slavery to me seems like the imagery of hell. I imagine hell being something you cannot escape. A place where your soul burns internally. You might beg, cry, or even pray but nothing will help the predicament you
There are various literary moments in the novel that suggest that Dana is a slave to time travel. First of all, the most obvious and important notion that she was taken back in time “ to [not only] insure the survival of one accident-prone small boy, but to ensure my family’s survival, my own birth.” (p. 29). Dana is responsible for the existence of her family and herself and she can’t do anything about it. She never chose or asked to save everybody, it just happened. Time travel made her a slave to her future and the future of her family. Additionally, Butler shows Rufus as Dana’s slaveholder through time. In fact, Dana is called to the past by Rufus as a slave would be called to his or her master. She has no choice but to go and help him. Also, Butler illuminates Dana’s enslavement further by making Rufus able to see and hear Dana before she actually travels in time. Earlier in the book when Rufus is just a child he “saw you [Dana] inside a room. I could see part of the room, and there were books all around - more than daddy’s library” (p.22). This last quote can be linked to the idea that the master always knows what the slaves are saying or doing, and if he doesn’t, the overseer or other slaves do. Liza, the slave that tells on Dana is a clear example. Even though she is also a slave she “betrays” Dana by telling Weylin that she has escaped. Furthermore, Rufus
Prior to the mistress’ change, Frederick Douglas, author of The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas (1995) describes her as “a woman of the kindest heart and finest feelings.” (19) This brings us to one of Douglas’ motifs of how slavery can carry a fatal poison that if one possess’ can change their outsight to life. This poison affects some people more then others. For example, if one compares all of Douglas’ slave owners, it is easy to see that those born into a slave holding family are less likely to become as cruel as those marrying into that way of life. Auld did not convert to an evil lifestyle overnight, in fact, she was the key to Frederick Douglas’ education.
battle her conscious mainly because she doesn’t know if she is morally bound to let Rufus live or die. Dana begins to slowly understand her life relies on Rufus’s actions after she has been put into several situations in which she has had to save his life. She starts to ponder and make the conclusion that if Rufus survives, she will also survive and make it back to California. Dana continues to go along with this mindset for a while, but eventually she starts to second-guess it, and therefore fights her conscious.
Many people often wonder what would it be like to time travel. Would it be fun or scary? Would they change the past and future or keep it the same? Would it change them as a person or break them? For Dana, one of the main characters of Kindred, she went through all of that. Kindred by Octavia E. Butler is about Dana, an African-American woman, who travels back to the antebellum South to preserve her existence in the present. When she goes into the past, she meets her ancestor Rufus, a white slave owner, and she tries to stop him from becoming a racist. Dana's efforts to make her ancestor change his ways fail because he becomes dangerous and racist. This results in Dana killing her ancestor, but this action does not affect her presence in
We discussed the details and differences between the types of slavery mentioned in the book, and they became just as confused and angry as I was.... ... middle of paper ... ... This book is also one of the first non-fiction books that I’ve had to write a reaction to.
Nowadays, students describe slavery based on what they read or learned. Students cannot be able to understand the true meaning behind the word “slavery.” The only people that can understand are the ones who went through it. For them, it is hard to look back from the most brutality and sorrowful years of their lives and yet they chose to write their experience. That is why in school, teachers are requiring narrative books for students to understand the main character’s point of view and apply the moral story to the real world. One of the famous books that English teachers are recommending is the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: an American Slave. It also includes two different introductions of Houston Baker and Peter Gomes and an
She mysteriously travelled back to the past whenever Rufus was in life-threatening danger. To Rufus, Dana is his hope for survival as she saved him from the dangers. To Dana, Rufus is also her hope for future, hoping for the birth of her grandmother and so she would still exist. She hoped to change Rufus so that he would treat slaves better and might free them in the future. On the other hand, it seemed impossible to change Rufus because of the environment and people he was surrounded by, being born in a slave-owning family in which he grew up learning his superior status over black people, calling them “Niggers” and whipped them when they disobeyed orders. Even though Rufus didn’t become the man Dana expected him to be, he was somewhat an improvement of his father, instead of selling all his children that were half black, he learned to treat them better and provide them with education, “It wasn’t until after Rufus left that I realized Joe had called him ‘Daddy’ ” (Butler 225). At the end of the story, both Kevin and Dana didn’t seem to feel sorry about Rufus death, but they tried to rebuild their life and move forward, which seem to represent resilience from the past and hope towards the
Celia, a Slave, a book by author Melton McLaurin, shows the typical relationship between a slave woman and her master in America during the 1850s. The story is the perfect example of how relationships between slave and their masters and other non-blacks within the community. This is shown through Celia’s murder of her slave owner, Robert Newsom. It was also shown through the community’s reaction that was involved in unraveling her court case. The Celia personal story illustrated how slave women was treated by their slave owners and how the laws wasn’t effective at protecting slave during the 1850s. Celia’s story help shed light on woman injustices, unconstitutional rights and most importantly racial issues/discrimination.
Butler teaches the importance of freedom by having Dana fight to try to free or help the other slaves in the 1800s. Rufus falls out of a tree and breaks his leg when Dana is sent back to him but this time with her husband (Kevin). Rufus asks Dana to come to the manor with him so she goes to help his leg heal. Dana is living in Rufus's house in 1819 pretending to be her husband’s slave. Dana chooses she will fight to help all of the slaves of the plantation get their freedom or write their own way to freedom, so she starts secretly teaching a young slave boy by the name of Nigel to read and write. Kevin responds to this by saying “‘Do a good job with Nigel… Maybe when you’re gone, he’ll be able to teach others.”’ (Butler, 101). This shows her dedication to freeing the other slaves by risking her life to teach Nigel to read and write. A mute slave girl by the name of Carrie, sees Dana teaching Nigel and she points to the book, Dana sees that Carrie wants to read and write as well. She sees this as another oppurtinity of them writing their own freedom. Dana will risk anything to help the slaves learn to
The scene started when Dana walked into the barn where once she had been whipped. She tried to get used to the darkness. After a few seconds, she saw someone hanging by the neck. The person hanging was Alice. Dana looked at her and touched her not believing what she was seeing. She looked at Alice's dress, shoes and hair. Dana thought that Alice had dressed up for her death. Dana cut the rope to take her down. Rufus finally walked in. He did not want to look at Dana. Dana asked Rufus if she did it that to herself and he answered yes. Then, Dana asked him for the reason but she did not get an answer. She desired to ask about Alice's children. Rufus moved his head and walked out of the bard.
In the novel, the author proposes that the African American female slave’s need to overcome three obstacles was what unavoidably separated her from the rest of society; she was black, female, and a slave, in a white male dominating society. The novel “locates black women at the intersection of racial and sexual ideologies and politics (12).” White begins by illustrating the Europeans’ two major stereotypes o...
The issue of Slavery in the South was an unresolved issue in the United States during the seventeenth and eighteenth century. During these years, the south kept having slavery, even though most states had slavery abolished. Due to the fact that slaves were treated as inferior, they did not have the same rights and their chances of becoming an educated person were almost impossible. However, some information about slavery, from the slaves’ point of view, has been saved. In this essay, we are comparing two different books that show us what being a slave actually was. This will be seen with the help of two different characters: Linda Brent in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Frederick Douglass in The Narrative of the life of Frederick
Alice and Kevin have an interesting start to their relationship. Initially, it appears that Dana is not interested in Kevin, as she tries to reject communication and his advances through buying her lunch. This distance on Dana’s part allows readers to contemplate whether Dana is put off by Kevin’s obtrusive attitude because he is a man, because he is white, or a combination of the two. As the novel advances, Butler continues to focus Kevin’s faults in his marriage because of his identity as a white man.
Slave women were also subjected to sexual abuse by their masters. The masters demanded sexual relations from the slave women they found desirable. They did this without any consideration of their own personal marital status and that of the slave. There was tension between slave husbands of abused women and their masters often resulting in fights between the two. Slave women were also subjected to jealousy and rage from mistresses whose husbands’ engaged in these illicit affairs. In conclusion, the slave could not expect to enjoy a fulfilling relationship with the master. The very essence of slavery was cruel and demeaning, making it difficult for any meaningful and mutually satisfying relationship to exist.