A Responsible Human Being In Kindred By Octavia Butler

1197 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Papers on racism in literature

In the novel Kindred by Octavia Butler, Dana reveals in the fight that she is drawn back again to a flashback of her husband Kevin talking to her in their kitchen; however, she realizes Kevin did not make it back to their home. Dana had a feeling of fainting and vomiting, and she realized that she would soon see Rufus and reconciled with her husband that she had not seen for months. Dana saw that Rufus was beaten by this young black male and there was a young lady who was frighten and had her clothes tore and told the man to run away and to leave Rufus. Then Rufus denies Dana’s help throughout the chapter. He says that he is a young adult and does not need her help at all. Later, in the chapter Rufus reveals that Dana’s fear would come to reality and that sooner Rufus will break the purity of the relationship they have. After that Dana, will realize the true colors that were reveal during Rufus confrontation with Kevin that almost resulted in a horrifying situation for Dana. Nonetheless, when it comes to relationship or treatment, every character differs from each other due to race, or how they …show more content…

Also, I believe that God created us all to be equal for He did not favor a color over another. Furthermore, I think it comes down to just being a human being and caring for one another without knowing their struggles in life. Another thing is that it’s just being a moral person and knowing how to make a right or wrong decision too. Yet, a responsible human being is a person who knows how to prioritize and seek when it is the right moment to seek help and comfort. After that it comes clear that being a responsible human being is to become kind to other people or animals. Now, there is a difference in the beliefs about what it means to be an adult and it tends to differ from people to

Show More
Related

  • Summary Of Caring Makes Us Human By Troy Chapman

    209 Words  | 1 Pages

    I had a few of the excerpts that I enjoyed but one of my favorites was Caring Makes Us Human by Troy Chapman. Just the title had me interested because I am someone who cares about other no matter what they have done in their past. This specific excerpt talks about how prisoners started taking care of a cat and felt grace. These prisoners have done some bad things to go to prison yet they can take care of this helpless animal and treat him like a king. Even the guard joined in or enjoyed watching the prisoners just simply talking to each other while petting the cute cat. They are the perfect example of what we should be as humans. Caring for people and things is what makes us human and a lot of people do not understand that yet. Everyone needs

    Read More

  • Power Exposed In Kindred By Octavia Butler

    1513 Words  | 4 Pages

    First, these works attest to the frequency of trauma and its importance as a multicontextual social issue, as it is a consequence of political ideologies, colonization, war, domestic violence, poverty, and so forth”(Vikory). Rufus is a representation of the white male system and having control over not just the slaves body but their mind and as any white save owner he thrives off that power.He has a desire to be loved and tries to control everything and everyone around him with out getting his hands dirty. Rufus morally knew it was wrong to force himself upon Alice, but instead he asks Dana to get Alice and persuade her to come to his bed. "Go to her. Send her to me. I'll have her whether you help or not. All I want you to do is fix it so I don't have to beat her. You're no friend of hers if you won't do that much!” (Butler 164). Rufus as a character feels remorse after he commits rape, divides families, and beat slaves. In all reallity he is just submitting to the cultural and social norms that are expected of any white slave

    Read More

  • People Can Change In Stray By Cynthia Rylant

    277 Words  | 1 Pages

    In the story Stray by Cynthia Rylant the theme is people can change. One example to show this theme is when Mr. Lacey said “ I sure don’t know where it came from but I sure know where it’s going.” This shows that at the beginning of the story Mr. Lacey was not going to let Doris keep the dog. But by the end of the story he ended up bringing the dog back after seeing where she would be living. For instance at the end of the story he changed, “I wouldn’t leave an ant at that place,” he said “So I brought the dog back.” It really showed that his attitude changed when he said “Well are you going to feed it or not?”This theme is shown throughout the story that if people want to they have the ability to change. Another example was when Doris changed

    Read More

  • Survival And Survival In Octavia Butler's 'Kindred'

    1218 Words  | 3 Pages

    How far would someone go to survive? All through life people go through various challenges, but when someone is facing death, how far would someone will they go to save oneself? Survival can mean many different things; such as making it through highschool without getting into trouble, fighting off a predator, or standing up for what is right to help others. In Kindred, Octavia Butler uses many different situations to show what survival means to her. For example, Dana, the main character, travels through time to save her ancestor Rufus thus experiencing times of near death predicaments. In Kindred, Octavia Butler uses the conflicts Dana experiences in her time travels to suggest the idea that people do things they wouldn’t normally

    Read More

  • Stability at Home vs. Fear in "Kindred" by Octavia Butler

    1273 Words  | 3 Pages

    Kindred by Octavia Butler has been a respected novel since its publication in 1979. In Kindred Butler provides readers with suspense until the last page. It provides readers with two definitions of a home. Home is a place where you feel safe where you have a family to come to when you are having a horrible day at work or at school. Home is a place where you share good and bad times with family and friends. A home is place of stability in your life. A home isn’t a place that you are scared to go to. A home isn’t a place filled with only negative thoughts and hopes. A home is not a place that you endured physical and mental abuse. Dana had a home of stability and a home filled with physical and mental abuse. Dana and her husband Kevin just moved into a new home that they just bought in Los Angeles, California. This is the best birthday gift she could ever receive because before she was living in a congested apartment. This is also the first day she starts to travel back into time to visit her plantation home in the early 1800s in Maryland. The distinctions between Los Angeles and Maryland present the differences in what makes a home.

    Read More

  • Moral Dilemmas In Kindred

    191 Words  | 1 Pages

    In the story, Kindred, an African American woman named Dana is transported back in time to save her uncle from death. However, Dana faces a moral dilemmas that lead her to change the lives of the people around her. Dana must choose to let Rufus die and stop the abusive acts he commits, or to let Rufus live in order to protect the other people who live on the farm. If Dana chooses to live, the abuse towards her and Alice will continue. The abusive acts Rufus does has both a physical and social effect on Alice and Dana. Because Rufus gets abusive if Alice refuses to have sex with him, she has no choice but to continue along. Also, Dana will receive punishment because she refuses to cater to Rufus’ wishes. But if Dana lets Rufus live, the families,

    Read More

  • Octavia Butler's Parable Of The Sower

    1100 Words  | 3 Pages

    Dystopias are full of dissatisfying issues and often unsettling worlds. Parable of the Sower, being a classic dystopian novel, is no different. Throughout the book, readers are engaged into a world where death is normalized and atrocity is average. The main character, Lauren’s connection to this world allows her to develop personally and spiritually. Lauren uses both connections to other people as well as connections between other people to express her feelings about the world around her. In Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, Lauren’s interest and connection to the female astronaut influences her religion, Earthseed, and uses the astronaut to mimic and express her dissatisfaction with the world she lives in.

    Read More

  • Human Dignity by Francis Fukuyama

    1177 Words  | 3 Pages

    In his piece, “Human Dignity”, Francis Fukuyama explores the perception of human dignity in today's society. This perception is defined by what Fukuyama calls “Factor X”. This piece draws attention to how human dignity has been affected recently and its decline as we go into the future. Using the input given by the Dalai Lama in his piece, “Ethics and New Genetics”, the implementing of factor X and human dignity on future generations will be explored. Through the use of the pieces, “Human Dignity and Human Reproductive Cloning by Steven Malby, Genetic Testing and Its Implications: Human Genetics Researchers Grapple with Ethical Issues by Isaac Rabino, and Gender Differences in the Perception of Genetic Engineering Applied to Human Reproduction by Carol L. Napolitano and Oladele A. Ogunseitan, the decline on the amount of human dignity found in today's society as well as the regression in Factor X that can be found today compared to times past. Society's twist on ethics as a result of pop culture and an increase in genetic engineering has caused for the decline in the amount of dignity shown by the members of society and the regression of Factor X to take hold in today's society.

    Read More

  • Kindred And The Parable Of The Sower Analysis

    1494 Words  | 3 Pages

    The first novel, Kindred involves the main character Dana, a young black woman, travelling through time to explore the antebellum south in the 1800’s. The author uses this novel to reveal the horrific events and discrimination correlated with the slaves of the south at the time. Dana, who is a black woman of modern day, has both slave and white ancestry, and she develops a strong connection to her ancestor Rufus, who was a slave owner at the time. This connection to Rufus indirectly causes Dana to travel into the past where she helps many people suffering in the time period. Butler effectively uses this novel to portray the harshness of slavery in history, and the impa...

    Read More

  • The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

    661 Words  | 2 Pages

    In The Handmaid’s Tale, much use is made of imagery; to enable the reader to create a more detailed mental picture of the novel’s action and also to intensify the emotive language used. In particular, Atwood uses many images involving flowers and plants.

    Read More

  • Good People, by David Foster Wallace

    847 Words  | 2 Pages

    David Foster Wallace’s “Good People,” is a very touching, powerful story about a young, unwed, Christian couple facing an extremely difficult decision and the moral and religious implications that may result. As the story begins, we are allowed into the head of Lane Dean, a college student, as he sits on a park bench with his girlfriend, Sheri. Lane and Sheri find themselves faced with an unplanned pregnancy, which causes them to battle with several moral and religious dilemmas. Both of them are devout Christians who have built their moral beliefs upon God and their religious upbringing. Although torn Sheri schedules an abortion, which weighs on Lane deeply. Lane, frozen in fear and not having the courage to freely talk to Sheri about the situation, has a conversation with her in his own head which leads him to question love, morals, religion and life. As they face this unwanted pregnancy, Lane, controlled by fear realizes that sometimes in life certain situations are too complicated to solely be answered within the rigidity of religion. People are human and regardless of how strong their faith in religion is, the battle between right and wrong will forever exist. Ultimately, Sheri decides to carry the child, which Lane assumes is a statement of Sheri’s faith in him. Inspired by her leap of faith, Lane decides to break free from the fear, muster up some courage and ultimately makes a leap of faith of his own and decides to give loving her a try. Lane’s epiphany leads to the central idea that sometimes it takes breaking the confines of fear and having faith in love or in another person to win the battle between right and wrong, which Wallace conveys beautifully.

    Read More

  • When Good Characters Do Bad Things by Toni Morrison

    935 Words  | 2 Pages

    Sula begins with serious questions within the mind of a reader. Many motifs in the book challenge social structure, and what it means to be human. Pride is apparent within the plot, because dramatic characters have pride, or belief in who they are. Characters are meant to be dramatized to provoke audience emotion. The characters may change throughout a play, but they will be prideful in their change. Toni Morrison puts the reader into the eyes of a character, allowing the reader to become the character. This then leads to the realization of the questions, Is it good or bad to be prideful, and does the characters pride create a bond between the audiences? Sula brings about many occurrences of pride either being good, or pride being bad. Two examples are Eva Peace's decision to kill Plum, and Sula's return to the bottom. Before the occurrences are determined as good or bad, there must first be a definition of what constitutes something as being good, or bad. Kraut and Richard wrote of the ethnic and moral virtue, "First, I believe that there are these two relationships: being good for someone and being bad for someone; furthermore, some things are related in these ways; and in favorable circumstances, we can know that these relationships hold" (pg.31). The philosophers stated there are things in the world that are considered good, or bad. Relationships will hold true due to the experiences of defining something as good or bad. Before an occurrence can be established as good, or bad, it must first be compared. "To call someone a good chess player is to compare her with other chess players; it is to say she is good-in-relation-to-them" (Kraut,Richard pg. 32). The comparison allows an occurrence to form relation to other occurrences. ...

    Read More

  • Relationships In Tayari Jones's 'Silver Sparrow'

    765 Words  | 2 Pages

    Some of the inspiration for Dana came from Jones desire to know her sisters from her father’s previous marriage stating in an interview: “I 've always felt that I had a sister just outside my grasp,” (Norris). In the world Jones has created for Dana she is well aware of the other family, the privilege they receive from being the legitimate family. Dana is not only denied a relationship with her father and sister but educational opportunities because the possibility that Chaurisse may attend the same event. Hiding in the shadows of her sister Chaurisse, Dana longs to know her sister, to have a relationship with her father and to be acknowledged as his child. At the outset of the novel Jones clearly lays out the conditions of life for Dana when in a conversation with her father, he states: “What happens in my life, in my world, doesn’t have anything to do with you…Dana, you are the one that’s a secret”. (p. 8-9) The absence of a loving father figure in Dana’s life drives her desire to be acknowledged by men. Jones portrays this acceptance of her role in life through a series of boyfriends finally settling on one, who much like her father, wants to keep their relationship a secret. Dana’s relationship with her mother is much more like that of sisters than a mother daughter relationship, each woman feels abandoned by their father turning to each other in times of need. The sisterly

    Read More

  • The Help, by Kathryn Stockett

    1159 Words  | 3 Pages

    Feminist theory is a term that embraces a wide variety of approaches to the questions of a women’s place and power in culture and society. Two of the important practices in feminist critique are raising awareness of the ways in which women are oppressed, demonized, or marginalized, and discovering motifs of female awakenings. The Help is a story about how black females “helped” white women become “progressive” in the 1960’s. In my opinion, “The Help” I must admit that it exposes some of our deepest racial, gender, and class wounds as individuals and social groups, and that the story behind the story is a call to respect our wounds and mutual wounding so that healing may have a chance to begin and bring social injustice to an end. The relationship between Blacks and whites in this novel generally take on the tone of a kindly, God-fearing Jesus Christ-loving Black person, placidly letting blacks and whites work out their awkwardness regarding race and injustice. Eventually both the black and white women realize how similar they are after all, and come to the conclusion that racism is an action of the individual person, a conclusion mutually exclusive of racism as an institutionalized system that stands to demonize and oppress people based on the color of their skin and the location of their ancestry.

    Read More

  • What Makes Us Moral By Jeffrey Kluger

    928 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the article “What makes us moral” by Jeffrey Kluger, he describes how morality is defined and how the people follow rules. Kluger discusses about scientific research that has been done to point out the important reasons of morality. Kluger explains that a person’s decision to do something good or bad is based on empathy, that humans tend not to do bad to those they sympathize with. Kluger also compares humans with animals and thinks that morality is the only thing that separates us from animals. I do agree with Kluger that people are born with a sense of right and wrong, but we should be taught how to use it. We learned to be nicer to those around us because we already know the type of person they are, and the morality we learned as children

    Read More

More about A Responsible Human Being In Kindred By Octavia Butler

Open Document