Alice And Hatred In Octavia Butler's Kindred

Alice was a broken woman by the time she committed suicide. Over the course of her life, she had freedom after freedom, hope after hope, ripped away from her, culminating with Rufus taking away her last remaining reason to stay. She was born free but was enslaved when she fled to be with her slave lover against the slave owner’s wishes. Forced into slavery, she was immediately pressed into sexual bondage to Rufus, her master. When Dana encounters Alice during The Storm, Alice only has two reasons providing her existential meaning: her children, and her escape plan. She attempted to escape, but was caught and punished with the perceived loss of her children. In the words of Sarah, “When he took her children, I thought she was go’ die right there”

(Butler 250). With her two raisons d’être lost, she turned to suicide as the only punitive action she had against Rufus, leaving him morose and almost “seem[ing] to want death” (257).
Dana’s first suicide is precipitated by a complete breakdown in her relationship with Rufus. Since their first encounter, Rufus and Dana had been building trust, culminating with Dana asking Rufus:
“… are you going to sell anyone else?”
He hesitated. “I hope not. I don’t like it.”
Another hesitation. “Daddy left debts”
…. “What are you going to do?”
“Get somebody who makes her living by writing to write some very persuasive letters.” (226)
This conversation shows Rufus implying that he will not sell any other slaves unless he is forced to through him saying that he hopes he does not sell any other slaves.

Dana draws her agency from this bond of trust, as Rufus allows her to do things that other slaves would not be permitted to, such as the letter writing, providing Dana more autonomy and control over her conditions and over the lives of the entire household. This trust is destroyed completely when Rufus decides to sell a slave who had been regularly talking to Dana. When Dana confronts Rufus about this sale, he hits her, dealing a blow both physically to Dana’s body, and psychologically to her relationship of trust with him. Rufus then orders Dana to “‘get in the house and stay there’,” curtailing her freedom of movement and establishing dominance in their relationship (239). The use of the short, direct, forceful diction preventing Dana from arguing, literally taking her speech away shows how Rufus is showing dominance over her. With the removal of Dana’s agency and perceived influence in one moment, she only has one action available to show Rufus her continued agency:

suicide.
An action that results in certain death is effectively a suicide.

And when Dana acts in a way certain to result in her own death, she truly has nothing left to lose. After Alice had died, Rufus began to think of Dana as a replacement for Alice, attempting to impinge on the one freedom that Dana had left, that he had always respected before: her sexual agency. After Rufus wonders aloud “how long would it take [Dana] to stop hating” (259) him if he forced himself onto her, Dana came to the realization that she “could accept him as my ancestor, my younger brother, my friend, but not as my master, and not as my lover” (260). This is a very important moment for Dana, as she connecting all the different roles Rufus had filled in her life, and realizes that Rufus has gone too far. Dana knows has lost her sexual agency, she cannot accept that loss. This knowledge at the front of her mind with previous thoughts of homicide supporting it, she accepts the certain consequences faced by a slave that kills her master, and proceeds to stab Rufus to death This action is effectively committing suicide (as a slave), as Dana knows that she would either killed for her crime or returned to the

future.
The three instances of suicide in Kindred are some of the most critical moments in the book. Alice is betrayed at every turn by the man who swears he is doing it out of love, leaving her with only one way of controlling her fate. Rufus curtails Dana’s agency multiple times: the first simply to show dominance, leading to her rebelling; and when he attempts to take the one freedom the he never attempted to curtail, it once again leads her to rebel. All situations where Dana or Alice had had their agency extremely curtailed, and they all show how when someone has no agency left, suicide is their ultimate power.