In his 2004 article “Inverting History in Octavia Butler’s Postmodern Slave Narrative”, Marc Steinberg addresses the concept of cyclical history. Steinberg does this by discussing the different ways “Kindred” suggests that the past and present are interchangeable, and how the past continues to live into the future. He also shows how author Octavia Butler deals with, and critiques the idea that psychological and historical oppression can be overcome. I will be responding to the ideas presented in this article, as well as raising a few points of my own.
Steinberg pays close attention to the notions of time and timelines in his analysis of Butler’s 1979 work. He states that Butler uses a “non-western conceptualization of history” (467), meaning
…show more content…
This is shown very clearly when Dana witnesses the children playing a slave auction game and exclaims “It’s nineteen seventy-six cushioning eighteen nineteen for me. But now and then, like with the kid’s game, I can’t maintain the distance” (Butler, 101). This is also shown when Kevin returns to the present after spending five years alone in the antebellum south, and finds he cannot readjust. However, the biggest indicator of a corrupted timeline is the way Butler relates all the white male characters back to each other: Kevin, Rufus, and Tom Weylin have the same accent, the same look in their eyes, the same privileges. Dana connects her husband to her oppressors, perhaps too strongly for her own good. This forces her to realize that, despite being a loving husband, by virtue of his whiteness, Kevin will always be part of the oppressive …show more content…
I would argue that this claim could be expanded to include historical and psychological oppression of any kind, and would still be supported by Butler’s argument that no oppression can truly be overcome. Primarily, Dana deals with being forcibly pulled back in time, which leads to psychological distress and fear that is will happen again. She struggles with the fact that she cannot control this aspect of her life. Then, when it happens again, she is forced into slavery, which, in addition to being another form of lost control, makes her question her sense of self. Additionally, the reader can draw parallels between Dana’s feelings of objectification in 1976, where she is treated as an anomaly for being in an interracial marriage, and in 1819, where as a female slave she is literally treated like an object, worth no more to the overseer than a workhorse. Dana brings this psychological baggage back with her every time she returns to the relative present, as well as physical damage: whip scars, a beaten and bloody face, and slit wrists, coming to a head after her final return, where she loses her entire forearm. This loss of a limb symbolizes Dana’s inability to escape the horrors of her past, as she has a constant reminder of what she and her ancestors went through to get to where she is
The novel showed a pivotal point prior to the Civil War and how these issues ultimately led to the fueling of quarrel between Americans. While such institutions of slavery no longer exist in the United States, the message resonates with the struggles many groups ostracized today who continue to face prejudice from those in higher
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
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
The purpose of this essay is to highlight the issues that Dana, a young African-American writer, witness as an observer through time. As a time traveler, she witnesses slavery and gender violation during 19th and 20th centuries and examines these problems in terms of how white supremacy disrupts black familial bonds. While approaching Octavia Butler’s novel Kindred, this essay analyses how gender and racial violation relates to familial bonds through Dana 's experience in Tom Weylin 's plantation. It is argued that Butler uses pathos, ethos, and in rare cases logos, to effectively convey her ideas of unfairness during the American slavery, such as examining the roots of Weylin’s cruel attitude towards black people, growing conflicts between
It leaves the readers in an awe of silence as they deliberate and take in the powerful message of Kindred. Octavia Butler extablishes the site of trauma as adaptation and the cause as the inhumane act of slavery. Butler led her audience to question the equality not only of the past, but also the present. Developing and critically thinking about the world around us is the message that Butler wanted to convey. Are black people really free? Have blacks gained all the right that are reserved to them by constitutional law? Those answers are to be decided by each individual, but in the words of Jesse Williams, “the burdened of the brutalized is not to comfort the bystander. If you have no interest in the equal rights for black people, then do not make suggestions for those who do. Sit down.”
Douglass's Narrative brings an ugly era of American history to life as it weaves through his personal experiences with slavery, brutality, and escape. Most importantly Douglass reveals the real problem in slavery, which is the destructive nature of intolerance and the need for change. Douglass refers many times to the dehumanizing effects sla...
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...
What defines an individual’s racial characteristics? Does an individual have the right to discriminate against those that are “different” in a specific way? In Octavia Butler’s works, which are mostly based on themes that correlate to one another, she influences the genre and fiction in ways that bring light to the problems of societies history. Through Kindred and the Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler examines themes of community, racial identification, and racial oppression through the perspective of a black feminist. In each novel, values and historical perspective show the hardships that individuals unique to an alien world have to face. Through the use of fictional works, Butler is able to delve into historical themes and human conditions, and with majority of works under the category of science fiction, Butler is able to explore these themes through a variety of settings. This essay will discuss two of Butler’s popular works, Kindred and the Parable of Sower, and will interpret the themes of women, race, independence, and power throughout the two novels.
I was in complete and utter shock when I began to read Disposable People. The heart-wrenching tale of Seba, a newly freed slave, shook my understanding of people in today’s society, as well as their interactions between each other. I sat in silence as I read Seba’s story. “There they [Seba’s French mistress and husband] stripped me naked, tied my hands behind my back, and began to whip me with a wire attached to a broomstick (Bales 2).” I tried to grasp the magnitude of the situation. I tried unsuccessfully to tell myself that this couldn’t happen in modern times, especially in a city such as Paris. How could this be happening? In the following pages of Kevin Bale’s shocking account of the rampant problem of modern day slavery, I learned of more gruesome details of this horrific crime against humanity, such as the different types of slavery, as well as his best estimate of the number of people still enslaved throughout the world, an appalling 27 million.
For most American’s especially African Americans, the abolition of slavery in 1865 was a significant point in history, but for African Americans, although slavery was abolished it gave root for a new form of slavery that showed to be equally as terrorizing for blacks. In the novel Slavery by Another Name, by Douglas Blackmon he examines the reconstruction era, which provided a form of coerced labor in a convict leasing system, where many African Americans were convicted on triumphed up charges for decades.
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, brings to light many of the social injustices that colored men, women, and children all were forced to endure throughout the nineteenth century under Southern slavery laws. Douglass's life-story is presented in a way that creates a compelling argument against the justification of slavery. His argument is reinforced though a variety of anecdotes, many of which detailed strikingly bloody, horrific scenes and inhumane cruelty on the part of the slaveholders. Yet, while Douglas’s narrative describes in vivid detail his experiences of life as a slave, what Douglass intends for his readers to grasp after reading his narrative is something much more profound. Aside from all the physical burdens of slavery that he faced on a daily basis, it was the psychological effects that caused him the greatest amount of detriment during his twenty-year enslavement. In the same regard, Douglass is able to profess that it was not only the slaves who incurred the damaging effects of slavery, but also the slaveholders. Slavery, in essence, is a destructive force that collectively corrupts the minds of slaveholders and weakens slaves’ intellects.
...details the transformation of a slave to a man. The institution of slavery defined a slave as less than human, and in order to perpetuate that impression, slaveholders forbade slaves the luxury of self definition. Therefore, when Douglass finally rejects the notions about his identity forced on him by slavery, and embraces an identity of his own creation, he has completed his journey from slave to man. He no longer defines himself in terms of the institution of slavery, but by his own thoughts regarding what his identity is. Through the metamorphosis of his identity as “an animal” to an author who fights for the abolitionist movement, Douglass presents his narrative not simply as a search for freedom, but also a search for himself.
Octavia Butler’s novel Kindred is categorized as science fiction because of the existence of time travel. However, the novel does not center on the schematics of this type of journey. Instead, the novel deals with the relationships forged between a Los Angeles woman from the 20th century, and slaves from the 19th century. Therefore, the mechanism of time travel allows the author a sort of freedom when writing this "slavery narrative" apart from her counterparts. Butler is able to judge the slavery from the point of view of a truly "free" black woman, as opposed to an enslaved one describing memories.
Octavia Butler’s Kindred (1979) is a speculative fiction novel about a young black African-American women, Dana Franklin, who can travel back in time to her ancestral past. Each time Dana’s ancestor Rufus, a white, slave-owner, is in danger he summons her from the future to rescue him. As Dana gets pulled back in time without any notice or knowledge, she realises that she has a purpose, that purpose being to preserve Rufus’s lifespan till a stage when it would be safe for her lineage to still exist in future generations. By the second trip, we discover that Dana has absolutely no control over this supernatural force and can only return ‘home’, back to present day, when she fears for her wellbeing. Throughout the entire experience the reader
The study of African American history has grown phenomenally over the last few decades and the debate over the relationship between slavery and racial prejudice has generated tremendous amounts of scholarship. There’s a renewed sense of interest in the academia with a new emphasis on studies and discussions pertaining to complicated relationships slavery as an institution has with racism. It is more so when the potential for recovering additional knowledge seems to be limitless. Even in the fields of cultural and literary studies, there is a huge emphasis upon uncovering aspects of the past that would lead one towards a better understanding of the genesis of certain institutionalized systems. A careful discussion of the history of slavery and racism in the new world in the early 17th Century would lead us towards a sensitive understanding of the kind of ‘playful’ relationship African Americans have with notions pertaining to location, dislocation and relocation. By taking up Toni Morrison’s ninth novel entitled A Mercy (2008), this paper firstly proposes to analyze this work as an African American’s artistic representation of primeval America in the 1680s before slavery was institutionalized. The next segment of the study intends to highlight a non-racial side of slavery by emphasizing upon Morrison’s take on the relationship between slavery and racism in the early heterogeneous society of colonial America. The concluding section tries to justify “how’ slavery gradually came to be cemented with degraded racial ideologies and exclusivist social constructs which ultimately, led to the equation of the term ‘blackness’ almost with ‘slaves’.