There are numerous science fictions and fantasies that integrate social issues into the stories, with the hope of readers being aware of and reflect on the oppression experienced by a certain groups in the society. The ideas of hope, resilience and survival can be seen under the larger narrative of oppression in the graphic novel adaptation of Kindred and the short story Terminal Avenue. In the following paper, I will discuss some moments of hope in the stories and how these ideas are integrated into the characters by looking into the relationship and interactions between characters. Kindred is about a African- American woman named Dana who travelled back in time when her ancestors were slaves, struggling with the oppression and life- …show more content…
threatening situations that she has never imagined of in her present life. At the same time, hoping to help the oppressed and make an impact against slavery. From the cover of the book, the black hands being cuffed with iron chain and grasped by a white hand, it is not hard to imagine the novel is about the black being oppressed by the white, the sense of the hopelessness with the infinity symbol on the chain. There are many moments in the story when the history hits, which make readers feel the cruelty of the reality in the past. At the same time, when comparing the past to our present generation, we can be positive and hopeful about changes, about the progress we made from the past, that the oppressed are being treated more humanly and slavery is illegal in most countries nowadays. Nnedi Okorafor quoted Steve Biko: “The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed” in the introduction of the book, in which the attempt to change the mind of the oppressed can be seen in the novel.
When Dana and her husband Kevin saw black children imitating the interactions between the slaves and their owner, she remembered her experience of being whipped and said “I never realized how easily people could be trained to accept slavery” (Butler 89). This is the moment when she decided to stay and hoped to change Rufus, Dana’s white great grandfather. Despite not being able to stop slaves from being sold or harmed, being educated in the present gives Dana the ability to teach slave children, in the hope of the slaves having more control on their life, higher chances of survival and capability to make changes to their …show more content…
future. The time travel between the present and the slavery past plays a major role in the novel in which it constructs and links the whole story. Not much of the slavery past has been recorded in the present time, it may be a past that people would like to forget about and make progress. When Dana travelled back to the past, it forced her to face the experience of being oppressed as a black and the scars she got followed her back to the present, reminding her the slavery past is real and it did exist. In contrast to the past, the present is a sign of hope and survival where Dana and Kevin feel safe to be in. The marriage between Dana and Kevin, a black woman and a white man, shows the differences in the relationship between the black and the white, from owners who treat slaves with violence to legally married couple who love each other. At the same time, she herself also brought hope to the past, using her experiences in the present to influence the mind of the oppressed and the oppressor. Her life in the present time shows them that changes are possible in the future and the hope for progress that made to end the oppression, that she can dress freely and be as educated as the white. Black people are able to have equal rights as a human, control over their own life and their offspring will no longer be slaves. The relationship between Dana and Rufus is fairly complicated.
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
future. The short story Terminal Avenue delivers the idea of hope differently, responding to the Oka Uprising and the salmon wars where two cultures were in conflict, the story doesn’t seem to be positive about the future of apartheid right. “Marginalized groups of people can discuss their own marginalization,” Nalo Hopkinson wrote in the introduction in the story So Long Been Dreaming, aiming to give space for the oppressed to express their feelings with their own experiences and their expectation towards the future. Terminal Avenue is based on the conflict between Canadians who are the majority and the minority First Nation individuals, with the aspirations of two brothers, Wil and Kevin, to be peace officers, striving for the power to make changes to the future of racial segregation. The peace officers represent those with power, the social justice system, maintaining the “peace” in the society by reinforcing racial segregation, ironically with violence, oppressing First Nation individuals including Wil’s father. Resilience is showed in Kevin when he quickly adjusted himself during the Oka Uprising, survived and became a peace officer soon after his father’s death. “He walked through their mother’s door one day, wearing the robin’s egg blue uniform of the great enemy… Against this Kevin said, I can stop it, Mom. I have the power to change things now” (Robinson 64). By being a peace officer, it brings hope to Kevin that he has the power to mitigate the conflicts between the two cultures, the hope for First Nation minority obtaining some authority in the social hierarchy to strive for human rights, against apartheid. Wil found his value through his experience of getting hurt and giving hurt in his lover’s club, where gave him pleasure and power. “He is not really alive until he steps past the industrial black doors of his lover’s club… He knows that he is a novelty item, a real living Indian: that is why his prices are so inflated. (Robinson 67). Despite the pain he suffered, he found his way to survive and resilient from the oppression, and he seemed to embrace his own identity including his experiences of being hurt in the club. At the end of the story, where he described as “the moment he chooses to be in…in the boat with his brother, his father, his mother. The sun on the water makes pale northern lights flickers against everyone’s faces, and the smell of the water is clean and salty” (Robinson 69), is a moment with peace and calmness, together with his family enjoying the nature. It shows the desire for peacefulness in the country, hoping that the conflicts between Canadian and First Nations, the Oak Uprising and salmon war, will come to an end with everyone sharing the beauty of nature together as a big family. With hope, resilience and survival being represented in the characters, the two stories brought up the past history to shed light on the progress of a better future. It is important to remember the past, learn from lessons and make progress, just like how slavery was a norm in the past but restricted by laws nowadays. People are more aware of the oppression and importance of global integration and the society is making progress every day, the hope of a future without oppression and any forms of segregation shall be positive.
Nearly everyone has a dream in life that they desperately want to accomplish. Without these dreams people wouldn’t strive to accomplish what makes them happy. Sometimes happiness might be hard to reach because of obstacles faced in life. The obstacles which one faces and how they can overcome them are remarked in Anne Lauren’s Carter short story “Leaving the Iron Lung”. In order for the author to show that one must overcome faced obstacles to pursue their dreams, she uses the protagonist transformation, contrasting characters and settings.
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
Dana is pulled back into the past whenever Rufus is faced with a life or death situation. On her first trip back into time, Dana finds Rufus drowning in a river. She pulls him out safely and begins to give him mouth to mouth resuscitation. Rufus’ mother, who saw the whole thing, begins hitting Dana while screaming, “You killed my baby!” (Butler 14). A few moments later Dana comes to face her first racial encounter with Tom Weylin. She turns to face the end of a long barrel of a shotgun. Almost immediately Dana becomes dizzy and passes out to wake up in her and Kevin’s home in California.
Butler alludes to the significance of the problem by choosing the adjective kindred as a title for her work. Throughout this novel, familial bonds are built up, and at the very end get a perverse form because of gender and racial mistreatments. Throughout time, Dana witnesses families clinging to each other while they are treated unjustly. The veracity of this assertion is confirmed by examining scenes where the heroes stick together with their family because they are put in circumstances where it is impossible to escape racial violation. An example of such a case is the incident between the slave called Tess and Dana. After Weilyn sells the man for attempting to flirt with Dana, other slaves try their best to not displease their masters because they do not want to be separated from their family. This scene suggests that racial violation was so horrifying that African Americans could not even choose to live with their family, and it made them even more dependent on each
Kurt Vonnegut's apocalyptic novel, Cat's Cradle, might well be called an intricate network of paradox and irony. It is with such irony and paradox that Vonnegut himself describes his work as "poisoning minds with humanity...to encourage them to make a better world" (The Vonnegut Statement 107). In Cat's Cradle, Vonnegut does not tie his co-mingled plots into easy to digest bites as the short chapter structure of his story implies. Rather, he implores his reader to resolve the paradoxes and ironies of Cat's Cradle by simply allowing them to exist. By drawing our attention to the paradoxical nature of life, Vonnegut releases the reader from the necessity of creating meaning into a realm of infinite possibility. It appears that Vonnegut sees the impulse toward making a better world as fundamental to the human spirit; that when the obstacle of meaning is removed the reader, he supposes, will naturally improve the world.
In many short stories, characters face binding situations in their lives that make them realize more about themselves when they finally overcome such factors. These lively binding factors can result based on the instructions imposed by culture, custom, or society. They are able to over come these situations be realizing a greater potential for themselves outside of the normality of their lives. Characters find such realizations through certain hardships such as tragedy and insanity.
The oppressed and the oppressor’s lives are intertwined through their need to protect and maintain their well-being. As seen in the novel, Dana is summoned to the past only when Rufus, her distant ancestor’s life is in danger. Rufus continues to summon her from his childhood through his adult years. ...
In Flannery O’Connor’s stories, “Good Country People”, “Everything that Rises Must Converge”, ”A Good Man is Hard to Find”, and “The Life You Save May Be Your Own”, there are many similar characters and situations. Few, if any of the characters are likeable, and most of them are grotesque. Two of the stories have characters that view themselves as superior in one way or another to those around them, and in some cases these characters experience a downfall, illustrating the old proverb, “Pride goeth before a fall” (King James Bible ,Proverbs 16:18). Two of the stories include a character that has some type of disability, three of the stories showcase a very turbulent relationship between a parent and child, and three of the stories contain a character that could easily be described as evil.
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
At a time where the future has never looked brighter, it is baffling how some people have become more pessimistic than ever. Why do people who are faced with traumatizing situations always seem to focus on the negatives? Why is it that when people are faced with despair, they always seem to rely on how the situation looks repugnant? Science fiction stories have a tendence to show all these questioning thoughts. There are many key details in the science fiction short story book titled Masterpieces: The Best Science Fiction of the Twentieth Century that shows pessimism and has a negative tendency of expecting the worst from life and how people treat each other. This is certainly shown in the acts of communication, isolation, and hopelessness.
The book is a first person point of view about slavery on a plantation in the antebellum south. The author gives detailed and vividly explains the beatings, attempted rape, and constant verbal abuse. “Instead he stopped me with one hand, while he held me with the other. He spoke very softly. ‘You got no manners nigger, I’ll teach you some.’”(Butler, Kindred 41). The cause of the trauma originates from the brutality of slavery. The site of the trauma is adaptation. The audience sees a dynamic change in having to adapt not only in Dana, but also Rufus and Kevin. While traveling back in time, Dana begins to discover her roots and the origins of her ansestors. Before time traveling back to 1815 Dana takes her freedom for granted. Traviling back in time she has to adapt and find her identity in a foreign place. Marie Varsam argues that the “past should be, even must be, retained and manipulated in order to formulate a cohesive identity in the present” (Varsam). Every time Danan returns to
As far as how it works in the actual story of the novel, firstly, and most importantly, it puts a strong, independent, black, 20th century black woman in the antebellum south. This provides a strong contrast in living conditions, as well as psychological patterns with those of the 19th century Dana sees and conveys the world of slavery around her with the background of the 20th century, "our world." This allows the reader to find a real connection with the protagonist, Dana. Dana describes in its gory detail the whippings she took:
In the novel Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, interprets the achievement of order and law through the use of power and violence by superheroes. This novel consists a total of seven different characters to demonstrate how superheroes obtain peace in society through the use of violence. The writer portrays the plot in different characters’ perspectives by guiding readers in their point of view. This motivation also assists readers to examine the loneliness and the feeling of isolation during Dr. Jonathan Osterman, Walter Joseph Kovacs and Laurie Juspeczky’s life experiences.
In other works of fiction where the oppressive circumstances of protagonists usually arise from failures of society and within the specific individual there is often an optimism to the extent that it is suggested that progress might eventually lift the individual or mankind beyond the scope of the type of situations depicted. In Washington Square', however, James' depiction of Catherine's tragedy could well be interpreted, at a universal level, as our susceptibility to the manipulative and domineering elements in human nature combined with those factors which drive us with passionate longing for another. Our hopes for an enlightened perspective of Catherine's situation diminish as she confronts an environment of emotional, psychological and motivational disregard and cruelty displayed in numerous situations of dialogue, interviews and conniving. We recognize, however, that Catherine's sufferings are intrinsic to human nature as she is depicted also as a protagonist who displays substance and a willingness to develop her perceptions of human behaviour at the cost of being isolated physically, psychologically and emotionally.
Several different elements are necessary to create a story. Of all the elements, the conflict is most essential. The conflict connects all pieces of the plot, defines the characters, and drives the story forward. Once a story reaches its climax, the reader should have an emotional connection to the both story and its characters. Not only should emotions be evoked, but a reader should genuinely care about what happens next and the about the end result for the characters. Guy de Maupassant’s “The Necklace” is the perfect example of how a story’s conflict evolved the disposition of its characters.