Octavia Butler's Kindred: Character Analysis

By definition, survival is to continue to live in spite of challenging circumstances. Survival is an instinct that everyone has and people are usually compelled to make tough decisions in order to survive. What happens when those decisions could be pernicious to innocent people and even ruin their lives? Octavia Butler explores this idea in her novel Kindred. The main character Dana Franklin is forced to make some complex decisions in order to survive. Dana is sent back in time to the 1800s to help a little boy. She soon discovers that the little boy is actually Rufus Weylin, her ancestor and she must continue to help him in complicated situations throughout his life because without him she will never come into existence. She goes back and forth between the Antebellum South and her home in 1976 and even brings her husband along. In Kindred, Butler uses Dana’s choices to explore the idea of survival and how people handle the difficult

choices in order to survive.
Dana is faced with tough calls to make, usually in a brief amount of time. In Dana’s second trip she comes face to face with a Patroller and in order to protect herself, she must decide whether or not to hit the Patroller.
“In that instant, I knew I could stop him, cripple him, in this primitive age, destroy him. His eyes. I had only to move my fingers a little and jab them into the soft tissues, gouge away his sight and give him more agony than he was giving me. But I couldn’t do it. The thought sickened me, froze my hands where they were. I had to do it! But I couldn’t … “ (42).
She is hesitant at first, she even considers letting him assault her, but she knows what she has to do so, she hits him over the head with a tree branch. Butler uses this example to show that Dana is not a violent person but has to hurt another human being, something she usually wouldn’t do, in order to save herself.
Butler also uses Dana’s choices to affect not only her life, but others around her as well. The best example of this is when Rufus asks Dana to get Alice to come to him because he has feelings for Alice. “Go to her. Send her to me. I’ll have her whether you help or not” (164). Dana, against her better judgment, obliges because she needs Alice and Rufus to be together so that her ancestor, Hagar, can be born. “Rufus sent me to talk to you. He wants you tonight” (166). Dana has to coax Alice but eventually Alice goes to Rufus. Dana’s need to survive forces her to make nonsensical choices. Dana’s choice to help Rufus affects Alice the most because Alice is forced into being with the person she loathes the most and has no say in the matter.That is the situation that Alice is in because her life is not truly her life. She knows that she belongs to Rufus and she must do what she is asked or she faces death. Dana forces Alice in this position with her choice to help Rufus.
Dana is faced with the most difficult decision to make when she must choose between her life or the life she had saved countless times. Rufus, numbed by the loss of Alice, realizes he has nothing left to lose so he decides to force Dana to be with him. Dana realizes that she has two choices, allow Rufus to be with her and forgive him for it or kill Rufus and put an end to everything. “ … I realized how easy it would be for me to continue to be still and forgive him even this. So easy, in spite of all my talk, But it would be hard to raise the knife, drive it into the flesh I had saved so many times. So hard to kill …” (259 - 260). Dana knows what she has to do and even though it pains her to do so, she must kill the man she had risked her life to save countless times. Dana willingly makes that decision to kill Rufus because it will end everything and she knows that that is the best chance she has of surviving. Although she has saved Rufus many times and cares for him, she must choose her life over his life because her survival is abundantly more important to her at that moment.
In Octavia Butler’s Kindred, Dana’s character is used to show that survival requires crucial decisions and when faced with those tough decisions people can end up questioning their beliefs and everything they once knew to be right.

Dana‘s character uses many examples to show the reader this throughout the novel. She often has to make these types of decision and is left questioning everything she thought was true. She wonders if death would be better than slavery, frequently in the novel and at the end of the book her thoughts about slavery have changed because she now has some perspective. She questioned whether or not she should kill another human being in order to keep herself safe.How could things have been different if Dana had made some different decisions? There are numerous problematic choices that people will run into in life and must often choose to stay true to their character or do what they need to in order to survive. Octavia Butler does a wonderful job of using her character, Dana, to present this idea to the

reader.