Dana was an ordinary woman making a living as a writer alongside her husband, Kevin, until something unimaginable happened. She is impacted by unexplainable, life-altering events as she’s forced to travel back and forth from California in the 1970s to Maryland in the early 1800s during the era of slavery. She is set on a journey to save her long-lost ancestors and preserve her lineage. This novel explores themes of inequality and persistence as Dana attempts to live in this time as a black woman by playing the role of a slave. In Kindred, Octavia Butler portrays slavery from Dana’s perspective, emphasizing her experience and its impact while analyzing the effects on others living in the antebellum period. The entirety of the novel is told from …show more content…
Us, the children... I never realized how easily people could be trained to accept slavery” (Butler 101). This quote emphasizes her experiences in particular, as they are obviously what the audience is experiencing while reading. They get to hear the thoughts that might not be voiced out loud or expressed in any other way. Other characters don't have this opportunity unless they are shown in dialogue. At the same time, readers only see particular conversations through Dana. This means other conversations with other characters are hidden from the reader because they only see Dana’s perspective. Readers of Kindred are greatly influenced by what they see, but also what is hidden from them because they can be missing important information. Throughout the story, the readers get to see the impact these experiences have on her. Readers can see that, as much as she hates it, she must play into the submissive slave position to survive. If Dana had tried to fight back against the privileged white people, things would not have gone her way. She is practically powerless in the position she was placed in, and there's nothing she can change about it. So, Dana plays the role of a slave, but we see she doesn’t accept
The book Kindred is about a women named Dana, a present day African American women. She ends up traveling from California, where she lives with her husband Kevin, who is Caucasian, back to the antebellum South. Dana only goes back in time when Rufus needs her help and each time she is there she seems to stay longer. Rufus is a white slave owner son. Slavery had previously existed throughout history, in many times and most places. What does it mean to be a slave or an enslaved person? To be a slave is to be owned by another person. Slavery to me seems like the imagery of hell. I imagine hell being something you cannot escape. A place where your soul burns internally. You might beg, cry, or even pray but nothing will help the predicament you
Kindred by Octavia E. Butler, is a novel about an African American woman named Dana (born in 1950) who lives in 1976 California. She experiences weird headaches and dizziness one day and gets teleported to a river in the woods. She sees a boy drowning and rushes into the river to save him. The boy’s mother comes out yelling at Dana and then the father comes out with a shotgun just as Dana is sent back to her house. Dana kinda sees it as a hallucination and goes on shocked. Later she experiences the dizziness again and is sent back to a house this time. Then she finds out she is being sent to the past to help her relative Rufus from dying. Every time Rufus gets in trouble to the point of dying Dana is flung back in time to save him. But she is sent to the 1800s
Kindred by Octavia Butler is incredible book that leaves the reader hypnotized as she depicts the antebellum period that left a deep and unremovable scar in United States history. This story educates people who might be ignorant
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
Janie Crawford, the novel’s main character, is an African American woman who eventually married three times throughout her lifetime. Her mother was raped by her schoolteacher and eventually gave birth to Janie, leaving her behind for Janie’s grandmother to raise her. A research article focused on Their Eyes Were Watching God concluded that “The devastating impact of the white discourse on black people which has targeted their identity is an integral part of this paper” (J Nov. Appl Sci. 1). It is evident in the novel that Janie (along with several other African Americans) are mistreated because of their skin color. This novel was set in the early 1900s, when although slavery was abolished, African Americans were not treated equally; the whites still held an unwritten superiority towards them. Although an imbalance of equality between whites and blacks is present, this novel should not be banned from the classroom because it teaches the cruel but true history of our nation. Our country’s history cannot be ignored like this, because it is a part of a valuable piece of literature and it makes society appreciate our new customs of equality that currently
Kindred by Octavia Butler is an incredible book that leaves the reader hypnotized. This story educates people on the first hand abuse of slavery. Butler took a woman of the modern era and transferred her back into a period in which she, like the rest of us only heard about in books and television. Octavia Butler depicts how trauma not only affects the slave 's, but the slaveholders. Butler also brings attention to adaptation in her work by using a key literary devices such as foreshadowing to expose the trauma and the cause of that trauma.
In the featured article, “Beside Oneself: On the Limits of Sexual Autonomy,” the author, Judith Butler, writes about her views on what it means to be considered human in society. Butler describes to us the importance of connecting with others helps us obtain the faculties to feel, and become intimate through our will to become vulnerable. Butler contends that with the power of vulnerability, the rolls pertaining to humanity, grief, and violence, are what allows us to be acknowledged as worthy.
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...
To the modern white women who grew up in comfort and did not have to work until she graduated from high school, the life of Anne Moody reads as shocking, and almost too bad to be true. Indeed, white women of the modern age have grown accustomed to a certain standard of living that lies lightyears away from the experience of growing up black in the rural south. Anne Moody mystifies the reader in her gripping and beautifully written memoir, Coming of Age in Mississippi, while paralleling her own life to the evolution of the Civil Rights movement. This is done throughout major turning points in the author’s life, and a detailed explanation of what had to be endured in the name of equality.
Dawn by Octavia Butler is a feminist take on an origin story. Due to its feminist foundations Dawn interrogates how gender, individuals, and social constructions shape people 's as well as society 's creation. The story follows the "rebirth" of Lilith Iyapo in an alien world after they 'saved ' her from the nuclear apocalypse on earth. Lilith 's journey is both mental and physical. She becomes more than human physically due to Okanali enhancements and mentally beyond the constraints of human beliefs, such as that of gender and time, due to her acceptance of the Ooloi and the Oankali way of life.
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. ...
The relationship between slave and master. One of the the most complicated, unspoken of relationships in history. The book Kindred by Octavia E. Butler tells a compelling story of the relationship between a white man and an african american woman during slavery in the 1800’s. The tale starts with a woman, Dana, who travels back in time to 1800’s where she meets Rufus a young white boy. Throughout the story Dana learns about slavery through her experiences with Rufus and he eventually teaches her to truly understand the relationship between master and slave.
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.
Events in history have influenced writers’ style, genre, and emphasis in their stories. 1 Alice Walker was greatly influenced by the time period of the 1940’s. There was much racism and oppression during that time, especially for black women. Women were beaten and abused simply because of their color and gender. Celie, a young black woman, endured many hardships reflective of the time period including racism, oppression, and sexism but remained strong in her faith in God and overcame these obstacles to show the quiet strength of a woman. The oppression of black women is very evident in The Color Purple (Ryan 3062). It is especially shown in the relationship between father and daughter, Alphonso and Celie(Fulmer 1). From the time Celie is very young she is subject to oppression. She is raped repeatedly by her stepfather and is told to keep quiet about it (Walker 1). This is very demeaning to Celie and it causes her to fear men for a good portion of her life (Walker 6). Celie gets pregnant twice with her stepfather. He takes the first baby and “ kilt it out there in the woods.” The other he sells to a family in a nearby town (Walker 3-4). Celie is oppressed all throughout her life, but she learns to overcome it and support herself (Ryan 3062).
It is not until Celie is an adult that she finally feels content with her life and understands her capacity to be a completely autonomous woman. The concept of racial and gender equality has expanded greatly throughout the twentieth century, both in society and in literature. These changes influence Walker's writing, allowing her to create a novel that chronicles the development of a discriminated black woman. Her main character, Celie, progresses from oppression to self-sufficiency, thereby symbolizing the racial and gender advancements our country has achieved.