Abolutionist, Fredrick Douglass once stated, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” 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 …show more content…
on the first hand abuse of slavery. Butler took a women from 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 slaves, but the slave holders. 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. 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 41). The cause of the trauma is consistently featured is the brutality of slavery. The site of the trauma is adaptation. The audience sees a dynamic change in having to adapt not only Dana’s character, but also Rufus, Kevin and Alice. While traveling back in time, Dana begins to discover her roots and where she comes from. “The past should be, even must be, retained and manipulated in order to formulate a cohesive identity in the present” (Varsam). Before time traveling back to 1815 Dana takes her freedom for granted, but when she finds herself in the antebellum south, she has to adapt and searches to find her identity in this foreign place. What drives her to the Weiglyn’s plantation is Ruffus’s fear and she gets sent back to her time by her fear. But, as she begins to adjust to the living on a plantation and being a slave it becomes harder for her to travel back to the time which she came. “I could recall walking along the narrow dirt road that ran past the Weylin house and seeing the house, shadowy in twilight, boxy and familiar. I could recall feeling relief at seeing the house, feeling that I had come home. And having to stop and correct myself, remind myself that I was in an alien, dangerous place” (Butler 126). I believe at this point Dana realized that she had a pull and a bond to this time which in itself could be consisdered another traumatic experience. Dana’s charaecter has a unideal bond to Rufus. No matter what he does to not only hurt her but the people she cares about she continues to feels the need to protect and save him. Dana believes she is traviling back in time to somehow change the past through her relationship with Rufus. It is not until after Rufus forces himself upon her that she discovers that she can not change the past. “The past cannot be disentangled from the present, particularly when that past is as traumatic and long lasting as slavery” (Rehak). The most violent act that occurred in this book is when Alice was brutally whipped and bitten by dogs. Even though the reader was not visually watching the scene take place, the detailed description was enough to make a stomach turn. As this is takes place Dana’s mind is not focusing on that horrible act of violence. Instead, she is concentrating on how Rufus and Alice need to procreate to save her existence by making sure her great great grandmother is born. I not only think that this shows how she has adapted to the violence, but it also shows how she is detached and complety disassociated from the world. The audience meets Rufus at a very young and gets to basically see him grow into a young man. The readers uncousiosly are rooting for Rufus to win. We ephathyze with Rufus and want to see Ruffus change and overcome the racist mindset of whie slave owners. Each time Dana travels back into the antebellum south we see how over the years society has molded him into being a white slave holder who is obsessed with power and greed. Butler uses foreshadowing by displaying to the audince that Rufus will soon evolve into becoming his father. “I thought of Rufus and his father, of Rufus becoming his father. It would happen someday in at least one way. Someday Rufus would own the plantation Someday, he would be a slaveholder, responsible in his own right for what happened to the people who lived in those half-hidden cabins” (Butler 68). “Trauma narratives engage readers in a number of important social and psychological issues.
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 …show more content…
owner. Kevin as a character defies his family and society my marring Dana despite her skin color. Before Dana goes back in time the reader can still get a depiction that color and questioning of equality plays a part of their relationship. When Dana and Kevin form a relationship they marry as equals, both of them are breifly working for a temp agency and they have a passion for reading. We start seeing a change in the relationship when they discuss history book. Kevin says that history books does not matter, while Dana completely disagrees, believing that history is a learning tool. “I turned to glare at him and he looked back calmly. It was a what-do-you-want-me-to-do-about-it kind of look” (Butler). Another example of the questioning of equality in their relationship is when Kevin gets mad at Dana because she will not type his work. “Kevin may fight his racial prejudice and male superiority complex, he expects Dana to give much of herself to him and gets bothered when she practices her agency. Thus, here we see a moment of unlearned oppressive tendencies”(Rehak). When Kevin travels back in time he develops a realization of the power he holds during the antebellum south.
Forshadowing is yet again seen when Dana is contemplating how being in a foreign time will not only effect her but also Kevin. “If he was stranded here for years, some part of this place would rub off on him... The place, the time would either kill him outright or mark him somehow” (Butler 77). Kevin was stuck in the antebellum period for five long years, he had no choice but to adapt to the time period. When he was on the Wielyn plantation he completely adapted to being in the role of a slave owner. Which is why I believe he moved to the north because he was transforming into something he did not want to be. As he lived and carried on life in the north he completely immersed himself in the role of being a abolitionist and trying to help free other slaves on the run. As a survivor the “painful connection to past trauma is also displayed and replayed through the body, even branded into their flesh” (Vikory). "There was a jagged scar across his forehead—the remnant of what must have been a bad wound. This place, this time, hadn't been any kinder to him than it had been to me" (). The scar on Kevins forhead acts as a symbol that signifies a part of that traumatic experience will always remain with him as he moves forward in
life.
He believes that he has a place in this disaster, and he accuses himself for causing a person's death and he doesn’t stop thinking about it as he says here “half a year has passed since I returned from Nepal, and on any given day during those six months, no more than two or three hours has gone by in which Everest has monopolized my thoughts” (296) .The experience has in many ways, affected him very deeply, which influenced him to write this book. The character development in "Kindred" by Octavia E. Butler is not as strong as "Into Thin Air", in this novel Dana, a young black woman who is a writer living at the end of the Twenty-first century, she is sucked into the south during the 19th century. Dana must go's through struggles so that she is able to establish her own identity and have
Initially, because she underestimates her own courage, which has never been properly tested, Dana doubts that she has sufficient fortitude to survive in the nineteenth century. As Kindred unfolds, it becomes clear that she does, indeed, have abundant courage and stamina. Butler effectively utilizes a common technique in fiction whereby an individual becomes heroic by transcending his or her base humanity by drawing on hidden inner resources. Dana is tested in her second trip to the past when she is nearly raped by a white man who is part of a patrol—the forerunner to the Ku Klux Klan. Never before having experienced physical abuse, initially Dana is reluctant to act. She fails to disable him by gouging his eyes, thereby losing her only chance
struggle for the power of freedom might be just to be allowed to exist at all.
A large message Kindred sends to the reader is how one individual with a large amount of power can destroy other people's lives solely on their own whim. Rufus is the character who exemplifies this theme the most, especially with Alice. When Rufus begins to pester Dana to speak with Alice, she begins to worry that Rufus will exhibit his power on her: “I had thought that eventually, he would just rape her again” (Butler 110). The most disturbing part of this sentence is the casual tone used towards it. Dana already knows the type of power Rufus takes against Alice, which is constantly sexually violating her. Since he already put her through the abuse once, Dana knows he will do it again. In Dana’s last time travel, she begins to truly reflect
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...
Persuasion Throughout history there have been many struggles for freedom and equality. There was the civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King Jr. There was the fight against government censorship in Argentina, spoken against by Luisa Valenzuela. And there was the struggle for women's equality in politics, aided by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.
The history of slavery in America is one that has reminders of the institution and its oppressive state of African Americans in modern times. The slaveholders and the slaves were intertwined in a cruel system of oppression that did not yield to either side. The white slaveholders along with their black slaves became codependent amongst each other due to societal pressures and the consequences that would follow if slaves were emancipated with race relations at a high level of danger. This codependency between the oppressed and the oppressor has survived throughout time and is prevalent in many racial relationships. The relationship between the oppressed and the oppressor can clearly be seen in Octavia Butler’s novel Kindred. In this novel, the protagonist Dana Franklin, a black woman, time travels between her present day 1977 and the antebellum era of 19th century Maryland. Throughout her journeys back to the past, Dana comes in contact with her white ancestor, Rufus Weylin, a white slave owner and Dana ultimately saves his life and intermingles with the people of the time. Butler’s story of Dana and her relationship with Rufus and other whites as she travels between the past and the present reveals how slaveholders and slaves depended on and influenced one other throughout the slaves bondage. Ultimately, the institution of slavery reveals how the oppressed and the oppressor are co-dependent; they need each other in order to survive.
Throughout modern American culture certain laws passed by the majority have been considered unjust by a wise minority. However, with the logical and emotional appeal of hard fought battles, voices have been heard, and the minds of the majority can sometimes be converted to see the truth. Thoreau, after spending a night in jail and seeing the truth hidden behind the propaganda of the majority, became convinced that he could no longer accept his government’s behavior of passing laws that benefit the majority with degrading the minority. It’s quite ironic that by the government imprisoning Thoreau he became freer then ever before. He was able to see how the government turned peaceably inclined men into controllable machines. Thoreau saw how the government dealt with its citizens as only a body, while completely disregarding the sense, intellect, and moral beliefs of its people. In his essay “Civil Disobedience,” Thoreau stated that “a government ruled by majority in all cases cannot be based on justice.” He further believed that “under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also prison.” This point made by Thoreau can be seen as the truth throughout history. A just man never sits by quietly watching the majority degrade the minority to suit their own immoral purposes. Like Thoreau, another just man who stood out from the quiet minority was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. King was, as well, willing to suffer for his views to put an end to racial segregation, and was arrested on numerous occasions for holding strong in his believes and spreading his message throughout the minds of all God’s children. King often cited conscience as a guide to obeying just laws and disobeying unjust ones. In an essay written by King titled “A letter from Birmingham Jail,” King clearly defines the interpretation of the differerence between the two kinds of laws. “An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is a difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal.” To further understand this King quotes from St. Augustine himself who once stated “any law that uplifts human personality is just.
Power is commonly maintained and distributed through violent actions. Often the combat to violence is violence or self harm. In Bloodchild Octavia Butler discusses how an influx of collective power affects an individual's power. Collective power is defined as choices or decisions impacted or initiated by a group. Contrastingly, individual power is defined as choices made by an individual. In both "Bloodchild" and "Amnesty" individual power is limited by a community of people which often leads to feelings of fear, anger, and despair, which leads to attempted self-harm. People who lack individual power as a result of institutional or communal power often respond with self harm; in "Bloodchild" and "Amnesty" Gan and Noah use suicide as a way
Ultimately, time travel lets Octavia Butler convey her own views on slavery, and the brutality of it. However, her main point is that although we have advanced through the last century, bigotry is still a major problem in our society. And, in order for any major progress to be had, each side will suffer losses, as Rufus’ life was taken along with Dana’s arm.
It may appear that in today’s America, slavery is looked down upon, and we’ve developed a long way from the past. However, before and during the Abolitionists Movement there were strong arguments for both sides of the subject. ("Arguments and Justifications: The Abolition of Slavery Project.") The gradual dominance in anti-slavery would not have been possible if people had not risked their lives and social standings to fight for the racial, social, legal, and political liberation for slaves. William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and the Grimke sisters are all prime examples of people who challenged pro-slavery, and protested the idea that one race was superior to another. Although abolitionists fought for their beliefs during this movement in the 1830s up to the year 1870 for the immediate emancipation of slaves, the ending of racial prejudice and segregation would not be possible if not by the influence of those courageous people, and should continue to be reinforced in today’s society. ("Civil Rights Movement.")
Thoreau explains “There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them; who, esteeming themselves children of Washington and Franklin” (Thoreau 3). George Washington and Benjamin Franklin are two prominent figures of American nationalism and independence, and many American citizens regard them as idols. Thoreau exploits their credential to motivate people to take actions against an ineffective government and oppose the war and slavery in the U.S. Thoreau also questions citizens by explaining what is ethical as a citizen. Thoreau states “but they do nothing in earnest and with effect. They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy the evil, that they may no longer have it to regret” (Thoreau 4). Thoreau explains that people of the U.S. do not put in their efforts to change such as voting or protesting, yet they still expect other people to discard evils such as corruption, slavery, and government tyranny. Thoreau justifies the uselessness as unethical and condemns the citizens. By using the word such as evil, Thoreau wants people to fight against the evil, government tyranny, and express the true American nationalism. The author employs ethos throughout Civil Disobedience to make the people of the U.S. ethical and become more involved with the problems about the
Literary critic Thelma Shinn Richard has said that “colonialism has inscribed its history on every African-American body and mind.” This is certainly evident in the science fiction slave narrative Kindred by Octavia E. Butler. One of Butler’s primary reasons for writing Kindred, perhaps subconsciously, may have been to try to receive closure about any white slave-owning ancestors she possibly had in her family tree. Creating the story of Dana Franklin, a modern black woman traveling through time to save her lineage from extinction, allows Butler to illustrate the ways in which some of the oppression that took place during the period of American slavery has carried over into later years, and the fact that many parallels can be drawn between
Tibeats refused to treat the slave with the same respect as Ford did. Chaos stirred on the plantation which had Northup’s life in danger after an altercation with Tibeats. In fact Ford knew Northup was no ordinary man so before Tibeates can have his way, he trade Northup in hope to save his life. “There may be humane masters, as there certainly are inhuman ones - there may be slaves well-clothed, well-fed, and happy, as there surely are those half-clad, half-starved and miserable; nevertheless, the institution that tolerates such wrong and inhumanity as I have witnessed, is a cruel, unjust, and barbarous one. Men may write fictions portraying lowly life as it is, or as it is not - may expatiate with owlish gravity upon the bliss of ignorance - discourse flippantly from arm chairs of the pleasures of slave life; but let them toil with him in the field - sleep with him in the cabin - feed with him on husks; let them behold him scourged, hunted, trampled on, and they will come back with another story in their mouths. Let them know the heart of the poor slave - learn his secret thoughts - thoughts he dare not utter in the hearing of the white man; let them sit by him in the silent watches of the night - converse with him in trustful confidence,
Nothing in life is guaranteed, but the one thing that humans demand is freedom. Throughout history, there are countless cases where groups of people fought for their freedom. They fought their battles in strongly heated debates, protests, and at its worst, war. Under the assumption that the oppressors live in complete power, the oppressed continuously try to escape from their oppressors in order to claim what is rightfully theirs: the freedom of choice. In Emily Dickinson’s poems #280, #435, and #732 and Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, freedom is represented by an individual’s ability to make their own decisions without the guidance, consultation, or outside opinion of others in order to find their true sense of self. Once an individual is physically and spiritually free, they can find their true sense of self.