Symbolism In Kindred

a) Why does Dana begin to constantly battle her conscious after realizing that her time traveling wasn’t going to just be a one or two time thing?
After understanding that time traveling wasn’t going to be a one time thing, Dana begins to
battle her conscious mainly because she doesn’t know if she is morally bound to let Rufus live or die. Dana begins to slowly understand her life relies on Rufus’s actions after she has been put into several situations in which she has had to save his life. She starts to ponder and make the conclusion that if Rufus survives, she will also survive and make it back to California. Dana continues to go along with this mindset for a while, but eventually she starts to second-guess it, and therefore fights her conscious.

She starts to see the terrible things Rufus starts to do to the slaves on the plantation, and Rufus also starts to do bad things to her. For example, she hears he raped Alice, and beats her a few times. This is where she gets into trouble with her conscious because she now does not know if her life relies on him, and she doesn’t know if she should kill him or not.
b) A popular theme in the novel is the wrongful influence of power. Who embodies this theme the most and why?
In the Novel, Rufus embodies the theme of wrongful influence of power the most. Rufus begins to embody this theme shortly after becoming a slave owner, and inheriting power and authority from his father. He quickly begins to think he can control all aspects of others’ lives (such as Dana), punish people harshly, and receive whatever he wants. With this being said, it is easy to see he misuses power. As time goes on and he gains more authority, he begins to turn on his family and friends on the plantation. He severely abuses Alice for no apparent reasons and starts to treat Nigel like he is nothing. Rufus also uses a ton of brutal violence to keep the plantation intact. He whips slaves when they make one tiny mistake, such as talking back to him. Another reason as to why Rufus embodies this theme is because he thinks he can do whatever he wants to Alice for the sole reason that he “wants” her. He beats her, talks rudely to her, orders her around, whips her, and forces her to do things she doesn’t want to do all. Rufus has no reason to treat her like this, and if anything he should be treating her nicer if he wants to be with her.
c) In the novel Kindred, whippings are commonly given to punish and hurt slaves. What do you think the author is trying to symbolize with these whips?
In the novel Kindred, the author uses whippings to symbolize the white man’s power and their brutal violence.

The men who use whips in the novel, Tom, Rufus, and Jake are all men that the slaves are afraid of. These guys are selfish and bitter and they use violence (whippings) for punishments, to hurt slaves, and even for pleasure. In the South, a white man with a whip often embodies evilness and anger. The functionality of the whip makes for slow and painful torture of the slaves. These whips are able to kill people, accept instead of killing very quickly, they kill very slowly and more painfully than other methods of killing. Whippings clearly show the white man had all the power, and that no one would be able to challenge them because of their desire for violence. All the white man wanted was to show his superiority, and with harsh whippings he surely

did.

Part III: Application
In the novel Kindred, Dana time travels back into a time where slavery was a very common societal practice.

She quickly begins to realize what time period she is in, and slowly adapts to it and starts to fit in. In our modern society today, learning and doing is also a common practice. As little babies, and toddlers we learn how to do things from our parents and peers, and we then start to do them. This practice of learning and doing continues through our childhood, adolescence, and lifetime. A specific practice as to where learning and doing takes place is in our education system (schooling). In our school programs today, learning and doing have become inseparable (rephrase). Teachers teach students about things like arithmetic, reading, and writing. Students are expected to follow everything they teach, and replicate the ways in which the teachers teach them to do things. These ways in our education system are similar to Dana’s world, where Sarah would teach her how to do things like cook, and Dana would have to replicate her cooking. The main reason as to why we have not abolished this practice is because it’s very effective, and majority of the time works. Learning and doing is an easy way to learn how to do things efficiently and the right way, and is much easier than teaching yourself. It’ part of human nature to watch how to do something, and to then do it, so there’s no reason to abolish learning and doing at

all!