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Kindred by octavia butler analysis
Kindred by octavia butler analysis
Kindred by octavia butler analysis
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“Science fiction is the branch of literature that deals with the effects of change on people in the real world as it can be projected into the past, the future, or to distant places. It often concerns itself with scientific or technological change, and it usually involves matters whose importance is greater than the individual or the community; often civilization or the race itself is in danger"(James E. Gunn). James E. Gunn’s definition from Anders’ list is strongest because it incorporates time travel, slavery, and change, as seen in the novel, Kindred, by Octavia E. Butler. It accentuates the significance of the issues that happened in the past in view of race, it ties into the things that most creators consider to be excessively unthinkable, …show more content…
This issue was greater than the characters in the novel and the community.
Octavia Butler’s novel, Kindred, is categorized as science fiction because of the existence of time travel. This novel correlates with Gunn’s definition because it connects with the fact that Dana, a 26-year old-American woman, travels from the future where she lives in California, to the past in Maryland. She traveled from the year of 1976 to the year of 1815. Some may think that time travel is impossible, but the article, Time Travel and Changing the Past: (Or How to Kill Yourself and Live to Tell the Tale) written by G.C Goddu says otherwise. He states, “not only is time travel possible, but so is changing the world” (Goddu 17). He also uses a model to explain why he think that time travel is possible. He uses some examples to prove this. His first example, Paul at 32-years old, leaves from February 12, 1998, for the past and touches base on January 28, 1972. On this outing, in an attack of self-skepticism, he finds and murders his 3-year-old
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Some examples of what the slaves went through in this Novel are; “Patrollers made sure the slaves were where they were supposed to be at night, and they punished those who weren't” (2.6.7). Dana's first experience with white savagery comes when she keeps running into a gathering of patrollers whose activity it is to keep slaves devoted to their lords. These individuals don't get paid for what they do. They do it since they get a kick out of the chance to apply control over other individuals. Alice concedes that she's going out on a limb by being hitched to a slave, particularly considering that she is a liberated person. By entering Isaac's life, she fundamentally hazards (and in the long run loses) her flexibility. Alice says, "My father was a slave, and they sold him away from her. She said marrying a slave is almost bad as being a slave" (4.10.30). Her discipline for attempting to enable Isaac to escape servitude is to end up noticeably a slave herself. In the article, The Intergenerational Trauma of Slavery and Its Aftereffects, reviews the historical backdrop of African Americans. This article centers around the center entry, the manors in Maryland and Virginia toward the South and the West. In this specific article you take in more about servitude and what African Americans experienced amid the 1790s - 1860s (Graff
One of the ways that life was not completely equal between black and white is when runaway slaves/servants are involved. An example of this that Breen and Innes talked about dealing with the degree of equality between white men and Negros was when seven men, six white indentured servants and one black slave, tried to escape the servitude of a ‘Mr. Reginolds’. All six of the white men received a branding, whipping, shackling, and added time to their servitude. Emanuel the Negro received 30 stripes, which was a great amount even in early Virginia, a branding, and shackling. Unlike his fellow white runaways, Emanuel the Negro was not given extra servitude time.
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
Slavery is a term that can create a whirlwind of emotions for everyone. During the hardships faced by the African Americans, hundreds of accounts were documented. Harriet Jacobs, Charles Ball and Kate Drumgoold each shared their perspectives of being caught up in the world of slavery. There were reoccurring themes throughout the books as well as varying angles that each author either left out or never experienced. Taking two women’s views as well as a man’s, we can begin to delve deeper into what their everyday lives would have been like.
Slavery in the middle of the 19th century was well known by every American in the country, but despite the acknowledgment of slavery the average citizen did not realize the severity of the lifestyle of the slave before slave narratives began to arise. In Incidents in the life of a slave girl, Harriet Jacobs uses an explicit tone to argue the general life of slave compared to a free person, as well as the hardships one endured on one’s path to freedom. Jacobs fought hard in order to expand the abolitionist movement with her narrative. She was able to draw in the readers by elements of slave culture that helped the slaves endure the hardships like religion and leisure and the middle class ideals of the women being “submissive, past, domestic,
Darko Suvin defines science fiction as "a literary genre whose necessary and sufficient conditions are the presence and interaction of estrangement and cognition, and whose main formal device" (Suvin 7-8) is a fictional "novum . . . a totalizing phenomenon or relationship" (Suvin 64), "locus and/or dramatis personae . . . radically or at least significantly" alternative to the author's empirical environment "simultaneously perceived as not impossible within the cognitive (cosmological and anthropological) norms of the author's epoch" (Suvin viii). Unlike fantasy, science fiction is set in a realistic world, but one strange, alien. Only there are limits to how alien another world, another culture, can be, and it is the interface between those two realms that can give science fiction its power, by making us look back at ourselves from its skewed perspective.
The issue of Slavery in the South was an unresolved issue in the United States during the seventeenth and eighteenth century. During these years, the south kept having slavery, even though most states had slavery abolished. Due to the fact that slaves were treated as inferior, they did not have the same rights and their chances of becoming an educated person were almost impossible. However, some information about slavery, from the slaves’ point of view, has been saved. In this essay, we are comparing two different books that show us what being a slave actually was. This will be seen with the help of two different characters: Linda Brent in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Frederick Douglass in The Narrative of the life of Frederick
As the United States grew, the institution of slavery became a way of life in the southern states, while northern states began to abolish it. While the majority of free blacks lived in poverty, some were able to establish successful businesses that helped the Black community. Racial discrimination often meant that Blacks were not welcome or would be mistreated in White businesses and other establishments. A comparison of the narratives of Douglass and Jacobs demonstrates the full range of demands and situations that slaves experienced, and the mistreatment that they experienced as well. Jacobs experienced the ongoing sexual harassment from James Norcom, just like numerous slave women experienced sexual abuse or harassment during the slave era. Another issue that faced blacks was the incompetence of the white slave owners and people. In ...
Growing up, Frederick Bailey dealt with a harsh slave life. His grandmother raised him, and he rarely saw his mother. All slaves slept on the ground with no extra comforts, like blankets or pillows. Frederick was only entitled to one t-shirt yearly and he witnessed lashings of other slaves. Most slaves on the plantation pick cotton and worked from dawn to dusk. All slaves were fed small corn oriented meals. At the age of eight, Frederick was sold to a slave-owner by the name of Master Auld. Master Auld owned a house in the city of Balitmore. Although he was still separated from most of his family, he was given a full set of clothes and a bed to sleep on. Slaves in the cities were treated different from slaves of the plantations. While the slaves of the plantations were treated with little respect, city slaves were seen as show dogs. You had to make your slave look the best in your neighbor’s view. Here, Frederick Bailey learned to read from poor white boys whose payment for a lesson was a piece of bread or any other food. At age twenty, Frederick ran away to New York City, New York. Many slaves, at the time, ran away t...
Many people often wonder what would it be like to time travel. Would it be fun or scary? Would they change the past and future or keep it the same? Would it change them as a person or break them? For Dana, one of the main characters of Kindred, she went through all of that. Kindred by Octavia E. Butler is about Dana, an African-American woman, who travels back to the antebellum South to preserve her existence in the present. When she goes into the past, she meets her ancestor Rufus, a white slave owner, and she tries to stop him from becoming a racist. Dana's efforts to make her ancestor change his ways fail because he becomes dangerous and racist. This results in Dana killing her ancestor, but this action does not affect her presence in
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.
In the middle of the night, four white men storm into a cabin in the woods while four others wait outside. The cabin belongs to Alice and her mom. The four men pull out Alice’s father along with her mom, both are naked. Alice manages to scramble away. The men question Alice’s father about a pass, which allows him to visit his wife. Her father tries to explain the men about the loss of the pass but the men do not pay any attention to him. Instead they tie him to a tree and one of the white man starts to whip him for visiting his wife without the permission of Tom Weylin, the “owner” of Alice’s father. Tom Weylin forbid him to see his wife, he ordered him to choose a new wife at the plantation, so he could own their children. Since Alice’s mother is a free woman, her babies would be free as well and would be save from slavery. But her freedom “status” does not stop one of the patroller to punch her in the face and cause her to collapse to the ground.
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:
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an autobiography of Frederick Douglass which depicts the hardships and abuse he witnessed and felt as a slave, gives the reader insight into what it was like to be a slave in America. The type of slavery Frederick Douglass endured as an in-house slave for many years in Maryland was not as harsh or difficult as being a slave in another state such as Tennessee which is farther away from the North, or on a different plantation being used as a field hand. Frederick Douglass had the luxury of living in the city for a while, where “a slave is almost a freeman, compared with those on a plantation” and where “there is a vestige of decency” and “a sense of shame” which makes the city slave owners kinder, since they do not want to seem like an unkind slave owner to their non-slave owner neighbors. Even with this fact in mind, the reader is still able to understand the types of punishments that occurred, how the slaves were treated, and what it was like to live life as a slave because of the detail that Frederick Douglass writes in his book about the experiences he went through all those years that he was a slave and what it was like to become a free man.
During the eighteenth and nineteenth-century, notions of freedom for Black slaves and White women were distinctively different than they are now. Slavery was a form of exploitation of black slaves, whom through enslavement, lost their humanity and freedom, and were subjected to dehumanizing conditions. African women and men were often mistreated through similar ways, especially when induced to labor, they would eventually become a genderless individual in the sight of the master. Despite being considered “genderless” for labor, female slaves suddenly became women who endured sexual violence. Although a white woman was superior to the slaves, she had little power over the household, and was restricted to perform additional actions without the consent of their husbands. The enslaved women’s notion to conceive freedom was different, yet similar to the way enslaved men and white women conceived freedom. Black women during slavery fought to resist oppression in order to gain their freedom by running away, rebel against the slaveholders, or by slowing down work. Although that didn’t guarantee them absolute freedom from slavery, it helped them preserve the autonomy and a bare minimum of their human rights that otherwise, would’ve been taken away from them. Black
As female slaves such as Harriet Jacob continually were fighting to protect their self respect, and purity. Harriet Jacob in her narrative, the readers get an understanding of she was trying to rebel against her aggressive master, who sexually harassed her at young age. She wasn’t protected by the law, and the slaveholders did as they pleased and were left unpunished. Jacobs knew that the social group,who were“the white women”, would see her not as a virtuous woman but hypersexual. She states “I wanted to keep myself pure, - and I tried hard to preserve my self-respect, but I was struggling alone in the grasp of the demon slavery.” (Harriet 290)The majority of the white women seemed to criticize her, but failed to understand her conditions and she did not have the free will. She simply did not have that freedom of choice. It was the institution of slavery that failed to recognize her and give her the basic freedoms of individual rights and basic protection. Harriet Jacobs was determined to reveal to the white Americans the sexual exploitations that female slaves constantly fa...