People naturally change and adapt to their surroundings whenever they relocate anywhere, whether it is a new town, city, state, country, or even as little as a new class. In 1860, this very concept was used on Native Americans who were forced into boarding schools to try to get them to assimilate into American culture. This concept was forced onto Dana and her husband, Kevin, when they were forced to live in 1815 Maryland after living in 1976. In the novel Kindred by Octavia Butler, the main character Dana gets shot back in time against her will, and is called back to 1813 on a slave plantation. While stuck there, she is forced to adapt to the culture and ways of life. The concept of assimilation is brought up a lot in Rufus’s way of growing up, Dana’s worry about her husband, and Dana’s forgiveness. …show more content…
While Rufus has grown up, he has seen and experienced how his father acts and treats others and naturally picks it up because it is all he knows. This type of assimilation isn’t always thought of as such, but it is still the child adapting and accepting the culture and nature of his slave owner father. In the novel, when Dana travels back, she is instantly met by Rufus’ father and he shows himself as someone who is cold and judges people for their race, even when they have saved his children. When she travels back, Rufus displays his personality and Dana then realizes, “The boy already knew more about revenge than I did. What kind of man was he going to grow up into?” (Butler 25). Dana realizes that the boy has adapted and assimilated to his father's actions and how to handle and deal with them. She points out that he knows a lot about revenge, and can be inferred that he has been deeply affected by his father. His father's acts of violence towards him and those who are enslaved around him, have taught him how to fight
One’s sense of identity is shaped by the conception of how one faces challenges in the world. In Octavia Butler’s science fiction novel, Kindred, Butler explores the idea of maintaining one’s identity within an oppressive society. Dana’s experiences in the antebellum South push her to draw from within and around her to persevere through not only the past, but the present too. As Dana completes a journey which is unexpected and complex, it allows her to realize how strong she is because of her ability to preserve her understanding of herself despite any alienation in the past.
The Changeable nature of life affects us all somehow. Whether it be moving to a new city, having children, or losing people that we love, it can affect people in many different ways. For example, in the novel, the main character Taylor Greer changes her name from Marietta and moves...
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
In Miriam Toews novel A Complicated Kindness there are many references to pop culture. There are references to music, books and films. These all lead to the development of key ideas in the novel. East Village is supposed to be a town free form the influence of most media. The children are allowed to watch certain films but only the ones the church deems fit. Yet somehow the un-holy films find their way into the procession of kids in the town like Nomi. The films are used to develop key ideas by showing that not everybody is happy with a strong importance on religion, where Nomi gets some of her influence for wanting to move to New York and how the church uses the ban on films to remain in control. The church isn’t successful on banning media so the kids grow up knowing names like The Rolling Stones and James Taylor. These musicians, the books they read and the movies they watch all add to the mystery of the outside world and what life would be like outside of East Village.
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
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.
In the novel Kindred by Octavia Butler, Dana reveals in the fight that she is drawn back again to a flashback of her husband Kevin talking to her in their kitchen; however, she realizes Kevin did not make it back to their home. Dana had a feeling of fainting and vomiting, and she realized that she would soon see Rufus and reconciled with her husband that she had not seen for months. Dana saw that Rufus was beaten by this young black male and there was a young lady who was frighten and had her clothes tore and told the man to run away and to leave Rufus. Then Rufus denies Dana’s help throughout the chapter. He says that he is a young adult and does not need her help at all. Later, in the chapter Rufus reveals that Dana’s fear would come to reality and that sooner Rufus will break the purity of the relationship they have. After that Dana, will realize the true colors that were reveal during Rufus confrontation with Kevin that almost resulted in a horrifying situation for Dana. Nonetheless, when it comes to relationship or treatment, every character differs from each other due to race, or how they
Baldwin's mind seems to be saturated with anger towards his father; there is a cluster of gloomy and heartbreaking memories of his father in his mind. Baldwin confesses that "I could see him, sitting at the window, locked up in his terrors; hating and fearing every living soul including his children who had betrayed him" (223). Baldwin's father felt let down by his children, who wanted to be a part of that white world, which had once rejected him. Baldwin had no hope in his relationship with his father. He barely recalls the pleasurable time he spent with his father and points out, "I had forgotten, in the rage of my growing up, how proud my father had been of me when I was little" (234). The cloud of anger in Baldwin's mind scarcely lets him accept the fact that his father was not always the cold and distant person that he perceived him to be. It is as if Baldwin has for...
While travelling to and from the south, Kevin often tries to understand and empathize with Dana. In the book Scenes of Subjection, written by Saidiya Hartman, she writes, “yet empathy in important respects confounds Rankins’ efforts to identify with the enslaved because in making the slave’s suffering his own, Rankin begins to feel for himself…” (19). Rankins is s white man whom appears to be in a similar situation as Kevin. While understanding and trying to feel what slaves feel, he goes beyond and starts feeling sorry for himself. I believe Kevin discovers he has the same problem: he tries to empathize with Dana and as a result feels sorry for himself. Time travel brings the situation to light by allowing Dana to be subjected to the role of a slave. Despite Kevin unconsciously empathizing with himself, he never stops his worry for Dana. Upon Dana’s return to modern days, Kevin tells her, “‘But in all my travelling, do you know the only time I ever felt relieved and eager to be going to a place?’... ‘it was when you went back to Maryland, when you visited the weylins to see whether I was there.’” (192). Kevin constantly worries about Dana even though he was stuck in a time where whites treat blacks as though they are objects. He always shows his love for Dana, which for the time he was in is extraordinary. While the antebellum south changes their views on life, it rarely changes their views of each
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.
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”().
Toni Morrison's novel, Beloved, reveals the effects of human emotion and its power to cast an individual into a struggle against him or herself. In the beginning of the novel, the reader sees the main character, Sethe, as a woman who is resigned to her desolate life and isolates herself from all those around her. Yet, she was once a woman full of feeling: she had loved her husband Halle, loved her four young children, and loved the days of the Clearing. And thus, Sethe was jaded when she began her life at 124 Bluestone Road-- she had loved too much. After failing to 'save' her children from the schoolteacher, Sethe suffered forever with guilt and regret. Guilt for having killed her "crawling already?" baby daughter, and then regret for not having succeeded in her task. It later becomes apparent that Sethe's tragic past, her chokecherry tree, was the reason why she lived a life of isolation. Beloved, who shares with Seths that one fatal moment, reacts to it in a completely different way; because of her obsessive and vengeful love, she haunts Sethe's house and fights the forces of death, only to come back in an attempt to take her mother's life. Through her usage of symbolism, Morrison exposes the internal conflicts that encumber her characters. By contrasting those individuals, she shows tragedy in the human condition. Both Sethe and Beloved suffer the devastating emotional effects of that one fateful event: while the guilty mother who lived refuses to passionately love again, the daughter who was betrayed fights heaven and hell- in the name of love- just to live again.
Another realization that helps the narrator gain more of an identity is the realization of his grandfather’s advice.
There are many themes that occur and can be interpreted differently throughout the novel. The three main themes that stand out most are healing, communication, and relationships.
Many people wonder: what is the meaning of life? What is the human purpose on this earth? At least one time in our lifetime, we all look at ourselves and wonder if we are living our lives the way we were meant to live them. Sadly, there is not a definite answer to the principles of human life. Every human comes from different backgrounds and different experiences throughout their existence. Each person is different, each with different emotions and reactions to their surroundings. People strive to uncover the secrets to the meaning of life. In reality, humans are given the desire to live the way we want and have a critical thinking mind, unlike animals. In the essay Living like Weasels, Annie Dillard believes we should live more carefree and instinctual as weasels, but what we were given as humans is a gift that no other creature has – free will and choice to shape our own lives.