Octavia E. Butler Essays

  • Kindred By Octavia E. Butler: Literary Analysis

    1439 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

  • Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

    776 Words  | 2 Pages

    believed that “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” With this in mind, “The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all” (Kennedy). In the novel, Kindred, written by Octavia E. Butler, many characters throughout the book displays ignorance versus knowledge which, like MLK has said, is dangerous. The main character, Dana, time travels from 1976 back to the early nineteenth century. When she time travels, she pops in and out

  • Parable Of The Sower By Octavia E. Butler

    1427 Words  | 3 Pages

    social issues in reality. "Parable of the Sower" by Octavia E. Butler is about a fictional society where the issues of race, gender, politics, religion, and sexuality are as bad as they can be. In "Parable of the Sower, Octavia uses the events occur around Lauren Olamina to indirectly present the contemporary issues not only in the novel, but also in the reality; especially, these issues is not a private matter of the United States, but also

  • Reality In Kindred By Octavia E. Butler

    1606 Words  | 4 Pages

    situation as a reality. In the novel, Kindred, by Octavia E. Butler, one can see how the author believes that one’s environment and, or training will shape their self-image and, thus, their feelings toward their

  • Analysis Of Kindred By Octavia E. Butler

    804 Words  | 2 Pages

    personality. Dana would time-travel to Maryland and come back to her new home in California. In the 1800s, slavery was bad in Maryland and California wasn’t part of the United states. The use of time-travel and issues of race in the book Kindred by Octavia E. Butler shows the progress the United States has made on racism and how it got better. By 1976, slavery was ended by Abraham Lincoln when he made the 13th amendment. Despite slavery being ended, there is definitely still some racism in 1976 but compared

  • A Comparison of Butler's Life and Kindred

    1891 Words  | 4 Pages

    work itself. Octavia E. Butler's life and her novel Kindred have remarkable comparisons. This essay will point out important events of Butler's life and how they link to the mentioned novel. Octavia Estelle Butler was born on June 22, 1947 in Pasadena, California (Voices From 1). She began her life with many hardships as an only child and having her father die when she was very young (Voices From 1). She grew up in a location that had a wide variety of racial backgrounds, however Butler never felt

  • Octavia Butler's Kindred vs. Harriet Jacobs' Incidents In The Life of a Slave Girl

    1036 Words  | 3 Pages

    Octavia Butler's Kindred vs. Harriet Jacobs' Incidents In The Life of a Slave Girl According to 'the conventions for slave narratives', it is possible to categorize Kindred by Octavia Butler as a slave narrative. However, the circumstances that take Dana back in time are imaginative and fantastical compared to slave narratives such as Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs. While reading Kindred, one doesn't really get the experience of the slaves, but how Dana feels as she

  • Octavia Butler

    3259 Words  | 7 Pages

    Table of Contents Page 1. A BRIEF CONVERSATION WITH OCTAVIA E. BUTLER Page 2 - 4. Biography Page 5 - 9. Synopsis Page 9 - 14. Analysis of Criticism Page 14 – 15. Influences on Society Page 16. Footnotes Page 17. Bibliography A BRIEF CONVERSATION WITH OCTAVIA E. BUTLER 1. Who is Octavia E. Butler? Where is she headed? Where has she been? Who am I? I'm a 51-year-old writer who can remember being a 10-year-old

  • Analysis Of Parable Of The Sower By Octavia E. Butler

    901 Words  | 2 Pages

    The book “ parable of the Sower “ was written by Octavia E Butler . In this text the writer wants to show up some people are unhappier to others people activities ,also people make a distance each others in a different condition and wants to take a power to keep them safe.In some cases people will unpleasant because people make a disagreement with each others and separate to many groups,technologies that have dramatically change they we where we live also people style of living. Now in modern

  • Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower Compared to Real Life

    1172 Words  | 3 Pages

    Parable of the Sower is a very well-written science fiction novel by Octavia Butler. The setting is California in the year 2025. The world is no longer prosperous and has turned into a very poor place. There are countless people homeless, jobs are scarce and hard to come by, and very few communities of homes. The few communities that are still occupied have huge walls with barbed wire and laser wire surrounding them. There are robberies, murders, and rapes just about every day. People walk

  • Kindred By Octavia E. Butler: Literary Analysis

    946 Words  | 2 Pages

    America has not always been great, it has a dark history of slavery and racial discrimination, that are still present in the modern day. From the novel, Kindred by Octavia E. Butler, Dana is constantly summoned to travel back in time from 1976 to 1800s, to save and protect Rufus, a white son of a plantation owner, who later becomes the father who bores the child who later become Dana’s ancestor. Both the characters, Dana and Rufus struggle to accept each other’s differences of thought because of

  • Movie the Matrix and Octavia Butler's Dawn

    1552 Words  | 4 Pages

    Movie the Matrix and Octavia Butler's Dawn When I first announced to my parents that I was going to marry my current wife, the first words out of my father’s mouth were, “But she’s from another culture.” My father and mother, although being generally good people, are the products of an older system of beliefs. It is the matrix I was raised with, and that dictated my earlier learning experience. Fortunately for me, I chose to risk alienating my parents, and told them that if they ever mentioned

  • The Tradition in Octavia E. Butler´s Parable of the Sower

    1079 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Octavia E. Butler’s novel “Parable of the Sower”, the community was entirely collapsed, and almost everywhere was chaos and out of control. It was obviously in a dark period. The main character, Lauren used to live in the walled community; it was the only small safe place for people tried to maintain a normal life. Because the neighborhood provided a temporary safety, people were willing to stay for education and work even if the walled community had been getting crowded already. To compare and

  • Kindred by Octavia Butler

    1391 Words  | 3 Pages

    Kindred by Octavia Butler 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

  • Rape Rewarded in Octavia Butler’s Kindred

    789 Words  | 2 Pages

    Rape Rewarded in Octavia Butler’s Kindred “So you’ll be rid of the man and have possession of the woman just as you wanted,” I said with disgust. “Rape rewarded.” He turned his head toward me and peered at me through swollen eyes. “I begged her not to go with him,” he said quietly. “Do you hear me, I begged her!” I said nothing. I was beginning to realize that he loved the woman-to her misfortune. There was no shame in raping a black woman, but there could be shame in loving one. Dana

  • Bloodchild: Oppression in Science Fiction

    1402 Words  | 3 Pages

    literary genre, authors such as Octavia Butler have become increasingly popular. In her short story "Bloodchild", Butler extends the discussion of oppression in America into the science fiction genre. In this manner her story, "…like almost all science fiction, though it seems to concern itself with human beings and worlds of the far distance and future, it also concerns itself with the here and now" (Asimov 110). Within the first few passages of "Bloodchild", Butler establishes that the Tlic clan

  • The Basis of Utopia

    1199 Words  | 3 Pages

    stories written by authors looking to change the world in some way or another. Authors begin with an idea, and then move towards placement of thought and scheme into somewhat of a reasonable reality. Authors such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Octavia Butler use the stories they write as ways to express their problems that they have with the present world. Advances in the present day world can only be reached through dreams and desires. These dreams and desires come to life as authors present their

  • Comparison Of The Sower And On Darwin Tides

    2252 Words  | 5 Pages

    Climate change has become an increasingly urgent and complex issue, causing authors to wrestle with its diverse implications through narrative fiction. In Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower and the short story "On Darwin Tides" from the anthology Everything Change: An Anthology of Climate Fiction, the authors explore the narrative challenge of depicting humans as villains amidst environmental crises. Parable of the Sower paints a dystopian picture of a future America destroyed by climate change

  • Octavia Butler Research Paper

    602 Words  | 2 Pages

    Octavia E. Butler Octavia Estelle Butler was born on June 22, 1947 in Pasadena California. When she was younger, she was known as Junie because her mother and she had the exact same name. Her father was a shoeshine man until he past away. Her mother had to raise her on her own. She was dyslexic, but that never stopped her from her from chasing her dreams. She loved reading books and she started to create her own stories. At the age of 10, she knew she wanted to be an author. “She went to Pasadena

  • Octavia E. Butler’s Novel, Fledgling: Societal Fear of Shori

    790 Words  | 2 Pages

    “How could it feel so good when it should be disgusting and painful?” (Butler 75) These words spoken by Theodora, an elderly white woman, about her symbiotic and sometimes sexual relationship with Shori, a black “elfin little girl” (Butler 75), express the societal fear that Octavia Butler exposes in her characterization of Shori as a monster. Shori is a monster because her very existence is a testament to the blurring of historically concrete lines. She is androgynous, vampire and human, black and