Examples Of Reader Response For Kindred
Maxwell Corbett
Ms. Mouw
Honors 10 Block 2
31 May 2023
Kindred by Octavia E. Butler: Reader Response Journal If I were able to choose any book revolving around black history and slavery, it would have to be Kindred by Octavia E. Butler. It is the number one New York Times best selling graphic novel, and has also received the Eisner Award for best adaptation. Kindred is Butler’s fifth book out of twenty two originally published before retiring. This book gives you a sensible overview of slavery, and discrimination of black people in the early 19th century. Through intense emotion, tension, and truth, Kindred makes you feel as if you were experiencing discrimination in real time. The main character of the novel, Edana (Dana) Franklin, a 26-year
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This quote from Dana Franklin helps readers shape out the story in a different manner. The proper way of thinking during the 19th century was to be morose towards slaves, as this was the cultural standard during the antebellum, as seen with Rufus. “There was no shame in raping a black woman, but there could be shame in loving one,” (124). Unknowing, Dana theorizes that Rufus loves her, and he keeps the behavior of a neutral slave owner in order to protect her. All of this is ironic because Rufus demonstrates having zero human dignity, compassion, or equality in this novel. Octavia E. Butler demonstrates characterization in a manner never done before by authors; a way that wasn’t allowed, or even thought about during the 19th century. Love in this way wasn’t fundamental, and that is why the Kindred novel represents slavery in a perfect …show more content…
The three words used to describe Dana’s experience are truly all you need. Fighting for your life to escape is something that nobody needs to go through, and having the courage of risking your life is already enough. Continuously, Dana had multiple close encounters to death, and torture. This is something that you should go through, and this quote alone sums up the whole passage. Dana wandering the woods with little sense of direction, awareness, and survival needs, her escape back into her time was a true hardship that she faced. Octavia E. Butler did a great job at summing up this scene because if you were in a life or death situation, you wouldn’t know much about how or what got you out; that’s why the minimal words were a great addition to this passage, and helped this quote thrive in the novel. Overall, Kindred is a great Sci-Fi experience for readers interested in history, but don’t want it to be a boring story. In conclusion, this novel gives an engaging, thrilling, and avid exploration of slavery for readers wanting to learn more about the 19th century
Analysis Of Kindred By Octavia E. Butler
624 Words | 3 PagesDid you know that 20% of the American population during the Antebellum Period were African Americans? In Kindred by Octavia E. Butler, the author deeply describes how the discrimination of Africans living in America leads up to conflict in the novel. Relating to reality, slavery has been one of the biggest conflict in the past for many years and still occurs today. Kindred will show the people today how we look back in time to see what we have done. The historical time period in the 1800s developed the theme and the character of the time period, but mostly the conflict is deeply expressed.
Analyzing Character Development In Octavia Butler's Kindred '
1936 Words | 8 PagesAnalyzing Character Development: Dana Octavia Butler’s novel, Kindred, provides a unique look into slavery in the antebellum South through the eyes of Edana Franklin, a black woman living in the late 20th century, who is suddenly sent through time to the early 19th century where she is suddenly faced with the task of protecting her ancestor, Rufus, from many dangers in order to ensure her existence in the present. Dana begins her adventure with no knowledge of how or why she has been given this responsibility and, as a result, must adapt to her new and unfamiliar surroundings. As the novel progresses, the reader sees Dana’s internal battle with herself as she decides whether or not Rufus is worth saving, or if she should let Rufus die
Kindred By Octavia E. Butler: An Analysis
451 Words | 2 PagesIn addition, Octavia E. Butler illustrates that change in human beings stems from the people, places, and the situations that surround them. The people depicted in Kindred change and develop so much throughout the book, the most prominent
Embodied Agency In Octavia Butler's Kindred
886 Words | 4 PagesThis analysis of agency would be useful for a person pushing for more freedom of expression or freedom of speech. All in all, Bast’s successfully supports his perspective of agency through his evaluation of Kindred, and the comparison of the human instinct of expression to Dana’s want to create change with her time traveling powers constructs a powerful parallel between the novel and Bast’s article. The novel Kindred, however, serves to create an important message about society on its own, as well. Octavia Butler’s Kindred is a science-fiction novel that depicts the life experiences of a young black woman named Dana, who is given the task of traveling back in time to the era of slavery to save her ancestors, but is unjustly oppressed and has most, if not all, of her rights stripped away from her simply due to her race and gender. As a result, the most prominent overarching theme of the novel is the inequality of power and social status given to people of varying gender and race, and the struggle that those people must go through to gain as much freedom and equality as possible.
Examples Of Power In Kindred
1127 Words | 5 PagesPower, Violence, Identity. Three simple words that at a time in America's history meant a lot more. Slavery was a time in everyone's life that affected them physically and mentally until 1865 when all the violence ended. Kindred Give us a perspective of both sides of this these terrible events. We get to learn about a younger white man growing to be just like his father and all his horrible ways, and a younger black woman who is trying to help this younger man be a better person.
Character Development In The Novel Kindred By Octavia E. Butler
780 Words | 4 PagesOctavia E. Butler's novel Kindred tells the tale of American slavery from a more modern-day perspective through time travel. The novel includes many themes and recurring motifs, but it also includes many different characters with different motivations and personalities that all go through some sort of character development. No one character follows a certain archetype commonly found in a lot of other literary works, and it makes the story engaging and more realistic. First off is Dana, the main character of the story. At the novel's start, Dana has experience with doing hard labor to barely make a living, but her development starts after she travels back to the Weylin plantation.
Human Emotions In Kindred By Octavia E. Butler
725 Words | 3 PagesThe novel Kindred explores Yearning in people that were slaves in forms of love, freedom, and family. On page 36 of kindred a man that is Alice's dad is a slave that left without a pass and got beat for it while he just wanted
Kindred By Octavia Butler: Literary Analysis
642 Words | 3 PagesIn Kindred, Dana’s narrative entirely revolves around the slaveholding American narrative of Rufus which illustrates the second fiddle notion of Dana’s identities. The fact that she can only time travel when white man, Rufus, mortally needs her demonstrates that her entire story regardless of time is dictated by the White Man (Butler 12). Furthermore regarding time fragmentation, the imagery of Dana’s body being in a constant state of scars, bruises, and general crisis in 1976 and 1819 while Rufus’ body and life continues in a progressive linear state depicts how the white historical narrative continues to strut along time whereas the black, female, American narrative continues to be an unhealed wound discarded alongside white-American-male chronology. This notion is expressed when Dana puts her bodily pain to the side in order to sexually usher love and welcoming to Kevin’s five year journey in Antebellum south (Butler 190). Essentially Dana’s body politics do not exist in a state of paradox because through Butler’s textual portrayal of embodiment, she was and still remains as an
Genetics Vs Environment Quotes In Kindred
939 Words | 4 PagesIt’s significant that he is influenced by his abusive family and the world where slave owners treat people like personal property. Dana, the protagonist of the novel, travels back in time to save him when he is in life threatening danger since he is a little boy. It becomes clear for her that he is her ancestor and she really is trying to influence him to become a different man, unlike his father. Rufus doesn’t live up to her expectations and becomes even worse than him.
Meaning Of Kinship Through Dana And Rufus: Character Analysis
1736 Words | 7 PagesLauryn Fleshman Mr. Morgan English I - G 13 March 2023 The Meaning of Kinship Through Dana and Rufus In the novel Kindred, Butler uses tone to highlight Dana and Rufus’s combatant views, often revolving around slavery, and their often one-sided relationship, where Rufus possesses the majority of the power. At the beginning of the novel, Dana is transported to the early 1800s in Maryland, where a young white boy named Rufus is struggling in a river. Dana wades in, drags him to the shore, and saves him from his unconscious state.
Examples Of Patriarchy In Kindred
1285 Words | 6 PagesThe Personal and Embedded Societal Racism and Patriarchy of Rufus Weylin The science fiction novel Kindred, written by Octavia Butler highlights the lasting effects of the hierarchical system of slavery in the United States. The main character, Dana Franklin, a black woman living in 1976 Los Angeles who suddenly travels back in time to her ancestors’ years of the early eighteenth century, experiences the embedded institutional racial controversies practiced daily. She watches one of her ancestors, a white man named Rufus Weylin living in Maryland, grow to be a product of institutional patriarchy and racism - a slave owner. His father set a violent example for him, causing him to grow to be an unprincipled man.
Octavia Butler's Kindred As A Feminist
1563 Words | 7 PagesMany women in the book, such as Sarah has all of her children sold, and is acceptable with slavery. Some of the female’s children become objects used against them, as a way to control their mother. Overall kindred is an example by and about women of color. These stories demonstrate the complexities surrounding problem that affect women of color. Slavery, power, and motherhood are all themes from Kindred.
Frederick Douglass Dehumanization
1647 Words | 7 PagesDehumanization of both slaves and slave owners must occur for slavery to exist. Slavery harms everyone involved, including the slaveholders who superficially seem to profit from the arrangement. Douglass’s narrative acknowledges the damage inflicted on both sides of the institution of slavery, emphasizing that a human being’s personality and disposition form per the laws and socially acceptable practices exhibited within the society. Douglass has an excellent example how he seen with his own eyes how his mistress became demonized when she became an owner of a slave. Douglass became Mrs. Auld's first salve owner and at the begging when they first met “she [was] of the kindest heart and finest feelings” (38).
The Role Of Women In Kindred
967 Words | 4 PagesIn the novel, Kindred, by Octavia E. Butler, a lot of ignorance and intelligence is demonstrated all through the book which in a way is dangerous. Kindred is a wonderful work of science fiction that catches the attention of readers by telling a story of Dana, a modern-day African-American woman, who is abruptly transported from California in 1976 to the antebellum South. Not only is Dana abruptly transported back in time but she’s able to experience first-hand the cruelty of enslaved black women and men in the 1800s. The experiences of Dana and the enslaved women in the novel were viewed as mostly women working in households.
Kindred Commentary
458 Words | 2 PagesDana was a positive part of Rufus’s environment because she was the one who really helped him through the good and the bad. Dana tried to help Rufe reach a realization that slavery was clearly wrong and tried . But in the end not much changed. “What’s he done to you?” ‘Sent me to a field, had me beaten, made me spend nearly eight months sleeping on the floor of his mother’s room, sold people. . .
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