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Fate And Destiny In Kindred By Octavia E. Butler

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Fate or Destiny? Fate is decided by forces out of our control, while destiny involves choices. Could you choose to love someone that takes your freedom? Could choose to stay with someone that takes your children away and sell them to demonstrate you are powerless? Those are some things that Alice must have asked herself in the novel Kindred, written by Octavia E. Butler. In this novel, we learn about a black woman called Dana and her “time travels” into an 1800s Maryland plantation, where she saves young Rufus, and learns that he is one of her ancestors. The other one is Alice; her fate is to have a child with Rufus that will be named Hagar and will be Dana’s grandmother. Although Alice had no control over her fate, ultimately, she took control …show more content…

Over the years, Alice starts to grow impatient with Rufus, she tells Dana one day: “The more you give him, the more he wants (…) I got to go while I still can – before I turn into just what people call me” (234). I think she starts to realize over time that Rufus would never let her go, he would never free her kids and her hate for him is not as it was before because of the things they had gone through together. She feels like losing her identity, not being able to recognize herself. Alice tells Dana “I got to go before I turn into what you are” (235). She refers to Dana as acting “white” turning against her own people. I think that over the course of time, the memory of Isaac was fading, and she felt guilty about it. Dana also noticed: “I got the feeling that Alice was keeping him happy- and maybe finally enjoying herself a little in the process. I guessed from what she had told me that this was what was frightening her.” (236). Alice was conflicted, life with Rufus and the kids were getting more comfortable, and she was getting used to being a slave, there is a passage in the book where Dana states that and I think that scared her. When Rufus took the kids away from her, I think that it was the last straw for Alice. The fact that she started to feel for Rufus, bothered her because she felt losing her

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