Kindred By Octavia Butler: An Analysis
Using time travel, Octavia Butler creates a new view of racism in her novel, Kindred, by having Dana experience the life of a slave from an outsider's perspective. Though Dana’s present is far from a race utopia, it has drastically improved the problems of the past. In the past, Dana is surprised to find herself growing used to the injustices which surround her. Overall, traveling gives Dana first-hand experience at how slavery warped slaves’ perception of freedom. After spending time on the plantation Dana says, “I never realized how easily people could be trained to accept slavery” (Butler 101). Prior to life on the plantation, Dana has only heard about slavery. Now, actually living it, she is shocked at how easily she acclimates to the
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
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.
Anne Moody Civil Rights Issues
366 Words | 2 PagesCivil rights issues stand at the core of Anne Moody’s memoir. However, because my last two journal entries centered on race and the movement, I have decided to shift my focus. In her adolescent years, Anne Moody must live with her mother, her mother’s partner Raymond, and her increasing number of siblings. As she reaches maturity, she grows to be a beautiful girl with a developed body. Her male peers and town members notice, as does her step father Raymond.
Discrimination Exposed In Kindred By Octavia E. Butler
842 Words | 4 PagesDana experiences the typical slave life and realizes that being a woman in the 1800s was an obstacle. Dana had to deal with sexual harassment, emotional abuse,
Kindred By Octavia Butler Sparknotes
884 Words | 4 PagesMadi Kelley ENGL- 2413 Response 5 Time travel is a very well-known science-fiction topic that many are drawn to, perhaps due to the mystery of time travel and what could be discovered, or perhaps simply to experience a time that you do not belong to, or just as simple as wanting to figure out who it works. The possibility of time travel opens up many questions about what would happen if someone was able to travel back in time such as, what would happen if you let an ancestor die that was not supposed to die yet or tell someone anything about the future or their life, or something even as minuscule as moving a chair could throw the whole future for a loop. However, by using time travel could historians learn more about the motives of
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
Comparing The Relationship In Octavia E. Butler's Kindred
853 Words | 4 PagesDana and Rufus’s Relationship Ever wonder what it's like to have a changing relationship with a plantation owner's son back in the 1800’s? Dana Franklin is a younger African-American woman married to Kevin Franklin who is a middle-aged man. Dana travels from California in 1976 back to the early 1800’s whenever Rufus is in trouble. Rufus is a plantation owner son and is also the father of Dana’s ancestor. Dana’s travels are random; she gets lightheaded and dizzy when she is about to travel.
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.
The Role Of Deception In Nella Larsen's Passing
575 Words | 3 Pages1920’s society offered a prominent way for blacks that look white to exploit its barrier and pass in society. Visible within Nella Larsen’s Passing, access to the regular world exists only for those who fit the criteria of white skin and white husband. Through internal conflict and characterization, the novella reveals deception slowly devours the deceitful. In Passing, Clare and Irene both deceive people. They both engage in deceit by having the ability to pass when they are not of the proper race to do so.
Examples Of Racial Inequality In Kindred
452 Words | 2 PagesDana plays the role of the angel on Rufus’ shoulder by reminding him that even though the solution may seem subversive, he does not need to become a product of his environment, though easier said than done. Even when she explains to Rufus that in “history,” he will “find a white man named J. D. B. DeBow claimed that slavery is good because, among other things, it gives poor whites someone to look down on”(140). On account of this realization, she begins to understand that no matter what side they are on, history is objective “whether it offends you or not,”signifying that subjectivity is the root of history’s violent nature(140). Rufus, physically, mentally, and emotionally cannot face the weight history packs on top of Dana as a black woman years after slavery and vice versa for Dana to expect a difference from the son of a slave master who can do nothing but follow in his footsteps. By meeting Rufus at various points in his life as he grows up, she comprehends that to blame him directly would mean to erase all of the history before him and the way he was taught and deem his actions as his own fault when he follows the only way this point in history teaches
Stereotypes In Kindred
1804 Words | 8 PagesRacist and sexist stereotypes are depicted in the short story, Kindred. Kindred, is about an interracial couple living in California during the 1970s. Dana and Kevin are happily married, when Dana suddenly time travels back to the antebellum south during the time of slavery. Dana is an educated black woman, in the 70s it is normal for a black woman to have higher roles in society, but it is not
The Fight For Freedom In Octavia Butler's Kindred
1598 Words | 7 PagesSituations are defined by choices. Small actions in one moment of time alter the future of what happens forever. In Kindred by Octavia Butler Dana, the main character, is a black women born in 1976, who time travels back to the early 1800’s in order to save her relative, Rufus, a white boy who is the son of the owner of the plantation. Along the way she also meets her other relative, Alice, a slave born free, but enslaved since she helped her husband run away. Alice is owned by Rufus, who is convinced that he is in love with her.
Racism Exposed In Octavia E. Butler's Kindred
670 Words | 3 PagesIn Octavia E. Butler’s novel Kindred, Dana battles an external conflict of time traveling to the past, and experiencing what it was like to be a slave. Dana ultimately resolves this conflict by killing her ancestor named Rufus to return to her present time; however, this choice also illustrates her true character as both scared but brave. Dana’s decision to kill Rufus because she did not want to live in a time where slavery and racism occurred also reveals the universal theme that racism was very common in the past, and it still occurs till this day. When traveling to the past Dana struggles with an external conflict of racism and slavery.
Flannery O Connor's Use Of Setting Analysis
724 Words | 3 PagesThe story takes place at the height of the Civil Rights Movement in America, when desegregation is finally achieved. Flannery O’Connor’s use of setting augments the mood and deepens the context of the story. However, O’Connor’s method is subtle, often relying on connotation and implication to drive her point across. The story achieves its depressing mood mostly through the use of light and darkness in the setting.
Education In Octavia Butler's Kindred
1843 Words | 8 PagesMaryland in 1815, like much of the south, was a hot bed for slavery plantations. For slave owners in particular, it was a benefit if your slaves were not educated, as they would be less likely to question the oppressive treatment, and not adequately be able to express the conditions under which they labored. In the novel Kindred by Octavia Butler, various aspects of education are intertwined throughout, effectively depicting how education and slavery do not go together cohesively. Specifically, in the case of Dana, the novels protagonist, her intelligence led to her owners feeling inferior, which prompted many verbal and physical attacks, an exploitation of her abilities, and the overriding attempt to suppress the education of other slaves
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