Kindred By Octavia Butler: Literary Analysis

The novel Kindred by Octavia Butler examines issues of racism and slavery throughout America by depicting an African American woman named Dana who, through forced time travel, finds herself in the antebellum south. This story focuses on the violence, exploitation, and abuse of black people in the past. However, through Dana and Kevin's relationship, the novel speculates on the systemic impact racism has systemically on contemporary society. This is highlighted through the struggles present within their interracial marriage and how their dynamics parallel the racism present throughout the book. Kindred explores the ways in which systemic racism has affected and continues to impact society. The novel sheds light on the ways institutionalized

This causes lasting marks on her as she sees that her family relationship cannot overcome her racial identity, as Rufus has power over her simply because he is white. He reminds her that if she had not been bought by him, she would have been beaten like the couple she had seen previously. Kevin's power is taken away when Dana is sold, and this has a lasting impact on their relationship. It showcases Kevin's inability to protect her from the violence and racism within society, further highlighting a divide between the two as individuals. This forces Dana to have awareness and fear when in the past and present of how her blackness affects her life because "Nothing in her education or knowledge of the future had helped me to escape" (Butler) the torment she experienced in the past. This is in part due to the fact that having knowledge of and seeing violence in a detached way is very different from experiencing it in person, and she had never "lain nearby and smelled their sweat or heard them pleading and praying, shamed before their families and themselves. [She] was probably less prepared for the reality than the child crying not far from [her]"

The novel shows how even those born in the modern era are not safe from a time when racism was the norm and where they must confront the consequences of a system that dehumanizes people of colour. It can be seen how race shapes not just individual experiences but also societal structures and how the consequences of its history can reverberate through generations. By examining these challenges, Kindred highlights the inescapable nature of inequality, speculating that actions within the past can have permanent effects, creating struggles for generations to come. This novel forces the recognition that, well, humankind is not inherently evil; they will participate in "monstrous things [that their] society [says are] legal and proper"