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Analysis Of Kindred By Octavia E. Butler

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Kindred is a book written June 1979 by Octavia E. Butler comprised of two genres, historical fiction, and science fiction and as a result, the book classifies into a new genre. This book can be considered a historical fiction because it shows the history of the pre Civil War 1800s when there were still slaves and it shows the perspective of a slave's life in the south. This book can also be considered a science fiction because Dana can time travel. The logistical issues for it cause the effects to be considered science fiction. Kindred can also be called both of these two genres, but the genre it creates is something new. The book Kindred can be classified as a new type of genre called a neo-slave narrative because it is made with the culmination …show more content…

During the time that she was on the Weylin plantation, she had either got whipped or physically assaulted by every family member of the Weylin family. Octavia Butler had explained the first time Tom Weylin had whipped Dana because she was secretly teaching Nigel to read, “Then I was out of the cookhouse. Weylin dragged me a few feet, then pushed me hard. I fell, knocked myself breathless. I never saw where the whip came from, never even saw the first blow coming. But it came— like a hot iron across my back, burning into me through my light shirt, searing my skin …”(Butler 107). Dana also had formed different relationships with different slaves because they either had house jobs instead of field jobs and some slaves did not for her personality and some didn’t. For most slaves in the 1800’s, slaves and their masters had very little to no relationship and the masters would only tell them what to do or face their consequences. For all of these reasons, the book could categorize into the genre of historical …show more content…

The book has been qualified as a science fiction novel because it incorporates time travel, scientifically impossible for humans right now, but Dana somehow was able to do the impossible. The book is historical fiction because it describes the conditions of a slave during the 1800s by describing all of the emotional and physical aspects of it. The book is a neo-slave narrative because it has both elements of each genre because it has incorporated time travel and describing what it is like to be a slave, but not just one of

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