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Brief Comparison Of Kindred And The Nickel Boys By Octavia Butler

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History is constantly playing a role in the way the world works in the present day. Octavia Butler's Kindred provides a unique, science fiction perspective on slavery in the Antebellum South. On the other hand, Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys invites readers into a depiction of the loopholes the Thirteenth Amendment left that allowed places like the Dozier School to be functional for over one hundred years. Although on the most basic level both novels have different elements, they contain a great deal of foundational similarities. Kindred and The Nickel Boys have many parallels that provide a larger understanding of African American history and what it is like to be a victim of systemic racism in America. In particular, the concepts of violent punishment as a …show more content…

Kindred has a more overt portrayal of slavery than The Nickel Boys, given the time period and storyline. The main character, Dana, describes being whipped for running away from the Weylin plantation. She states, “He beat me until I swung back and forth by my wrists, half crazy with pain.This was only punishment and I knew it” (Butler 176). Dana knows that while she is being cruelly punished for attempting to escape, she was still somewhat lucky to be kept alive since she still had a life to go home to. This theme of violent punishment and death were common forms of control during the Antebellum era. In The Nickel Boys, this same theme can be found in the ways the boys are forced to do labor and obey authority to avoid punishment since “The White House delivered the law and everyone obeyed” (Whitehead 66).With regards to punishment and consequences, The Nickel Boys portrayed how unforgiving death was handed onto the unlucky ones, “Most of those who know the story of the rings in the trees are dead by now. The iron is still there.

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In Kindred, Octavia E. Butler talks about a young African American aspiring writer that goes on a dangerous journey to Maryland in the eighteen hundreds. The eighteen hundreds was a time where slavery was a common thing in America. Dana, the main character, has a connection with a young white boy from the eighteen hundreds, named Rufus. As the story unfolds, we learn that Rufus would bring Dana back in time when he was in danger. Unfortunately, Dana’s experience in the eighteen hundreds was far from an adventure.

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Kindred is a story about the past intertwining with the present. Dana, a black woman from the 1970’s, is taken back in time to the antebellum South. She gets sent to Rufus, the son of a plantation owner, to protect him time and time again. Each time she travels back to the South, she remains there for a longer period of time with a higher risk of death accompanying her stay. She ended her long spell of being trapped in the South by murdering Rufus, thus making it impossible for her to return to the past.

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Fredrick Douglass, a slave who escaped into the north and started a life for himself, wrote a narrative called “The Life of Fredrick Douglass” (1818-1895) about his life as a slave. In his narrative Fredrick Douglass says, “There was very little said about it all, and nothing done. It was a common saying, even among little white boys, that it was worth a half- cent to kill a “n****r,” and a half-cent to bury one.” (Douglass 4) Whites thought slaves were worthless.

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Kindred is a book that I really enjoyed reading, it was interesting how Butler was able to combine two totally different eras. The book was also a new topic for me, it kept me engaged with the use of suspense and plot twists. I appreciate that the book is versatile and very mysterious in the beginning. Once I finished reading the first two pages, I was hooked mostly because I was curious about what had happened to Dana’s arm. Putting that aside, I like how Butler brought two different genres together, History and Science Fiction.

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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.

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The young men in Rios’ study internalized these messages, believing they were “inherently criminal” (Punished Policing of black lives, 52). And, as Rios illustrates, it’s a difficult message not to internalize, difficult at least in part because it comes from so many different directions. It’s not that adults are colluding to ruin these boys lives. Yet, Rios illustrates how well-intentioned adults throughout their lives help to criminalize this population, such that “their subjectivities are partially constructed by punishment” Punished Policing of black lives,

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Inhumane What is a slave? The word slave in the dictionary is as stated; a person who is the legal property of another and is forced to obey them. Many have heard the word slave before but few are familiar with the brutality and horrors slaves endured in the past and still sometimes today. Through the book Kindred, written by Octavia E Butler, the movie Roots, Incidents in the life of a slave girl seven years concealed, and the diary of a slave we are exposed to some of the gruesome and appalling ways slaves were treated. Not only are we exposed to the physical inhumanity but we also get a glimpse of the emotional expedition slaves overcame and overcome on a day to day basis.

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Analyzing 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

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A normality in the literary world is that texts deeply nestled in the crosshairs of biopolitics, gender, nationalism, and other identity particularities often fall victim to one sided and dogmatic cultural critiques. Critic after critic find difficulty regarding how to analyze and essentially read a novel where intersectionality is intrinsic to its framework such as Kindred, because it does not fit the fairly common singular literary theory mold. This notion is articulated and defended in “"Some Matching Strangeness": Biology, Politics, and the Embrace of History in Octavia Butler's "Kindred"” where Robertson explores Butler’s usage of Dana’s body to confront universal truths and to cement the idea that Dana is in a historical paradox due

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His sympathetic persona along with his analogies actively connect the reader to his story, while the strong diction and depressing tone make a strong emotional impact. Unlike most essays, the anti discrimination message can be applied to multiple minority groups and other social issues. As a whole, Brent Staples essay succeeds on all levels as it makes an impactful argument describing how society's view on African Americans as being dangerous violent criminals is truly

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The book Kindred, by Octavia Butler, revolves around two completely different time periods. One that is formed from hate, and restrainment, and the other is formed from love and freedom. From Kindred, we start to learn that it is not the time period that influences the ideologies, it is the people. According to Kindred, the society we grow up in greatly influences our ideology by shaping our thoughts, so our actions are always based off what our society taught us.

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This 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.

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The globalized black experience, informed by collective cultural identity, shared history, common experience of racial oppression and marginalization by racist ideologies, is represented in narratives transforming it into a discourse of subversion and resistance. The novel, Kindred, by the Afro-American writer Octavia Butler, employs the fantastic element of time travel to present the Black diasporic experience as a continuum which forms a link between the cultural past and the present day hybridized identities. Dana, the Black female protagonist of the narrative, finds herself sporadically travelling between her present day life in 1976 California and the antebellum South plantation in 1815

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