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Brief Summary Of Kindred By Octavia E. Butler

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The novel Kindred, written by the author Octavia E. Butler, was about a black woman named Dana Franklin traveling through time to save her ancestors to ensure her birth. Dana travels back to the 1800s, to the era known as the “Antebellum South.” The novel opens with a horrific scene of Dana having her arm crushed in the wall of her house and being taken to the hospital. The police question her about what happened, as they accuse her husband Kevin. Eventually Kevin is cleared as a suspect and is allowed to see his wife Dana. The Prologue ends there, and we are presented with how this incident took place. The novel’s setting is centered around Dana’s house or where she is teleported which is Rufus father’s plantation. Dana and Rufus have a complicated …show more content…

Most of Rufus’s anger is toward his father. One time he even summons Dana because he decided to set the house on fire because his father beat him. Also, Rufus once pointed his gun at her and threatened to kill her, lied to her, yelled at her and punished her for doing nothing wrong. Dana is tired of the mistreatment, so she sticks to their roles with the knowledge that he's unpredictable. Even the other slaves have mixed feeling towards him “they seem to like him, hold him in contempt, and fear him all at the same time” (pg 159). Dana feels the same way. Their relationship started to change when he started seeing Dana differently. Dana had a resemblance to another slave named Alice. This led to Rufus making the remark of them being “two halves of a whole” (pg 247). Towards the end of the novel Alice commits suicide, leaving Rufus devastated. He even goes as far as to try to commit suicide himself, but Dana stopped him. Rufus tries to take his relationship with Dana to the next level by almost raping her. Dana says that “I could except him as my ancestor, my younger brother, my friend, but not as my master, and not as my lover” ( pg 260), so Rufus’s intentions were going to immediately rejected by Dana. Dana isn't comfortable nor accepting of Rufus's implications. Dana’s motivation changes when Rufus changes. As he got older he tended to act on emotions. For example, Rufus wants her to stay and hurts people without thinking first. Their relationship is officially and finally severed when Dana kills him. This needed to be done because Rufus wanted something Dana was never going to give him, which was being physically involved with

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Both Tom and Rufus Weylin have personalities that match in compassion. This is shown in great detail after Dana is recaptured from running off the plantation to mail her letters out to Kevin. Rufus explains that with his interference “you know you got off easy! He didn’t hurt you nearly as much as he’s hurt others” (180) this justification is seen throughout the entire story because of the emotional attachment Rufus makes for Dana. It was clear to Tom that Rufus was responsible for Dana’s behavior “he figured your running away was my fault” (180).

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In the beginning of Octavia Butler’s Kindred the relationship between Dana and Rufus begins with Dana saving a drowning child otherwise known as our young Rufus. Their relationship at this point in time is that of an adult caring for a young child. Fast forward to the next time Dana meets with Rufus again when he burns up the draperies. Stereotyping becomes evident when Rufus questions Dana as to why she does not refer to him as master or that of a higher title.

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If Crassus and the other female slave developed romantic feelings, she could have been bitter and jealous of their relationship because it's a relationship that she wanted. She also could be bitter at her master for forcing her to go into the cave and not making another woman do it. She also could be mad at her master for giving her to Crassus to pretty much have sex with her without her knowledge of Crassus or knowing what he looks like and his feelings towards her. She might have angry memories because she could have been promised her freedom by her master and not given to her, even though she stayed with Crassus for the whole time he was in the cave. Her master also could have promised her that her stay with Crassus was only going to be for a couple of days, making her angry with him when she had to stay with Crassus for 8 months.

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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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The Erlking by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum confused me, even though the interpretation sounded interesting and fantastical. At first, I wondered if my confusion dealt with me not reading or hearing about “Der Erlkönig” before. After thinking that, I read the poem online; I really liked the poem because of creepy it is. I saw some correlations with Bynum’s version, but confusion still lingered in my head. I’m thinking a combination of the story structure and the lore (the fairies and elves) didn’t mix well with me.

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In Octavia Butler’s novel, Kindred, Rufus Weylin is one of the main characters who undergoes a lot of change throughout the novel, making him a round character. A round character is defined as a “major character in a story who encounters contradictory situations and undergoes transformation during this phase. Therefore, the characters does not remain the same throughout the narrative, making their traits difficult to identify from beginning until the end (LiteraryDevice).” The reader, along with Dana, follows Rufus’s growth throughout some major points in his life, from a young boy who forms a bond and friendship with Dana, to when he grows up to be a racist man who ultimately attempts to rape her. However, it is evident that Rufus’s ideology

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historical phenomenon that has lasting cultural meaning and enduring social consequences. This describes sufficiently in defining Kindred as a neo slave narrative and clarifies how Octavia uses slavery in her novel with the heroin, Dana, who investigates between her familial slave history in nineteenth century South and her own sight of slavery in twentieth century. Kindred is the first person narration of the life story of a young Afro-American woman writer, Dana, who finds herself travel regularly between past and present in 1976 and a pre-Civil War Maryland plantation. Dana uncovers her family’s history and discovers a dark past. Her history starts with a slave owner’s son called Rufus and her survival means keeping him alive even when

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Each day that goes by, certain individuals and groups of people are faced with threats, menace, and risk. These people can be targeted just by random choice, have current or past affiliation with crime, or can just be part of a certain situation going on in the community. Dana from the novel Kindred by Octavia E. Butler, and China Joe from the A Path Appears by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn happen to represent this situation perfectly. In the books Kindred and A Path Appear, threats serve as a motif for characters to enhance the importance of protecting and having a direct connection with each other. Dana is a mid-twenties African American women told in the story, Kindred.

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And Rufus was Rufus-erratic alternately generous and vicious. I could accept him as my ancestor, my younger brother, my friend, but not as my master, and not as my lover. He had understood that once” (260). Dana is distancing herself from being a slave doesn’t feel that she could ever be subjected to it like Alice was. She uses pronouns like “her” to describe a slave to show that she will be associated with one.

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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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Imagine waking up in complete darkness and not knowing who or where you are. That was the problem that Shori, the main character in “Fledgling”, faced at the beginning of the novel. After figuring out she had become an Ina (similar to a vampire) and finding her father, Shori and her symbionts (co-dependent humans) move into a community with other Ina’s. Soon after she moves in, several Ina’s plan to kill Ina because she is genetically modified. Shori has human melanin, making her skin dark and allowing her to move around freely in the daylight.

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Later he found out about Rufus jumping Peck and ran away in fear thinking to himself that

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Maryland 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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Mateo helps Rufus better himself and makes him into the kind of person he wants to be. Mateo is described as being kind to a fault in the book. He is not only the kind of person Rufus wants to be, but the kind of person Rufus needs in his life. Mateo’s positive influence rubs off on Rufus when, in the park, Rufus is willing to part with his prized possession: his bicycle. "My friend isn’t about me riding this thing, so you can have it.

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Dana 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.

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