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Comparing The Relationship In Octavia E. Butler's Kindred

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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. In Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred, Dana and Rufus’s relationship is intricate in the following ways: Dana is more of a guardian to Rufus, Rufus and Dana become companions, and he finally starts acting like a slave owner while she starts acting like a slave that Rufus owns. Dana and Rufus’s relationship has many intricacies, one intricacy is that Dana is more like a guardian to Rufus. Whenever Rufus is in trouble Dana gets teleported back to Maryland in the 1800’s and as early as 1810. Dana has to save him from various occurrences such as a river that he was drowning in, a fire that he set and about burnt the house down, an illness he got from drinking, and finally a fight with a slave over the fact that he wanted his wife. Dana even had to save Rufus from getting in trouble by his dad a few times. Dana would have to make excuses …show more content…

She transforms from Rufus’s guardian to his companion and finally she becomes his property or slave. Rufus and Dana have a intricate relationship that changes over the years as she is in the past. Dana needs to keep Rufus alive long enough, so that Rufus and Alice could have Dana’s ancestor. Rufus and Dana’s changing relationship is important because without this relationship Rufus wouldn’t have stayed alive long enough to have Dana’s ancestor. Dana needs to keep saving Rufus’s life. This is why Rufus and Dana’s relationship has many intricacies throughout the

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Tom Weylin has grown much older and frail, and tells Dana that as long as she cares for Rufus he will allow her to stay, and he will hurt her if any harm comes to him. Dana believes him. Tom soon dies of a heart attack, and Rufus believes that Dana could have saved him. Rufus sends Dana to work in the fields as a punishment for not saving him, and she is whipped. Rufus is just as controlling as ever and forces Dana to stay, and when she does he becomes gentler.

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467 Words | 2 Pages

Tragic Yet Beautiful Kindred Spirits was selected as our second piece of music for CMEA on May 7, 2016, because it is a tragic ballad that symbolizes the loss of two of our own. We use a motto in band when preparing for CMEA. The motto goes as follows: Establish your Unanimous Superior in the first song, Earn your Unanimous Superior in the second song, and Don’t lose your Unanimous Superior in the final song. Through the use of a story, symbolism, and complexity, this piece will help us earn our Unanimous Superior after establishing it in the first piece of music, Overture Jubiloso. One reason Kindred Spirits was chosen was because it has a tragic background.

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960 Words | 4 Pages

To such an extent that he boy seems to be using dangerous methods of retaliation. For example, in addition to Dana rescuing him from the fire he set to the draperies in his house in retaliation against his father, he also describes previously having set the stable on fire because his father sold a horse he liked (25). Based on his irrational impulses taken when things don’t go his way, it is evident that Rufus is growing up with an entitled and vindictive attitude. Dana is alarmed by Rufus’s actions and logic and analyzes, “The boy already knew more about revenge than I did. What kind of man was he going to grow up into?

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473 Words | 2 Pages

They lived in a segregated neighborhood in a segregated town. They left “home” when she was 9 but she felt like “ home was turning its back on her without so much as a goodbye” This specific quote is important because it demonstrates now that she is older her perspective of Greenville changed since she was young. In conclusion, there is little doubt that Greenville has changed.

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642 Words | 3 Pages

In 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

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1674 Words | 7 Pages

As an African America, Dana is forced into the life of a slave, suffering through various hardships and numerous close encounters with death. All of these experiences have a significant effect on Dana’s mental stability, as she becomes more and more distant and distressed. However, her fellow characters are unable to fully realize Dana’s state of

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1598 Words | 7 Pages

Rufus no longer understands the difference between friend and master at the loss of Alice. Dana was able to make the selfish decision of killing Rufus, rather than submitting herself, for the good of herself, not the good of anyone else. She could not stand to become like Alice, a slave at the hands of a master; thus, her determination to escape stemmed from her will to remain independent. She knows as soon as she lets herself submit to the will of this society she cannot be viewed as a person, but a tool. Dana represents the women in the current day and age that would do anything to protect their own freedom, even at the

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1804 Words | 8 Pages

As Rufus was carried in the house, his mother frantically entered the bedroom and pushed Dana aside. Margaret Weylin noticed Dana and asked for her name. She seemed to recognize Dana from the past but as she spoke Rufus interrupted her asking for some water. Margaret turns and looks at Dana, as if Dana is her slave, and orders her to “get him some water” (Butler 69). Failure to do so Margaret dismisses Dana to the cookhouse.

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458 Words | 2 Pages

Dana was a positive part of Rufus’s environment because she was the one who really helped him through the good and the bad. Dana tried to help Rufe reach a realization that slavery was clearly wrong and tried . But in the end not much changed. “What’s he done to you?” ‘Sent me to a field, had me beaten, made me spend nearly eight months sleeping on the floor of his mother’s room, sold people. . .

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886 Words | 4 Pages

In his “’No.’ : The Narrative Theorizing of Embodied Agency in Octavia Butler’s Kindred,” Bast underscores humanity’s desire for agency, one’s “ability to reach decision[s] about themselves and [express them]” and how one’s agency can benefit a society or a community (Bast 151). In the beginning of his article, Bast labels this decision-making and expression as beneficial and necessary for a community, while simultaneously underlining society’s limitations put on mankind’s freedoms such as discrimination, prejudice, or injustice. Nevertheless, he follows up by stating that it is simply human instinct to want to express thoughts even if other factors oppress them, undermining these social limitations.

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909 Words | 4 Pages

In James Baldwin's short story, Sonny’s Blues, the reader should understand and visualize the historical context in order to understand the world being presented. The reader has to comprehend the harsh life of a male African-American who struggles with his dreams and drug addiction sometime around early 1957. I will discuss Baldwin's writing style, the life/value of an african american's life during this time, and the relationship between Sonny and his brother. Baldwin’s short story illustrates the hardships a person faces while searching for themselves in a world full of people or obstacles that stand in their way. Some of these obstacles are self inflicted, present from the beginning of their existence or appear as though they are random.

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967 Words | 4 Pages

In the novel, Kindred, by Octavia E. Butler, a lot of ignorance and intelligence is demonstrated all through the book which in a way is dangerous. Kindred is a wonderful work of science fiction that catches the attention of readers by telling a story of Dana, a modern-day African-American woman, who is abruptly transported from California in 1976 to the antebellum South. Not only is Dana abruptly transported back in time but she’s able to experience first-hand the cruelty of enslaved black women and men in the 1800s. The experiences of Dana and the enslaved women in the novel were viewed as mostly women working in households.

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1843 Words | 8 Pages

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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579 Words | 3 Pages

Sometimes, people manipulate others in order to obtain their goal. In the short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, by Flannery O’Conner, portrays a grandmother as a witch, trying to influence others to their will. The manipulative grandmother leads her family to danger, causing the death of everybody, when she decides to join them on their trip to Florida. The grandmother, not wanting to go to Florida for vacation, first tries to convince her son, Bailey, to go to Tennessee instead of Florida, “seizing every chance to change Bailey’s mind” (138).

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1772 Words | 8 Pages

In The Book of Martha Octavia Butler places the reader in the middle of a conversation with God. There are only two characters in the story, and the theme is Martha’s annoyed tête-à-tête with God. Martha is given the option of saving the world. The rules of this arrangement are Martha can make one change and whatever the results, she must occupy the bottom stair. She must make a decision concerning the entire earth; nevertheless she must first overcome her fears and personal views of God.

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