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Dana's Life Exposed In Kindred By Octavia Butler

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Octavia Butler’s novel Kindred is a science fiction time travel novel, but Kindred is not like other science fiction novels. The book is told in first person by the main character Dana, a modern day black woman as she travels between her time 1976, and the antebellum South. When Dana transports to the antebellum South she is forced to endure slavery and the violence and abuse that comes along with it. As we read further into the book we see Dana’s life and relationships change because of the time travel. Dana is first introduced to us a Dana's last visit to the past brings us full circle; when she must murder Rufus to fend off his attempt to rape her, he grasps her arm as she is sent forward in time, anchoring her arm in the past. Symbolically, Dana's loss may mark the continued scars of slavery on more personally, Dana has suffered many losses throughout the text, of which the arm is a symbol. For all her literacy, self-confidence, and 20th-century knowledge, she is willing to lose an arm to escape from the past. Significantly, her final trip occurs on July 4, 1976. …show more content…

Interracial coupling is a topic that is shown throughout the book, we see it with Dana and Kevin, and somewhat with Rufus and Alice. For Dana and Kevin their marriage is not as unusual in their time as it would be in the antebellum south, they get a little criticism from their families and from people at work, but they’re relationship is not that big of a problem. When Kevin travels with Dana they have to act as a white man with a free black woman would, so that they can survive and be accepted in the antebellum south. If Kevin were to treat Dana the way he did at home, he would not be respected or accepted in slavery time. I think Butler chosen to write the book this way because we see how the relationships between races have changed between then and

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