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Examples Of Patriarchy In Kindred

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The Personal and Embedded Societal Racism and Patriarchy of Rufus Weylin The science fiction novel Kindred, written by Octavia Butler highlights the lasting effects of the hierarchical system of slavery in the United States. The main character, Dana Franklin, a black woman living in 1976 Los Angeles who suddenly travels back in time to her ancestors’ years of the early eighteenth century, experiences the embedded institutional racial controversies practiced daily. She watches one of her ancestors, a white man named Rufus Weylin living in Maryland, grow to be a product of institutional patriarchy and racism - a slave owner. His father set a violent example for him, causing him to grow to be an unprincipled man. Using his power Rufus neglects …show more content…

Rufus is a selfish person who craves what he never received as a child, and he exploits the power of being a slaveholder to manipulate those who he builds a connection with in order to safeguard himself. Rufus is embedded into nineteenth century society as a product of his time, though he is too stubborn to change his arbitrary practices. Over the course of Kindred, Rufus endures childhood, teenagerhood, and slave ownership. Though Dana is guiding him hoping to change his ways, he proceeds with them. Alice, a black girl born into The Weylin plantation, was friends with Rufus as a child. Though as Rufus grew up, he developed complicated romantic feelings for Alice. Rufus was afraid to admit to loving her, though he continued to force her into sleeping with him. The first time he brought Alice into bed was when she was married to a different man named Isaac. Rufus …show more content…

His possessive behavior towards Dana grows stronger when other people pay her the same affection. This was apparent previously with Kevin, and similar with a slave man that was interested in Dana, Sam. Rufus went to the extreme by selling Sam once he noticed their interactions. She spoke, “Sam didn’t do anything, you sold him for what you thought he was thinking,” He replies,“He wanted you,” (Butler 256). At this point, Rufus has not shown any romantic affection towards Dana, though once Alice dies, he does. He had the power to completely rid his plantation of Sam, and he did just so. White people living in the Antebellum South believed black people were to be treated as animals. Black people were tortured, whipped, worked to the bone, and unjustly harassed for just surviving. Rufus used the norms of the time to justify his patriarchal actions. He speaks about Alice and Dana as if they were objects. His words were, “If I lived, I would have [Alice]. And, by God, I had to have her.” As he walked towards Dana he stated, “You’re so much like her, I can hardly stand it,” She replies, “Let go of me, Rufe!” As he continues, he mentions the relationship he saw between the two of them. He states, “You were one woman. You and her. One woman. Two halves of a whole,” (Butler 257). Rufus has always noticed their similarities, though only pointed them out when it was of utmost convenience

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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.

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Both Rufus and his father are products of the environment and the time in which they live. They both conform to survive in an environment that requires little compassion for the slaves they own. Tom Weylin recognizes the threat that Dana’s education poses and punishes her for taking the spelling book and reading (Butler 106).

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Along the way, she develops mechanisms to cope with the controlling threats and abuse from the Weylin family, and even reminds Rufus of what she is capable of doing. Throughout the novel, Kindred, Octavia Butler expresses the idea

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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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She becomes a witness to how a vulnerable little boy turns into a selfish, malevolent and cruel slave master. In every chapter of the novel, Dana has been transported to a certain period of time and observes significant changes in the behavior of Rufus, due to the influence of the environment. Therefore, Rufus is more of a product of Nurture, rather than Nature. His father, Tom Weylin, is influential in how Rufus

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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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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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In Octavia E. Butler’s novel Kindred, Dana battles an external conflict of time traveling to the past, and experiencing what it was like to be a slave. Dana ultimately resolves this conflict by killing her ancestor named Rufus to return to her present time; however, this choice also illustrates her true character as both scared but brave. Dana’s decision to kill Rufus because she did not want to live in a time where slavery and racism occurred also reveals the universal theme that racism was very common in the past, and it still occurs till this day. When traveling to the past Dana struggles with an external conflict of racism and slavery.

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Situations are defined by choices. Small actions in one moment of time alter the future of what happens forever. In Kindred by Octavia Butler Dana, the main character, is a black women born in 1976, who time travels back to the early 1800’s in order to save her relative, Rufus, a white boy who is the son of the owner of the plantation. Along the way she also meets her other relative, Alice, a slave born free, but enslaved since she helped her husband run away. Alice is owned by Rufus, who is convinced that he is in love with her.

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He’s done plenty, but the worst of it was to other people ” (245). Rufus had a very complicated life. He was affected by the Antebellum south both in a positive and a negative way. Sure he was white, but that just means he wasn’t sold, killed or beaten. He was also so used to be getting everything handed to him that when he wanted something done for him he got someone to do it.

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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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Harming not only slaves but free blacks as well in the novel, when Dana is transported back to the moment right after Rufus rapes Alice: Dana attempts to express how she felt about Alice’s right to refuse Rufus sexual advances and he replied, sarcastically saying “‘She must have thought she was a free woman or something”. In the novel, shows the oppression of black women. Dana asks Rufus: “‘...your father whips black people?’” and he replies “‘when they need it’” (Butler 26).

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and he felt he could not live without Alice by his side. From this it makes Rufus come off as a deplorable person, but he was only portraying the way people acted around him. It really comes down to was Rufus really that bad of a person, or would he have been very different person with better morals, if he grew up in a time period with an environment that would not shape him in such a twisted manner? In the beginning of Kindred, Rufus is seen as a fool hearted young boy, but as the novel progress we see Rufus turn into a cold heated man shaped by the environment he grew up

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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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Moreover, the outcome of the relativism of the faith was the relativism of behavior. When rock solid mores, moral absolutes, give way to relativism, you end up with twentieth-century situation ethics, where morality is dictated by the situation and the subject. Also out of relativism came twentieth-century world-come-of age theology, where the secularity of the world is celebrated. University professors can debate whether relativism is relative, but when wrong becomes right people become confused and disillusioned. 6

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