Examples Of Power In Kindred

Power, Violence, Identity. Three simple words that at a time in America's history meant a lot more. Slavery was a time in everyone's life that affected them physically and mentally until 1865 when all the violence ended. Kindred Give us a perspective of both sides of this these terrible events. We get to learn about a younger white man growing to be just like his father and all his horrible ways, and a younger black woman who is trying to help this younger man be a better person. Throughout Kindred, Octavia Butler reveals how Power and Violence can result in a change in Identity.
Power in Kindred is shown a lot. Whether it is through Rufus and his abusive need to show his power to women, or Dana and her need to show power to Rufus and get

Another example of power in Kindred is right after Rufus sent Dana into the field to get beaten by Fowler “Sent me to the field, had me beaten, made me spend nearly eight months sleeping on the floor of his mother's room, sold people… He's done plenty, but the worst of it was to other people.” (Butler 167) Dana finally realizes and admits that everything Rufus has done is terrible. While Rufus has a lot of power and good use to improve people's lives he chooses to abuse his power whenever he feels he like it. The last example of power in Kindred is when Dana Murders Rufus “I pulled the knife free of him

Whether it is the pressure of doing the right thing or the pressure of saying the correct thing and not putting yourself in a perilous situation it can affect anyone's identity for the better or worse. After one of the many times Dana has gotten beaten, she says “I didn't want to depend on someone else's chance violence again—violence that, if it came, could be more effective than I wanted.” (Butler 189) Dana is over white people taking advantage of her. She feels she needs to protect herself in a way and that is why and when she started carrying a knife in her pocket. The same knife she would later kill Rufus with. When Rufus is telling Dana about what his mom did to him "I asked her where you went […] and she got mad and said she didn't know. I asked her again later, and she hit me. And she never hits me." (Butler 165) Rufus’s mom has never hit him before, but something with seeing Dana disappear is making her really uncomfortable and she has no other way to express her feeling but by hitting him. This shows how someone's identity can change when confronted with something complicated to understand. The very last example of identity is during the prologue when we first get to meet Dana. “I closed my eyes again remembering the way I had been hurt—remembering the pain.” (Butler 212) Dana gets to a point in her life where there is so much going on that the only way she feels as if she is normal is through