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Examples Of Racial Inequality In Kindred

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Throughout the story of Kindred, Octavia Butler illuminates the societal systems and antiquated treatment towards black people created during slavery. In doing so, this allows Dana to uncover the root and reason for racial inequality which ultimately helps her build sympathy towards Rufus. In the first encounters with Rufus, Dana, coming from a time where there is a drastic difference in racial equality, she makes an effort to correct his thought patterns or change how slavery affected the way white people saw and treated black people. For some time, we can see him actively trying to rewire his thinking, but he falls off of that path as he grows up due to his environment. After holding a sense of superiority, his acceptance with slavery and …show more content…

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.” “ I hope not,” I said watching him. “You don’t have to do that kind of things.”(140). Dana plays the role of the angel on Rufus’ shoulder by reminding him that even though the solution may seem subversive, he does not need to become a product of his environment, though easier said than done. Even when she explains to Rufus that in “history,” he will “find a white man named J. D. B. DeBow claimed that slavery is good because, among other things, it gives poor whites someone to look down on”(140). On account of this realization, she begins to understand that no matter what side they are on, history is objective “whether it offends you or not,”signifying that subjectivity is the root of history’s violent nature(140). Rufus, physically, mentally, and emotionally cannot face the weight history packs on top of Dana as a black woman years after slavery and vice versa for Dana to expect a difference from the son of a slave master who can do nothing but follow in his footsteps. By meeting Rufus at various points in his life as he grows up, she comprehends that to blame him directly would mean to erase all of the history before him and the way he was taught and deem his actions as his own fault when he follows the only way this point in history teaches

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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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732 Words | 3 Pages

Kindred Essay When comparing the past to the present, the differences between the two times become very apparent. The novel Kindred, by Octavia E. Butler is about an African-American woman named Dana, time traveling to the past to act as a guardian over her great-grandfather Rufus. Being an African-American woman temporarily living in the 1800s, the reader would expect Dana to have little to no power. But if the reader digs deeper, they realize that Dana has more power than Rufus because she can choose not to save him from danger, and Rufus knows this, which is why Dana gets treated better than most of the slaves on the plantation.

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1936 Words | 8 Pages

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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497 Words | 2 Pages

He clearly has not yet been shaped by his parents or environment. As they talk it becomes more clear that he hardly sees Dana as black. Rufus even goes on to call her the N word in such a casual tone because he hadn’t known it was wrong. However like all people he grew up and was taught by his parents causing him to gain their morals and beliefs. While Rufus does go on to do many things that are considered objectively wrong it wouldn’t be fair to blame his character or original nature for

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939 Words | 4 Pages

It’s significant that he is influenced by his abusive family and the world where slave owners treat people like personal property. Dana, the protagonist of the novel, travels back in time to save him when he is in life threatening danger since he is a little boy. It becomes clear for her that he is her ancestor and she really is trying to influence him to become a different man, unlike his father. Rufus doesn’t live up to her expectations and becomes even worse than him.

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1198 Words | 5 Pages

In Kindred, a novel by Octavia Butler, we see Dana, a young African-American woman living in Los Angeles in 1976 travel back in time to the 1800’s for a seemingly unknown reason. Here, we see that she is put in charge of Rufus Weylin, the father of a relative of Dana. Throughout the novel, we see their relationship transform in different ways. Their relationship started off with Dana being a guardian to Rufus, as the story continues we see that they develop into a friendship and then ultimately take on the role of slave owner and enslaved. Although it is not explicitly stated in the story, we see that Dana had big plans in terms of how Rufus could be changed into a plantation owner with morals.

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842 Words | 4 Pages

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler highlights the issue of racial discrimination and brings out the horrors that are attached to it. The book was written in 1979 and became super popular because of the issues still prevalent today. It reveals the story of a black woman, Dana, who travels back in time and becomes a slave, she then has to face the authorities that a white man had back then. Dana is pulled back and forth through time to protect an ancestor, Rufus. Dana struggles throughout the 1800s as a slave while having to work harder than she ever has, while also trying to protect him.

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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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670 Words | 3 Pages

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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2092 Words | 9 Pages

Butler used this to set the tone for the past travels as well as the present. In the past, clearly blacks are not respected. On her first trip back, Dana had just saved Rufus from drowning and was not only referred to as a nigger by Rufus’s mother, Margaret Weylin, but even had had a rifle pointed at her by his father, Tom Weylin. Dana is not used to being called by racial slurs, and surely does not understand why she would have her life threatened for saving Rufus, in her time she is not judged on her skin color. These scenes helped me to feel how frustrating it must have been and is today for blacks to experience racism, they don't even see them selfs as anything different from anyone else, but some people seem to view them as evil animals with

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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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175 Words | 1 Pages

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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733 Words | 3 Pages

Martha Peraza SOC 3340 Inequality in Education California State University, Bakersfield Abstract In the United States, there exists a gap in equality for different demographics of students. The factors contributing to educational disadvantages include socioeconomic struggles, gender of students, language or culture, and particularly for the scope of this paper, race.

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564 Words | 3 Pages

As a college undergraduate, I had dreamed of joining the faculty of a distinguished university and making a lasting scholarly mark in political philosophy. As the twentieth century drew to a close, both dreams had come true. I had served on Princeton's faculty for nearly three decades, and mentored two generations of great young scholars who now hold teaching appointments at illustrious universities around the world.

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To Kill a Mockingbird Essay ¨Inequality is the root of social evil¨ (Pope Francis). In the book To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee shows that social inequality affects everyone. As the book goes on, Lee proves that racial inequality was one of the greater stresses in the 1930’s. Social inequality does not just exist only with race; it interferes with wealth, family backgrounds, age, and even your beliefs.

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