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Fate And Destiny In Kindred By Octavia E. Butler

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Recommended: Research essay focusing on Octavia Butler's Kindred

Fate or Destiny? Fate is decided by forces out of our control, while destiny involves choices. Could you choose to love someone that takes your freedom? Could choose to stay with someone that takes your children away and sell them to demonstrate you are powerless? Those are some things that Alice must have asked herself in the novel Kindred, written by Octavia E. Butler. In this novel, we learn about a black woman called Dana and her “time travels” into an 1800s Maryland plantation, where she saves young Rufus, and learns that he is one of her ancestors. The other one is Alice; her fate is to have a child with Rufus that will be named Hagar and will be Dana’s grandmother. Although Alice had no control over her fate, ultimately, she took control …show more content…

Over the years, Alice starts to grow impatient with Rufus, she tells Dana one day: “The more you give him, the more he wants (…) I got to go while I still can – before I turn into just what people call me” (234). I think she starts to realize over time that Rufus would never let her go, he would never free her kids and her hate for him is not as it was before because of the things they had gone through together. She feels like losing her identity, not being able to recognize herself. Alice tells Dana “I got to go before I turn into what you are” (235). She refers to Dana as acting “white” turning against her own people. I think that over the course of time, the memory of Isaac was fading, and she felt guilty about it. Dana also noticed: “I got the feeling that Alice was keeping him happy- and maybe finally enjoying herself a little in the process. I guessed from what she had told me that this was what was frightening her.” (236). Alice was conflicted, life with Rufus and the kids were getting more comfortable, and she was getting used to being a slave, there is a passage in the book where Dana states that and I think that scared her. When Rufus took the kids away from her, I think that it was the last straw for Alice. The fact that she started to feel for Rufus, bothered her because she felt losing her

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The novel Kindred, written by the author Octavia E. Butler, was about a black woman named Dana Franklin traveling through time to save her ancestors to ensure her birth. Dana travels back to the 1800s, to the era known as the “Antebellum South.” The novel opens with a horrific scene of Dana having her arm crushed in the wall of her house and being taken to the hospital. The police question her about what happened, as they accuse her husband Kevin. Eventually Kevin is cleared as a suspect and is allowed to see his wife Dana.

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She planned everything out thoroughly and made it happen even though she got caught not even 10 minutes after she left (Butler, 170-174). Looking back in the book there are many instances where anyone can see the similarities between Alice and Dana, even in the most simplest ways it’s

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Octavia E. Butler's novel Kindred tells the tale of American slavery from a more modern-day perspective through time travel. The novel includes many themes and recurring motifs, but it also includes many different characters with different motivations and personalities that all go through some sort of character development. No one character follows a certain archetype commonly found in a lot of other literary works, and it makes the story engaging and more realistic. First off is Dana, the main character of the story. At the novel's start, Dana has experience with doing hard labor to barely make a living, but her development starts after she travels back to the Weylin plantation.

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The time period in which Dana and later Kevin travel back to is around 1815 Maryland before the civil war and a time where Slavery was still prevalent in the south. “The worst of my shock wore off and I realized where I was; I had returned to the past, and I was a slave.” (Chapter 3) This quote highlights the symbolic nature in which Time Travel is portrayed as Dana travels back to a time where Slavery is prevalent, it represents the past as well as the present by connecting them through time travel and highlighting the traumatic events in the era. The quote highlights the symbolism of slavery and its legacy, it also highlights the injustice, racial inequality and racism that was persistent throughout society.

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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.

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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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Did you know that 20% of the American population during the Antebellum Period were African Americans? In Kindred by Octavia E. Butler, the author deeply describes how the discrimination of Africans living in America leads up to conflict in the novel. Relating to reality, slavery has been one of the biggest conflict in the past for many years and still occurs today. Kindred will show the people today how we look back in time to see what we have done. The historical time period in the 1800s developed the theme and the character of the time period, but mostly the conflict is deeply expressed.

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The novel Kindred by Octavia Butler examines issues of racism and slavery throughout America by depicting an African American woman named Dana who, through forced time travel, finds herself in the antebellum south. This story focuses on the violence, exploitation, and abuse of black people in the past. However, through Dana and Kevin's relationship, the novel speculates on the systemic impact racism has systemically on contemporary society. This is highlighted through the struggles present within their interracial marriage and how their dynamics parallel the racism present throughout the book. Kindred explores the ways in which systemic racism has affected and continues to impact society.

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From the excerpt “Father”, it reveals “ I’m positive my father never understood why I wrote.” , and as a result, Alice and her father never got an opportunity to connect with each

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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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1598 Words | 7 Pages

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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Title: Rufus and Alice’s Relationship The Relationship of Rufus and Dana, severely twisted and strained over the time they’ve known each other, is a staple throughout the book and reminds the reader that even with Danas influence in his life Rufus cannot become an improved man. It’s not that he does not wish to better himself, but that he is incapable of doing so. The influence of one's parents and the collective mindset of the time that one is born in are the utmost considerable factors in a child's attitude. When we first meet Rufus we are able to obtain a quick glance at who he will become as he grows up.

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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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780 Words | 4 Pages

This because she is a capricious protagonist who can be perceived as utterly, unstable and unreliable. In one passage she cries and feels pity for herself, and in the following she expresses maternal compassion and care for others. Alice’s constant changes in size are puzzling for her. She seems to struggle in order to comprehend her identity, but the various oscillations in size and in life phases cause considerable confusion on her. The concept of identity can be also associated to an adolescent’s socio-emotional development.

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At the start of the book when Alice falls into the deep hole she cannot control her emotions, crying and acting immature. This resembles the way a young or a spoiled child would act if they can’t get what they want. She also has poor choice of wording which causes other animals to get offended or

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