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Dana's Character In Kindred By Octavia Butler

528 Words3 Pages

While disrupting the image of Sarah as the doting mammy figure, Butler places Dana into that role by making her be responsible for Rufus. This further allows Butler to examine what it meant to be a caretaker for white children during this time period. Dana’s travels allow her to catch glimpses of Rufus’s development into a young man. While she initially has hopes that she can be a positive influence on him and curtail the influences from his mother and father, she inevitably fails. Though Dana saves Rufus from many near death experiences and nurses him back to health many times, Rufus still grows into a replica of his father and becomes a man of his time. Dana’s inability to nurture Rufus into a more socially enlightened man cause her to question …show more content…

I could get that angry with him, even though I knew the consequences of killing him. He could drive me to a kind of unthinking fury. Somehow, I couldn’t take from him the kind of abuse I took from others. If he ever raped me, it wasn’t likely that either of us would survive.
Maybe that was why we didn’t hate each other. We could hurt each other too badly, kill each other too quickly in hatred.
This passage foreshadows the ending of the novel where Dana does kill Rufus for trying to rape her. Dana’s musing indicate that rather than holding a familial affection for Rufus like she did when he was a young child, she begins to tolerate Rufus’s behavior as a means for survival. As someone who helped raise Rufus, she hoped that eventually he would be able to see black people as human beings and treat them better than his father and other racist white men during this time period, but society’s influence on his life overshadowed Sarah’s and Dana’s influences. Once Dana realizes that Rufus is a man of his time, affection becomes replaced with weary acceptance of who he is, and she begins to anticipate the day when should would no longer be able to forgive Rufus’s trespasses. Here, Butler is able to highlight the futile position of the mammy figure in the lives of the white family member. Though she takes care of them and attempts to subversively create a more humane generation, the institution of slavery and American culture

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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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Book Report of The Family Tree “Friendship Baptist Church was named friendship for the fact the white man had given so generously of their money and time in the building of the first church and with the short-lived hope of an eternal Amity between the races.” This quote from the book The Family Tree a lynching in Georgia a legacy of Secrets and my search for the truth by Karen Branan equivocate the tumultuous relationships between whites and blacks. Branan unveils the strained relations between the two races in her search for the truth of her family's involvement in a lynching during 1912. Continuously, Shelf-Awareness raved Branan for her personal perspective in soul-searching that makes this history insightful relevant and memorable. Throughout

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In the beginning of Octavia Butler’s Kindred the relationship between Dana and Rufus begins with Dana saving a drowning child otherwise known as our young Rufus. Their relationship at this point in time is that of an adult caring for a young child. Fast forward to the next time Dana meets with Rufus again when he burns up the draperies. Stereotyping becomes evident when Rufus questions Dana as to why she does not refer to him as master or that of a higher title.

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Kindred is a book written June 1979 by Octavia E. Butler comprised of two genres, historical fiction, and science fiction and as a result, the book classifies into a new genre. This book can be considered a historical fiction because it shows the history of the pre Civil War 1800s when there were still slaves and it shows the perspective of a slave's life in the south. This book can also be considered a science fiction because Dana can time travel. The logistical issues for it cause the effects to be considered science fiction. Kindred can also be called both of these two genres, but the genre it creates is something new.

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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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As an African America, Dana is forced into the life of a slave, suffering through various hardships and numerous close encounters with death. All of these experiences have a significant effect on Dana’s mental stability, as she becomes more and more distant and distressed. However, her fellow characters are unable to fully realize Dana’s state of

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Rufus no longer understands the difference between friend and master at the loss of Alice. Dana was able to make the selfish decision of killing Rufus, rather than submitting herself, for the good of herself, not the good of anyone else. She could not stand to become like Alice, a slave at the hands of a master; thus, her determination to escape stemmed from her will to remain independent. She knows as soon as she lets herself submit to the will of this society she cannot be viewed as a person, but a tool. Dana represents the women in the current day and age that would do anything to protect their own freedom, even at the

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Today, oppressed women around the world still face difficulty regarding their personal survival, and the survival of their children in their communities. Butler, however, does a tremendous job in presenting the struggle of a woman with their limited ability to help themselves and their love ones. Another key contribution to women oppression is young men and the examples that they have in their lives. Rufus the boy/men from Kindred doesn’t respect the females slave, not even his mother. “He had spent his life watching his father ignore, even sell the children he had had with black women.

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Dana and Rufus’s Relationship Ever wonder what it's like to have a changing relationship with a plantation owner's son back in the 1800’s? Dana Franklin is a younger African-American woman married to Kevin Franklin who is a middle-aged man. Dana travels from California in 1976 back to the early 1800’s whenever Rufus is in trouble. Rufus is a plantation owner son and is also the father of Dana’s ancestor. Dana’s travels are random; she gets lightheaded and dizzy when she is about to travel.

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