ipl-logo

How Is Kindred Relevant Today

709 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Analysis of a slave narrative

Is the novel Kindred relevant to teenagers today? The novel is not relevant to any teenager in today's society as the novel's main focus is time travel and slavery. The novel's plot is Dana a black woman who is celebrating her 26th birthday with her husband in her home in california living in the 1970’s who gets transported to the past to save a little boy from drowning who she soon finds out is her ancestor who she must protect in order to be born. Some might argue that Kindred is relatable to teenagers today because it's important for teenagers to learn about their ancestry and what life was like during slavery for example Dana mentions how Tom Weylin was a ordinary man that did bad things because his society said it was okay some could …show more content…

In the novel when Dana is first time traveling to the past she mentions how “I had seen people beaten on television and in the movies. I had seen the too-red blood substitute streaked across their backs and heard their well-rehearsed screams. But I hadn't lain nearby and smelled their sweat or heard them pleading and praying, shamed before their families and themselves. I was probably less prepared for the reality than the child crying not far from me.”. Dana explains how she had seen reenactments of a time and place that she was in but now that she was there it was much different than she'd seen. Teenagers cannot relate to this because unlike Dana they will never have to experience what it is like to smell real blood or see any of the horrors of slavery. In the novel after Dana has time traveled a number of times now back to the past Dana mentions how she felt about the way rufus is treating her he states how “Rufus had caused her trouble, and now he had been rewarded for it. It made no sense. No matter how kindly he treated her now that he had destroyed her, it made no sense.”. In this quote Dana talks about how she felt it didn't make sense how rufus could be so nice and yet so vicious and still be rewarded for it. Teenagers cannot relate to this situation because they will never be treated as a slave and have to wonder what's right and wrong and question their position in

Show More
Related
615 Words | 3 Pages

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.

Read More
1072 Words | 5 Pages

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.

Read More
1106 Words | 5 Pages

As a result, the slave is upset or depressed in that he has to live through this. Although he is a good person at heart, he is still not given the chance to prove himself or get the rights he

Read More
1772 Words | 8 Pages

This book is very relevant today, many of the experiences that happened to the characters still happen today, people aren’t lynched as often anymore. But racially motivated crimes still happen and the internet allows for people to get worked up into a frenzy even if there was no actual crime committed by the accused. The alleged rape of Sandra Teal caused the white people of Duluth to be angered to the point where they turned into a mob that quickly turned into a riot. This event seems similar to the events of Ferguson Missouri in August of 2014. The riots in Ferguson started because the people did not wait for the facts to emerge, they instead listened to anyone who was telling them something that they wanted to hear.

Read More
1583 Words | 7 Pages

When it is revealed that Mr. Weylin “knew [Dana] could do as [she] threatened”, it is proven that Dana has regained her agency as a result of her understanding the underlying motivations of another character, thus accessing their fears and being able to manipulate them by making threats intertwined with those fears. Therefore, Dana is able to reclaim her agency by making threats, instead of

Read More
865 Words | 4 Pages

Many people have been slaves and prisoners since they were young. Some of them born there and are slaves or prisoners for their whole entire lives. Most of the time their lives are stuck in the darkness and never know what is going to come or happen to them. Every day in their lives they feel worry, afraid, and frightened because they’re scared that they might do something wrong or unable to do what they have been told. In their lives, the only goal they have is to escape from slavery and imprisonment or be a good slaves and prisoners.

Read More
1936 Words | 8 Pages

She is not immediately sent home and must deal with more trouble with Rufus, including being slapped by him, so she later decides to attempt suicide, knowing that the danger will send her home, and if it doesn’t she is at the very least free from the danger. This event is also the first time that Dana forces herself to be sent to the present rather than waiting for danger to find her. She is finally fleeing Rufus’s abuses, feeling betrayed because this is the first time that Rufus

Read More
997 Words | 4 Pages

Sarah didn't want Carrie to learn how to speak because Sarah didn't want her last child to be sold. Soon after this Dana gets whipped because Tom Weylin caught Dana teaching Nigel how to read. When she was got whipped and she got sent back to nineteen seventy-six. When Rufus' father dies Rufus wants Dana to write persuasive letters to the people that tom Weylin owed money to.

Read More
929 Words | 4 Pages

historical phenomenon that has lasting cultural meaning and enduring social consequences. This describes sufficiently in defining Kindred as a neo slave narrative and clarifies how Octavia uses slavery in her novel with the heroin, Dana, who investigates between her familial slave history in nineteenth century South and her own sight of slavery in twentieth century. Kindred is the first person narration of the life story of a young Afro-American woman writer, Dana, who finds herself travel regularly between past and present in 1976 and a pre-Civil War Maryland plantation. Dana uncovers her family’s history and discovers a dark past. Her history starts with a slave owner’s son called Rufus and her survival means keeping him alive even when

Read More
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.

Read More
886 Words | 4 Pages

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.

Read More
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).

Read More
1083 Words | 5 Pages

In any novel there is multiple parts that make up and define how the novel will go, such as if the character will be good. There is always a storyline to follow and from that storyline there are many different themes that give the novel character. In the novel Kindred by Octavian Butler there are multiple themes laced into the text that make the novel what it is. For example, throughout the story there is a huge underlying theme that involves Rufus Weylin, a main character of the novel and how the environment shapes him into the man he is at the end of the novel. Kindred starts off with Dana, a black woman, who by some mysterious means is sent back in time, to the days where her ancestors were alive and enslaved by Tom Weylin, a southern plantation

Read More
967 Words | 4 Pages

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.

Read More
771 Words | 4 Pages

When somebody doesn 't do the right they get hit with a whip till they do what is told. Slavery is nothing like doing chores for your parents it 's worse you can 't take a break until you are done you have to keep working until they tell you when your done, and you barely get paid for it. • B. Background information: There has been a lot of injustice in society in slavery like beating up up someone when they don 't do the right thing for the job. slavery isn 't there choice they have to do it for them not for

Read More

More about How Is Kindred Relevant Today

Related Topics

Open Document