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'Incidents In Octavia Butler's Kindred'

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In the beginning of Kindred we are introduced to Dana and her relationship with Kevin. Dana is a part-time worker and an aspiring writer while Kevin is also an aspiring writer Who has had more success than Dana he is also works at a warehouse full time. Octavia Butler makes it clear that Kevin successful young white man and Dana is a struggling black women and puts those two together for a reason later on in the book. While Dana and Kevin are in their new home the two are unpacking their belongings and Dana faints and wakes up in another time. Dana meets a young boy named Rufus and his family but she takes more of an interest in Rufus. She later finds out that he is her ancestor and Dana wants to do what she can to teach him the right way so he doesn’t end up like his father. Dana makes it clear to Rufus to refer to her with respect when addressing her even though his parents teach him otherwise. It is later revealed that Rufus has an abusive …show more content…

What I took from Kindred, 12 years of slave, and Incidents in the life of a slave girl is how America viewed African Americans during the time of slavery. African Americans were viewed as property nothing else their feelings were not considered they were disrespected and were conditioned to believe that they were not human and they were inferior to whites. The way these authors Express this point varies from sarcasm to blatant honesty. For example how in incidents in the life of a slave girl Jacob 's descendants were loyal to their slave masters and in the end no matter what they did they were still property easily replaceable. In Kindred I do wonder if even after Dana’s work with Rufus will even stay with him because It would be a waste of time to see him develop into his father. I think that Rufus isn’t even Tom’s kid because of how Tom treats him. It was common for slave master wives to sleep with slaves so if that’s the case for Rufus and Tom isn’t his father it would show why Rufus is treated with

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Many colored individuals were forced into slavery and each and everyone of the slaves had a different experience with their master. The slaves were treated as if they were nothing, a piece of property that the white people owned. They were not allowed to learn how to read or write; only needed to know how to do their chores and understand what their master was saying. They were just an extra hand in the house that had no say or existed in the white people world. The slaves’ job was to obey their master or mistress at all times, do their chores and take the beating if given one.

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The author, Douglas R. Egerton, has his M.A. and Ph.D. from Georgetown University. His grandparents were slaveholders and believed that slaves were property. He became interested in race relations because of grandparents and the television series “Roots”. He specifically concentrates on race relations in the American South. He is now a history professor at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New York.

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He wants Dana to care for his mother and allows Dana to spend the rest of the day doing whatever she chooses. When Margaret returns, she forces Dana to care for her, but she has lost the temper due to age and the drugs she is taking. One day, Dana discovers that some of the plantation’s slaves are being sold and is devastated. Rufus claims that his father arranged the sale before he died. Alice gives birth to Hagar, and Dana is relieved because this means that her existence in the present is safe.

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It’s globally known that the relationship between slaves and owners were abusive and unbalanced. Both male and female slaves endured horrible conditions and punishments brought on by their masters, but a woman’s slave-experience proves to be very different than a man’s. While women had to experience the abuse that came with their race, they also had to experience the oppression that came along with their gender. Regardless of viewing and treating them as animals, many male slave owners still had a sexual attraction and sense of protection over the female slave- sometimes even developing feelings for them. This creates a dangerous situation where not only the men have control over how the women work, but they have control over their body and emotions.

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In Octavia Butler’s novel, Kindred, Rufus Weylin is one of the main characters who undergoes a lot of change throughout the novel, making him a round character. A round character is defined as a “major character in a story who encounters contradictory situations and undergoes transformation during this phase. Therefore, the characters does not remain the same throughout the narrative, making their traits difficult to identify from beginning until the end (LiteraryDevice).” The reader, along with Dana, follows Rufus’s growth throughout some major points in his life, from a young boy who forms a bond and friendship with Dana, to when he grows up to be a racist man who ultimately attempts to rape her. However, it is evident that Rufus’s ideology

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In the story “Kindred” by Octavia Butler the slaves hardly fought back. The book showed that the slave owners as a whole weren't the entire problem, society was. No matter how much the slaves fought against it in their personal lives it was still widely accepted and enforced. The slaves had virtually no rights and were seen as sub human even when they were freed. Every part of society was against them and fighting back did much more harm than good.

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The author also made it known that many plantation owners were accepting positions to claim that "to the Negroes, slavery seemed natural; knowing no other life, they accepted it without giving the matter much thought” (429). Which seems odd because blacks were transported to America and sold to the highest bidder. Their lifestyle prior did not resemble what they had endured in America. When arriving to America they had the impression they were here to help the white man not be inferior to

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Douglass points to the vast unwillingness from the group of whites that refuses to fully perceive and accept African-Americans as deserving and equal citizens of the nation. Based on his personal experiences as a slave, Douglass is abundantly aware that the battle to abolish slavery is not an easy task. For the first twenty years of his life, he witnessed firsthand the abject cruelty of that institution in our country. Tactfully, Douglass seizes this opportunity to publicly highlight the unmerited and coarse differences in the treatment between the whites as opposed to the blacks living in the United States during this time period. He makes a “powerful testaments to the hypocrisy, bigotry and inhumanity of slavery” (Bunch 1).

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And Rufus was Rufus-erratic alternately generous and vicious. I could accept him as my ancestor, my younger brother, my friend, but not as my master, and not as my lover. He had understood that once” (260). Dana is distancing herself from being a slave doesn’t feel that she could ever be subjected to it like Alice was. She uses pronouns like “her” to describe a slave to show that she will be associated with one.

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Kindred Analytical Essay Question:Critically analyze the environment surrounding Rufus. How does his environment shape him? Positively? Negatively? Both?

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In his “’No.’ : The Narrative Theorizing of Embodied Agency in Octavia Butler’s Kindred,” Bast underscores humanity’s desire for agency, one’s “ability to reach decision[s] about themselves and [express them]” and how one’s agency can benefit a society or a community (Bast 151). In the beginning of his article, Bast labels this decision-making and expression as beneficial and necessary for a community, while simultaneously underlining society’s limitations put on mankind’s freedoms such as discrimination, prejudice, or injustice. Nevertheless, he follows up by stating that it is simply human instinct to want to express thoughts even if other factors oppress them, undermining these social limitations.

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Slavery can easily be determined as one of the most blatant acts of dehumanization. In the narrative titled “Narrative Of The Life of Frederick Douglass”, Douglass is easily able to portray this by quoting, “I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason. He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery; he must be made to feel that slavery is right; and he can be brought to that only when he ceases to be a man”, Chapter 10 page 45. The quote overall does illustrate to the reader the narrator’s reflection to slavery as a whole as he states they were deprived of not only their basic

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Maryland in 1815, like much of the south, was a hot bed for slavery plantations. For slave owners in particular, it was a benefit if your slaves were not educated, as they would be less likely to question the oppressive treatment, and not adequately be able to express the conditions under which they labored. In the novel Kindred by Octavia Butler, various aspects of education are intertwined throughout, effectively depicting how education and slavery do not go together cohesively. Specifically, in the case of Dana, the novels protagonist, her intelligence led to her owners feeling inferior, which prompted many verbal and physical attacks, an exploitation of her abilities, and the overriding attempt to suppress the education of other slaves

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She transforms from Rufus’s guardian to his companion and finally she becomes his property or slave. Rufus and Dana have a intricate relationship that changes over the years as she is in the past. Dana needs to keep Rufus alive long enough, so that Rufus and Alice could have Dana’s ancestor. Rufus and Dana’s changing relationship is important because without this relationship Rufus wouldn’t have stayed alive long enough to have Dana’s ancestor. Dana needs to keep saving Rufus’s life.

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