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Kindred By Octavia Butler Sparknotes

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Recommended: A Sound of Thunder (Short story by Ray Bradbury) about the protagonist

Madi Kelley
ENGL- 2413
Response 5 Time travel is a very well-known science-fiction topic that many are drawn to, perhaps due to the mystery of time travel and what could be discovered, or perhaps simply to experience a time that you do not belong to, or just as simple as wanting to figure out who it works. The possibility of time travel opens up many questions about what would happen if someone was able to travel back in time such as, what would happen if you let an ancestor die that was not supposed to die yet or tell someone anything about the future or their life, or something even as minuscule as moving a chair could throw the whole future for a loop. However, by using time travel could historians learn more about the motives of …show more content…

In the sci-fi history novel “Kindred”, author Octavia Butler does not shy away from the cruel and twisted past that was, she builds upon it and adds themes of suspense, drama, thriller, and a hint of romance in with it to keep it from becoming almost history book. Butler uses the time travel theory that states if an individual was to time travel and kill or impair an ancestor in a way that no longer results in their lineage then they will no longer exist and fade away. Logically this makes the most sense of the vast amount of time travel theories, due to the fact that if the ancestor that contributed to that individual’s lineage is impaired from the decision that lead to their existence, however far down the line that is, will simply cause them to no longer exist, now if they slowly fade away or disappear instantly is up to cinematography and drama but the logic is sound. Another theory that stems from that is from the short story “The Sound of Thunder”, by Ray Bradbury, which is about the protagonist who travels back in time to hunt a dinosaur for sport, the main idea of the story is to illustrate how delicate time travel is, “It fell to the floor, an exquisite thing, a small thing that could upset balances and knock down a line of small dominoes and then big dominoes and then gigantic dominoes, all down the years …show more content…

History as the world knows it could be completely altered, what we thought we knew could be all wrong. For example, a historian traveled back in time to the 1840s and was able to interview a slave owner and they were able to uncover why slave owners chose to own slaves in the first place. Perhaps it is a power high for the slave owners, they could enjoy having living beings beneath them that were scared for their lives, to obey their every command, this could make them feel like they have the power of life or death and thus help give meaning to their life. On the contrary, the slaver owner could choose to own slaves because it is what their father did before them and his father before him, a generational duty, and if the slave owner declines the ownership of the slaves, they are disgracing their family name and could be ridiculed by society. However, the idea of a psychological void that is caused by neglect, witnessing slaves being whipped and beaten at a young age, or a mix of other possibly traumatic experiences could lead to a need to be in charge over living beings in the sense to fill a void. Regardless of the reason why slave owners truly chose to own slaves, what is in the history books is not the whole truth of slavery, and those of us in the modern age may never learn the

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Rachel Heinen Dr. Bolis ENGL 1301W 3 March 2023 Analytical Response #4 - Kindred In the novel Kindred, by Octavia Butler, there are many instances of direct and indirect characterization. Direct characterization involves the technique of directly telling the readers something about a character while indirect characterization involves showing the reader through actions and dialogue. An excellent example of direct characterization is how Butler directly tells the readers right away in the novel that Dana is African American.

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Traveling through history In Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred, the author tells the story of a twenty-six-year-old African American woman named Dana. Dana is a writer who lived in Southern California during the 1970’s. She is married to a white man named Kevin who is a writer along with Dana.

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In addition, Octavia E. Butler illustrates that change in human beings stems from the people, places, and the situations that surround them. The people depicted in Kindred change and develop so much throughout the book, the most prominent

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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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“I thought I would die on the ground there with a mouth full of dirt and blood and a white man cursing and lecturing as he beat me. By then, I almost wanted to die,”– or so Dana physically and socially identifies the skewed dynamics existing within the South that greatly impact her overall character (107). In Kindred, a novel that collides science-fiction with historical fiction, Octavia Butler tells the story of an African American women who is forced to reconcile with oppression of the past as she is sent through time from 20th century California to 19th century Maryland, where she must protect the slave-master’s son: Rufus. Her experiences in the South greatly challenge and inform her sense of morality, or principles that influence the measures

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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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Afrofuturism, a genre that is the combination of science fiction, fantasy, and African diasporic culture, has its roots in the work of writers and artists who sought to imagine alternative futures for people of African descent. One of the key figures in the development of Afrofuturism is Sun Ra, a jazz musician and composer who created a mythic persona that merged ancient Egyptian symbols with visions of outer space. Sun Ra’s music and philosophy inspired a generation of artists and thinkers to explore new possibilities for Afrofuturist expression. Another important figure in the Afrofuturist movement is Octavia Butler herself, whose work has been instrumental in shaping the genre and pushing boundaries of what is possible in speculative fiction. Butler’s exploration of themes such as race, gender, and power in

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A normality in the literary world is that texts deeply nestled in the crosshairs of biopolitics, gender, nationalism, and other identity particularities often fall victim to one sided and dogmatic cultural critiques. Critic after critic find difficulty regarding how to analyze and essentially read a novel where intersectionality is intrinsic to its framework such as Kindred, because it does not fit the fairly common singular literary theory mold. This notion is articulated and defended in “"Some Matching Strangeness": Biology, Politics, and the Embrace of History in Octavia Butler's "Kindred"” where Robertson explores Butler’s usage of Dana’s body to confront universal truths and to cement the idea that Dana is in a historical paradox due

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The experience of mental time travel gives the reader a sense of sympathy for the author because soon, everyone will start to wonder about their past and sometimes it may be too late to learn about it from their parents; Baker wants readers to realize how heartbreaking it is to lose a chance which was always easily accessible to them. “About her father, my grandfather, I could only guess, and indeed, about the girl on the wharf with the bow in her hair, I was merely sentimentalizing” (59). Baker wants to know more about his family heritage because all he knew from that specific experience was from a picture, but the chance he had to

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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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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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Imagine waking up in complete darkness and not knowing who or where you are. That was the problem that Shori, the main character in “Fledgling”, faced at the beginning of the novel. After figuring out she had become an Ina (similar to a vampire) and finding her father, Shori and her symbionts (co-dependent humans) move into a community with other Ina’s. Soon after she moves in, several Ina’s plan to kill Ina because she is genetically modified. Shori has human melanin, making her skin dark and allowing her to move around freely in the daylight.

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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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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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While the possibility of time travel does seem exciting and wondrous, it also could be risky and dangerous. In Ray Bradbury’s short story, “A Sound of Thunder,” he uses the cause and effect of time travel to support his theme of not all technology brings good to the world. Society is always hungry for new technology and inventions, even at the risk of harm such as changing time. In “A Sound of Thunder”, the story shows that people are so desperate for more thrills and adrenaline rush that they risk changing the future and their own lives just to shoot a dinosaur- even though the only thing they would possibly receive is a picture.

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