ipl-logo

Kindred By Octavia E. Butler: Character Analysis

1583 Words7 Pages

“It was dangerous to educate slaves, they warned. Education made blacks dissatisfied with slavery,”--or so Rufus’s neighbors claim as they observe his liability of allowing slaves to have even the slightest form of education. In the novel, Kindred, composed by Octavia E. Butler, Dana strives to maintain agency, or power over situations and personal encounters, as she navigates the Antebellum South after being miraculously teleported through time. While exploring this oppressive society, Dana turns to using knowledge from 1976, the time era she came from, in order to gain agency over others who automatically have more power than her, such as Rufus, the son of a plantation owner she is tasked with helping. When Dana first meets Rufus, she keeps …show more content…

Recalling the influence she has had in the past, Dana makes threats that touch on all the good she once did, making them more believable. An example of this is when she is speaking with Mr. Weylin, discussing Rufus’s condition after coming home drunk and sick. Even as time has elapsed, Mr. Weylin continues to be condescending and aggressively rude towards Dana. Threatened by this demeaning attitude, Dana says, “‘If you can manage to put up with me a little more humanely, I’ll go on doing what I can for Mister Rufus.’ He frowned. ‘Now what are you talking about?’ ‘I’m saying the day I’m beaten just once more, your son is on his own.’... He loved his son no matter how he behaved toward him, and he knew I could do as I threatened. ‘At the rate Mr. Rufus has accidents,’ I said, ‘he might live another six or seven years without me. I wouldn’t count on more than that.’” (201). Unable to continue using her personal knowledge as leverage, Dana regains agency by making threats that are more believable as a result of the reputation she has built up for herself. By mentioning how “[Rufus] might live another six or seven years without [her]”, Dana reminds both the reader and Mr. Weylin of her credibility- how she has saved Rufus in the past multiple times. She also puts a time limit on his lifespan, challenging Mr. Weylin’s underlying yet powerful love for Rufus. 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

Show More
Related
922 Words | 4 Pages

In his essay “The Battle for My Body” Richard Rhodes relives the two of the most difficult years of his childhood, the period during which he lived with his father and his stepmother, Anne. She was a selfish and sadistic woman and as Rhodes says, “we never did call her Mother…” (45). Anne made it her mission to abuse Rhodes and his brother and she employed a variety of methods to do so: she beat them, she fed them spoiled foods, and she refused to let them used the bathroom at night. The boys, too young fight back, had no choice but to suffer. The first method Anne used to abuse the boys was to beat them viciously if they broke a house rule.

Read More
940 Words | 4 Pages

She gets taken away from her home in Southern California and via time travel magically transported to 19th-century Maryland. Throughout the book, Dana time-travels back to the early 1800’s and the slavery days of the southern United States where she discovers the truths about her family history and the harsh reality of being an African American woman at that time. Dana’s first time being transported back to this time period was on her 26th birthday. She and

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
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
960 Words | 4 Pages

To such an extent that he boy seems to be using dangerous methods of retaliation. For example, in addition to Dana rescuing him from the fire he set to the draperies in his house in retaliation against his father, he also describes previously having set the stable on fire because his father sold a horse he liked (25). Based on his irrational impulses taken when things don’t go his way, it is evident that Rufus is growing up with an entitled and vindictive attitude. Dana is alarmed by Rufus’s actions and logic and analyzes, “The boy already knew more about revenge than I did. What kind of man was he going to grow up into?

Read More
1204 Words | 5 Pages

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.

Read More
725 Words | 3 Pages

The novel Kindred explores Yearning in people that were slaves in forms of love, freedom, and family. On page 36 of kindred a man that is Alice's dad is a slave that left without a pass and got beat for it while he just wanted

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
1804 Words | 8 Pages

Playing the Part No matter the century or the centuries to come there has and there always will be stereotypes. A stereotype is a fixed notion or image of a certain group of people. Stereotypes put certain characteristics on people or objects. Most stereotypes are racist and sexist; over time stereotypes may change to fit with the evolving society.

Read More
458 Words | 2 Pages

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

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
667 Words | 3 Pages

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.

Read More
651 Words | 3 Pages

I guess you weren’t joking. COLIN: No, I most definitely was not joking. DANA: I 'm sorry for doubting you and saying you always want

Read More
1843 Words | 8 Pages

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

Read More
853 Words | 4 Pages

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.

Read More

More about Kindred By Octavia E. Butler: Character Analysis

Related Topics

Open Document