Literary Analysis Of Kindred

The science-fiction novel Kindred, written by Octavia E. Butler, is an extremely dramatic and fascinating novel that revolves around Dana, an African American writer living in California in the year 1976 and her mysterious trips to pre-Civil War Maryland. How she is being sent back to that time are unknown, but after the first few trips, she realizes she is being sent back to ensure that her bloodline continues; and this begins with saving a young, white boy named Rufus. This novel forces to reader to be in Dana’s thoughts and actions all the time, as it is written in first person from her point of view. She encounters terrible and repulsive treatments of African American slaves in her trips back, and she is horrified of it. Her “innocence”

Butler took until page 24 to inform the reader that Dana was black, she did this by having Rufus say, …”Mama said she tried to stop you when she saw you doing that to me because you were just some nigger she had never seen before…”(Butler 24). This was during Dana’s second trip back, after she puts out the fire Rufus had just lit on some draperies in his house. Dana was clearly angered by this, and told him to call her a “black women” if he did not want to call her Dana. She was confused at his innocence when she questioned him about calling her this, she was in total shock that it was seemingly normal for him to refer to blacks as “nigger”. Butler used this to set the tone for the past travels as well as the present. In the past, clearly blacks are not respected. On her first trip back, Dana had just saved Rufus from drowning and was not only referred to as a nigger by Rufus’s mother, Margaret Weylin, but even had had a rifle pointed at her by his father, Tom Weylin. Dana is not used to being called by racial slurs, and surely does not understand why she would have her life threatened for saving Rufus, in her time she is not judged on her skin color. These scenes helped me to feel how frustrating it must have been and is today for blacks to experience racism, they don't even see them selfs as anything different from anyone else, but some people seem to view them as evil animals with

When Dana saves him from drowning in the river on her first trip back, she has no idea who he is. Slowly however, she begins to realize that Rufus is her relative, and he must bear a child with a slave girl named Alice for her bloodline to continue. Rufus does not realize this, but he does know that Dana is sent back to save his life, and he realizes that he needs her for this, but yet never fully respects her. As Rufus ages, he rapes Alice and is almost killed by her husband when he is caught, and Dana is sent back to save him. Finally, Rufus does have a child with Alice, only because Dana pushed her into being with him. They both have ulterior motives for there actions, Dana to save her own life and Rufus to try to keep Dana with him. Rufus would try many different ways to keep Dana with him, even lying about sending her letters to Kevin. Dana sees this and works her way around it, practically by avoiding Rufus whenever she can. Finally Dana is forced to make a choice when Rufus trys to rape her, she has to decide wether to be raped or to kill Rufus, and she kills him. Rufus choice to try to rape Dana tells us a lot about himself, he was extremely selfish and only cared about his own desires. For him to make the choice to rape her, after she has saved his life many times, is disgusting. Their relationship changed the way I thought about slave owners and their relationship with blacks. I