ipl-logo

Literary Devices In Kindred

732 Words3 Pages

Kindred Essay When comparing the past to the present, the differences between the two times become very apparent. The novel Kindred, by Octavia E. Butler is about an African-American woman named Dana, time traveling to the past to act as a guardian over her great-grandfather Rufus. Being an African-American woman temporarily living in the 1800s, the reader would expect Dana to have little to no power. But if the reader digs deeper, they realize that Dana has more power than Rufus because she can choose not to save him from danger, and Rufus knows this, which is why Dana gets treated better than most of the slaves on the plantation. But at the same time, Rufus is a white male who lives in the 1800s. White males are known to hold power …show more content…

In the last chapter of the story The Rope, Alice hangs herself because Rufus pretended to sell her kids, Joseph and Hagar. When Alice commits suicide, Rufus turns out to be the most miserable because he does not want to live without Alice or die alone so he sinks into a deep depression. We know this because Butler states, “ something was wrong with him. He was haggard and weary– looked as though it had been too long since he’d last slept.” (Butler, page 247) This quote informs the reader how Rufus’ feelings give Dana and Alice power over him and how Alice’s death affected his life. This quote has significance because it gives the reader an example of why Dana/Alice have hegemony over Rufus when digging below the surface. When digging deeper, the reader also notices Rufus feelings get in the way of more than just power over Alice and Dana, but power over slaves in general. During the middle of the story, the reader starts to spot a pattern involving Rufus' short temper and how it affects him being a successful plantation owner like his father Tom Weylin. Rufus would lash out at the slaves for the smallest things. For example, In the fourth chapter of the story, There is a slave named Sam who seems to be hitting on Dana and Rufus does not condone this. So he ends up selling Sam away and this angers Dana. Dana begs for Rufus to reconsider but he ends up hitting her after she asks peacefully. Dana decides to go up to the attic and slit her wrists to go back

Show More
Related
173 Words | 1 Pages

On 01-07-16, Officer Cass #2067 and I responded to 1790 N. Fair Oaks Ave. regarding Missing Person Martha Chavez-Robles. Upon our arrival, we met with Reporting Party Brittany Dominguez who told us the following information: On 01-06-16 at 1400 hrs. Kitchen Staff Maribel Medina saw Chavez in the kitchen area of the facility.

Read More
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
451 Words | 2 Pages

Kindred is a story about the past intertwining with the present. Dana, a black woman from the 1970’s, is taken back in time to the antebellum South. She gets sent to Rufus, the son of a plantation owner, to protect him time and time again. Each time she travels back to the South, she remains there for a longer period of time with a higher risk of death accompanying her stay. She ended her long spell of being trapped in the South by murdering Rufus, thus making it impossible for her to return to the past.

Read More
294 Words | 2 Pages

Both Rufus and his father are products of the environment and the time in which they live. They both conform to survive in an environment that requires little compassion for the slaves they own. Tom Weylin recognizes the threat that Dana’s education poses and punishes her for taking the spelling book and reading (Butler 106).

Read More
780 Words | 4 Pages

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.

Read More
1936 Words | 8 Pages

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

Read More
939 Words | 4 Pages

It’s significant that he is influenced by his abusive family and the world where slave owners treat people like personal property. Dana, the protagonist of the novel, travels back in time to save him when he is in life threatening danger since he is a little boy. It becomes clear for her that he is her ancestor and she really is trying to influence him to become a different man, unlike his father. Rufus doesn’t live up to her expectations and becomes even worse than him.

Read More
709 Words | 3 Pages

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

Read More
642 Words | 3 Pages

In Kindred, Dana’s narrative entirely revolves around the slaveholding American narrative of Rufus which illustrates the second fiddle notion of Dana’s identities. The fact that she can only time travel when white man, Rufus, mortally needs her demonstrates that her entire story regardless of time is dictated by the White Man (Butler 12). Furthermore regarding time fragmentation, the imagery of Dana’s body being in a constant state of scars, bruises, and general crisis in 1976 and 1819 while Rufus’ body and life continues in a progressive linear state depicts how the white historical narrative continues to strut along time whereas the black, female, American narrative continues to be an unhealed wound discarded alongside white-American-male chronology. This notion is expressed when Dana puts her bodily pain to the side in order to sexually usher love and welcoming to Kevin’s five year journey in Antebellum south (Butler 190). Essentially Dana’s body politics do not exist in a state of paradox because through Butler’s textual portrayal of embodiment, she was and still remains as an

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
458 Words | 2 Pages

Dana was a positive part of Rufus’s environment because she was the one who really helped him through the good and the bad. Dana tried to help Rufe reach a realization that slavery was clearly wrong and tried . But in the end not much changed. “What’s he done to you?” ‘Sent me to a field, had me beaten, made me spend nearly eight months sleeping on the floor of his mother’s room, sold people. . .

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
766 Words | 4 Pages

Karina De Paz Mr. Stare AVID 2 March 17, 2024. Growing up can be one of our hardest battles in life. A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara is a tragic literary fiction that takes place in New York City about a group of college students on their journey of aging as they face the struggling reality of adulthood after graduation. The main character is a young man named Jude who has a tragic past which he hides from his friends in order to forget the trauma and move on. This story shows us how to cope with our problems and how to forgive others.

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

More about Literary Devices In Kindred

Related Topics

Open Document