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Octavia Butler's Kindred: An Analysis

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Octavia E. Butler wrote Kindred with the intention of making her readers feel and recognize the effect of slavery through a new, creative lens and address societal gender roles that still remain today. In order to differentiate it from other novels, she added science fiction through time travel. This element allowed her to fit into Achebe’s description of a writer’s role in society; A writer “must remain free to disagree with his/her society and go into rebellion against it if need be. But I am for choosing my cause very carefully.” Unlike most science fictions authors, Butler drifted away from using out of this world scenarios and applied science fiction concepts to real, tragic events in our history. With these ideas, she was able to transform …show more content…

“I was beginning to realize that he loved the woman- to her misfortune. There was no shame in raping a black woman, but there could be shame in loving one” (124). Dana and Alice have the most toxic relationship by far in the novel. Butler explicitly portrays what’s unfortunately the most common interracial relationship in 1815, which doesn’t allow equality between the male and female. Rufus rapes Alice and controls her by threatening their children but in his mind, he’s showing his affection while also asserting what he believes to be his right, dominance. Similarly, but not anywhere near the extent of Rufus and Alice’s relationship, is Dana and Kevin. “Will you type those pages for me now?” (109). An example of Kevin’s attempts at superiority over Dana is the fact that he persistently asks Dana to type his manuscripts for him as if she’s his assistant. Dana always says no but the fact that he asked the question in the first place shows the disconnect in their relationship. In addition, Dana and Kevin are an interracial couple and the difficulty of this doesn’t emerge until they travel to 1815 together. Kevin quickly integrates into the common racism and position of power that being a white man provides him, but thankfully he returns to 1976 and realizes the destruction of racism, which fulfills Butler’s goal as a writer. Lastly, there’s the relationship between Dana and Rufus, which is the most developed and complicated. “He has already found the way to control me- by threatening others” (169). Dana goes back in time to save Rufus and he’s family. As a result, she instinctually protects and defends him against everyone, and this causes her to gain enemies. She’s labeled as too white by other slaves and no one understands why she constantly protects him, not even she.

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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.

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In order for Butler to take her readers on this journey she incorporates key literary devices and includes major elements of dystopian literature. In “Bloodchild” the author alludes heavily to slavery which is a major factor of this work. While Butler herself says “that some people have seen “Bloodchild” as a story of slavery,

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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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Not only the relations between the enslaved and their owners, but how the enslaved view and treat themselves. In Toni Morrison’s A Mercy, Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred, and Ishmael Reed’s A Flight To Canada, interracial and intraracial relations are depicted through various different ways. The relations between slaves themselves and their masters, is represented by stereotypes, self hate, and the different attitudes of the oppressed enslaved.

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Kindred By Octavia Butler: Literary Analysis

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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

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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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1804 Words | 8 Pages

Kevin claims that Dana is his wife; Rufus squeals and says, “Niggers can’t marry white people”, “It’s against the law” (Butler 60-61). The Deep South had banned interracial marriages until 1967. Although interracial marriage was unheard of, miscegenation was common but it “often led to complications in the South. Sometimes white men loved their black concubines more than they did their white wives” (Blassingame 84). Many of the white wives would file for divorce if this happened and they would also take out their anger on the black woman involved.

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Now this might be perceived as an act of kindness or even love, grievously this is not the case with Rufus. Soon it is made clear that he does not intend to treat Alice as an equal or even what would be considered the correct way to treat one's wife at the time of the book. Alice’s hatred for him festers and blooms into a hatred of herself for being used by him. The effects of this new hate shows itself by Alice lashing out at Dana and others while in the beginning of the book being a kind hearted

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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.

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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).

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In the midst of clarifying how time seems to travel at different rates in both places, Tom responds; “Who in hell ever said you were an educated nigger? You can’t even tell a decent lie. Six years for me is six years for you!” (Butler 200). It seems that whenever a nerve is struck, the anger taken out on Dana is projected at her intellect.

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