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Oppression Of Slavery In Kindred By Octavia Butler

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Ryder Quinlan Mrs. Rogers Pre AP/IB English II 7 March 2023 Kindred Some people believe that they have it hard. But almost nothing can be compared to being as bad, evil, cruel, and fearful as slavery. Slavery was an awful point in time where many human beings were treated like dirt. People of color would be oppressed everyday, being reminded by their masters that whites are better than them and that people of color have no meaning. Within the novel Kindred, author Octavia Butler, shows all of this happening. The main character of the novel, Dana, witnesses and goes through slavery herself, getting a true feel of what slavery is. What Butler is trying to talk about is fear of oppression, how slaves should be worried about what's going to happen …show more content…

Slave masters would say things or do things to slaves that made them keep quiet, it kept the slaves from retaliating. In Kindred, this is shown when all of Sarah’s children were sold besides her one daughter Carrie. Sarah show’s her emotion to this when she says, “Whose idea you think it was to sell my babies? She made Marse Tom sell my three boys to get money to buy things she didn’t even need!” (Butler 95). This mentally affected Sarah because she was scared to lose her last child. She was now fearful to do anything disrespectful towards the Weylins because she believed if she did something bad enough, they would sell her last baby. Another example of slaves being mentally abused is when Alice is forced to let Rufus rape her. In the story, Dana tells Alice that Rufus wants to see her, and she knows exactly why. Dana explains how Alice is after the incident by saying, “She went to him. She adjusted, became a quieter, more subdued person. She didn’t kill, but seemed to die a little” (Butler 168). This shows how Alice is affected by what Rufus did. She was injured not only physically, but mentally as well. She fears now that Rufus will think he can do anything to her. Alice is truly scared of what Rufus will do next. He keeps her down, he keeps her oppressed, just like all other slave masters. They know what they’re doing when they enact these types of actions. They’re trying to put fear into slave's minds so they won’t

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Two of Alice’s children, Hagar and Joseph, were sent to Baltimore by Rufus. Alice believed that Rufus had sold them, even though he swore he would not, ultimately this caused her to hang herself out of sadness. Dana was furious with Rufus. He didn’t understand what he had done wrong, even though Dana had told him time and time again. Ultimately Rufus gets Dana alone and tells her he feels horrible and that he never meant any harm.

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who she was very close to. She explains that her father taught her and her brothers free will and to feel like they were human beings, although it was very dangerous for a slave. The more a slave possessed the notion of their own free will, the more likely they were to be disobedient, run away and be of no use to their owner. Slaves were supposed to think that they were less than human so that the masters not only had physical control over them but psychological control as well.

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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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Throughout the narrative, the author includes his personal stories about experiencing the violence of slavery first-hand. For example, on page 20, he writes about the first time he witnessed a slave, his own aunt, getting the whip. “The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran fastest, there he whipped longest…I remember the first time I ever witnessed this horrible exhibition… It struck me with awful force. It was the blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery…” The author including his experience of his aunts whipping, in detail, appeals to the emotions of the reader.

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Prabesh Acharya Mr.Cowell IB English 18 May 2023 Analysis on Symbolism Kindred by Octavia E. Butler is a novel which takes the reader through 2 different time periods while following the perspective of Dana, an African- American woman who is forced into traveling back and forth from 1979 Los Angeles, California to Antebellum Maryland. She is forced to travel accordingly to the dangers which Rufus, her ancestor faces. The complexities of racial identity are displayed as she is forced to navigate the horrors of Slavery day to day inorder to ensure her existence in the present. Octavia E. Butler's use of literary devices such as Symbolism, Foreshadowing and Irony among others help to portray a sense of suspense, anticipation, and bottomless

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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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He starts to notice the similarities between Alice and Dana and calls the “two halves'' of a woman. This shifts their relationship from guardianship to something more in Rufus’ eyes. However, as previously mentioned, Dana will not give in. To accept this would mean relinquishing all freedom she once “had”. To end this infatuation, Dana kills Rufus with a knife.

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Did you know that 20% of the American population during the Antebellum Period were African Americans? In Kindred by Octavia E. Butler, the author deeply describes how the discrimination of Africans living in America leads up to conflict in the novel. Relating to reality, slavery has been one of the biggest conflict in the past for many years and still occurs today. Kindred will show the people today how we look back in time to see what we have done. The historical time period in the 1800s developed the theme and the character of the time period, but mostly the conflict is deeply expressed.

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He was selling off her children, though, one by one. ”(192) This shows how slaves were not treated like humans at all and rather as animals. Not only that but the slave owner plays it off nonchalantly, because to them it's just an everyday occurrence.

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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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1598 Words | 7 Pages

In death she no longer has to face any consequences. Later, after Alice died, in his grief Rufus tries to make a move on Dana. Dana decides to grab her knife in a desperate move to escape being raped. “A slave was a slave. Anything could be done to her.

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Through his story, Douglass proves that slavery has negative effects on slaveholders. He uses imagery, flashbacks, and characterization to persuade the reader of the true nature of slavery. His deep thoughts and insights of slavery and the unbalanced power between a slaveholder and his slave are unprompted for a social establishment. Douglass insists that slaveholding fills the soul with sadness and bitter anguish. In addressing effects of slavery on masters cause one man to rethink his moral character and better understand the laws of humanity.

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But, he then goes to show how her transformation came to be of a true mistress and how that kind of foolish power corrupted her. She was not a bad person, but being able to control over another human being transformed her from an angel into a demon. Douglass saw the change in her how “That cheerful eye, under the influence of slavery, soon became red with rage; that voice, made all of sweet accord, changed to one of harsh and horrid discord; and that angelic face gave place to that of a demon” (38). This just shows how slavery affects not just the slave but the slave owners as well. This vicious cycle desecrates and destroys everyone involved.

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The Holocaust was a horrible crime against humanity which impacted society forever. 6 million Jews died at the hand of the Nazis during this time of war. Elie Wiesel, holocaust survivor, best-selling author of Night, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient declared ‘‘When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men or women are persecuted, because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – must become the center of the universe.’’. When governments make a decision to get involved and help a certain group of people, depending on the situation, their actions could endanger an entire country.

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