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Stereotypes In Octavia Butler's Kindred

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“People are much deeper than stereotypes. That is the first place our minds go. Then you get to know them and you hear their stories, and you say, 'I'd have never guessed.'” A quote by Carson Kressley which perfectly explains the relationship between our two main characters Dana and Rufus in Octavia Butler’s Kindred. In Octavia Butler’s Kindred people’s relationships are more complicated than stereotypes suggest them to be. In the beginning of Octavia Butler’s Kindred the relationship between Dana and Rufus begins with Dana saving a drowning child otherwise known as our young Rufus. Their relationship at this point in time is that of an adult caring for a young child. Fast forward to the next time Dana meets with Rufus again when he burns up the draperies. Stereotyping becomes evident when Rufus questions Dana as to why she does not refer to him as master or that of a higher title. “‘You have to say it.’ He insisted. “Or ‘Young Master’ or...or ‘Mister’ like Alice does. ‘You are supposed to’” (30). He even mentions how she is ‘supposed to’ because in his eyes she is a slave. Rufus, even at this young …show more content…

They are so dependent on each other. Dana forgives Rufus time and time again for doing these awful things to her such as whipping her. Right after her failed attempt at escaping, he informs her that she will be whipped to which she ‘gets off easy’ by being brutally beaten by Mr.Weylin. Another example would be how Rufus hid the letters Dana wrote to Kevin and then lied about it. Rufus always claims to love Dana and care for her yet he hurts her time after time. He even claims how Alice and Dana were the same person. “You were one woman...you and her. One woman. Two halves of a whole” (257). He believed if he could not have Alice anymore he would have to have Dana, by choice or by force, he did not

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I do like how Wade always has her back, “I could get on the phone and threaten to fly back there and kick his ass” (150) there is something beautiful about their dysfunctional relationship. I love how Wade gushes over her even though I feel like he is smarter than her but he leads not to be. I realized he was a hopeless romantic “Why don’t you write a love story instead” Angelia said.

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I believe that Rufus is an alternation of his father he still sees slaves as more than a piece of property with only a couple of exceptions. For example when Dana told him that Alice doesn 't love him, but he refused to take no as an answer which showed that he didn 't really care about the way she felt or thought of him. Furthermore, he also received some of his father 's temper or anger problems. Throughout the book there been moments where Rufus would suddenly get angry and become demanding, for instance when Rufus demanded Dana to get up form her chair but lucky he claimed down before he could do anything irrational. He also sold slaves like his father and punished them when he had too.

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Dennis Nilson was a well-known serial killer that lived in Fraserburgh, Scotland and was born on 23 November, 1945 was accused of killing 15 men and boys by luring the innocent victims into his house. Dennis would also preserve the bodies while they were already dead and sleep with them on his bed. And all of these gruesome acts occurred in the years of 1978 and 1983 in London, England. And Dennis did all of this because he was never comfortable with his homosexual desires towards other men, and to relieve his discomfort he began luring innocent men and boys into his house and began killing them and dismembering them. All of his victims were students from the nearby school or homeless men that he would bring home for sexual relations or merely

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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?

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And Rufus was Rufus-erratic alternately generous and vicious. I could accept him as my ancestor, my younger brother, my friend, but not as my master, and not as my lover. He had understood that once” (260). Dana is distancing herself from being a slave doesn’t feel that she could ever be subjected to it like Alice was. She uses pronouns like “her” to describe a slave to show that she will be associated with one.

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She quickly realizes that he has malaria. Nigel, a slave at the Weylin Plantation, informs Dana that Rufus has contracted malaria before, but Tom Weylin, Rufus’ father and current owner of the plantation, refuses to call a doctor because “all the [doctor] knows is bleeding and blistering and purging and puking and making [people] sicker than they [were to begin with]” (Butler 202). Dana manages to help Rufus overcome his illness simply with aspirins and time. While she is taking care of Rufus, she also discovers that Alice Greenwood, a slave who is forced into becoming Rufus’ concubine, has lost two children because of the malpractice of medical professionals during the time. Rufus allows the doctor to bleed and purge the two children in hopes of reducing their fevers; unfortunately, this results in the death of their two children (Butler

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and he felt he could not live without Alice by his side. From this it makes Rufus come off as a deplorable person, but he was only portraying the way people acted around him. It really comes down to was Rufus really that bad of a person, or would he have been very different person with better morals, if he grew up in a time period with an environment that would not shape him in such a twisted manner? In the beginning of Kindred, Rufus is seen as a fool hearted young boy, but as the novel progress we see Rufus turn into a cold heated man shaped by the environment he grew up

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