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Summary Of Octavia Butler's Kindred

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Dana is young, intelligent, middle class writer and in interracial relationship different, almost extraordinary, for a black woman in the late '70s. This novel was to try to make people feel the past as well as understand the history of the slavery experience. Butler wanted us to be in their skin, mind emotions and to feel like we were them in the past. Dana didn’t agree with the plantation life, Dana sees how the Whites act towards the Blacks. The goal was to keep Rufus alive whenever she was pulled back in time. She is only transported back through time when his life is in danger. Since Dana is a Black woman and Kevin, her husband is White, she would have to adjust to things that perhaps she wouldn't have thought about. In the past it was a terribly, unusual thing. Dana says, “You, uh ... don’t have any relatives or anything who’ll give you a hard time about me, do you?” They had decided to get married after dating for four months, and discussed whether their families would be okay with their mixed-race marriage. Kevin did not think his sister would have a problem, but sadly and surprisingly, she did. Dana’s aunt and uncle were also alert with the fact that her husband was going to be white; …show more content…

These people don't get paid for what they do. The Whites do it because they like to empower over other people. “Patrollers made sure the slaves were where they were supposed to be at night, and they punished those who weren't” (The River, 6). Dana is disappointed by how normal and easy it is to accept slavery and the whole world in the past supports it. She'd like to think that one smart person could find a way to change the system or even speak upon it. But of course that's not how it all works out. “The ease. Us, the children… I never realized how easily people could be trained to accept slavery” (The Fire,

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Douglass uses paradox to demonstrate that slavery degragrates the slaverholder. When Douglass under Mr. Sever’s care he described that: “He was less cruel, less profane… He whipped, but seemed to take no pleasure in it. ”(Douglass 24). Most slaveholders are characterized to be cruel and inhuman because of the whipping and the way they treated the slaves.

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She is not immediately sent home and must deal with more trouble with Rufus, including being slapped by him, so she later decides to attempt suicide, knowing that the danger will send her home, and if it doesn’t she is at the very least free from the danger. This event is also the first time that Dana forces herself to be sent to the present rather than waiting for danger to find her. She is finally fleeing Rufus’s abuses, feeling betrayed because this is the first time that Rufus

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In Octavia Butler’s novel, Kindred, Rufus Weylin is one of the main characters who undergoes a lot of change throughout the novel, making him a round character. A round character is defined as a “major character in a story who encounters contradictory situations and undergoes transformation during this phase. Therefore, the characters does not remain the same throughout the narrative, making their traits difficult to identify from beginning until the end (LiteraryDevice).” The reader, along with Dana, follows Rufus’s growth throughout some major points in his life, from a young boy who forms a bond and friendship with Dana, to when he grows up to be a racist man who ultimately attempts to rape her. However, it is evident that Rufus’s ideology

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Have you ever wondered what shapes a person’s personality? In Kindred, by Octavia Butler, each complex character is dynamic or changes throughout the story. The root of these attitude changes comes from the environment in which they are placed. In the novel, slavery in the 19th century is the reason characters change such as Dana. By introducing Dana into the world of slavery, this, in turn, causes change in herself and those around her (i.e. Rufus).

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”This helped show people that slavery did not only become injurious to slaves; as it also became injurious to slave owners

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A normality in the literary world is that texts deeply nestled in the crosshairs of biopolitics, gender, nationalism, and other identity particularities often fall victim to one sided and dogmatic cultural critiques. Critic after critic find difficulty regarding how to analyze and essentially read a novel where intersectionality is intrinsic to its framework such as Kindred, because it does not fit the fairly common singular literary theory mold. This notion is articulated and defended in “"Some Matching Strangeness": Biology, Politics, and the Embrace of History in Octavia Butler's "Kindred"” where Robertson explores Butler’s usage of Dana’s body to confront universal truths and to cement the idea that Dana is in a historical paradox due

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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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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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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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Frederick Douglass’s narrative provides a first hand experience into the imbalance of power between a slave and a slaveholder and the negative effects it has on them both. Douglass proves that slavery destroys not only the slave, but the slaveholder as well by saying that this “poison of irresponsible power” has a dehumanizing effect on the slaveholder’s morals and beliefs (Douglass 40). This intense amount of power breaks the  kindest heart and changes the slaveholder into a heartless demon (Douglass 40). Yet these are not the only ways that Douglass proves what ill effect slavery has on the slaveholder. Douglass also uses deep characterization, emotional appeal, and religion to present the negative effects of slavery.

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Kevin and Dana understand each other very well. Not only it’s related to Dana and the other characters, but it’s also related to our society as a whole. It’s related to our society because the salves in the south treat her as a kindred spirit. Kindred spirit means a person whose interests or attitudes are similar to one 's own. And the salves think that she’s

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Because of this, he successfully creates a contrast between what the slave owners think of and treat the slaves and how they are. Douglass says that slave’s minds were “starved by their cruel masters”(Douglass, 48) and that “they had been shut up in mental darkness” (Douglass, 48) and through education, something that they were deprived of, Frederick Douglass is able to open their minds and allow them to flourish into the complex people that they are. By showing a willingness to learn to read and write, the slaves prove that they were much more than what was forced upon them by their masters.

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Maryland in 1815, like much of the south, was a hot bed for slavery plantations. For slave owners in particular, it was a benefit if your slaves were not educated, as they would be less likely to question the oppressive treatment, and not adequately be able to express the conditions under which they labored. In the novel Kindred by Octavia Butler, various aspects of education are intertwined throughout, effectively depicting how education and slavery do not go together cohesively. Specifically, in the case of Dana, the novels protagonist, her intelligence led to her owners feeling inferior, which prompted many verbal and physical attacks, an exploitation of her abilities, and the overriding attempt to suppress the education of other slaves

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Dana and Rufus’s Relationship Ever wonder what it's like to have a changing relationship with a plantation owner's son back in the 1800’s? Dana Franklin is a younger African-American woman married to Kevin Franklin who is a middle-aged man. Dana travels from California in 1976 back to the early 1800’s whenever Rufus is in trouble. Rufus is a plantation owner son and is also the father of Dana’s ancestor. Dana’s travels are random; she gets lightheaded and dizzy when she is about to travel.

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“With them, justice, liberty and humanity were “final”; not slavery and oppression.” This relates to the hardships and the fact that the people don’t recognize how terrible it is. And that these meanings of these “free” words mean something else to him and other slaves. He shows that the changes are hard but once they are made everything will be peaceful. Rhetorical features and strategies are Douglass’ forte’ in engaging with the audience.

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