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What Is The Theme Of Discrimination In Kindred

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In the novel, Kindred, by Octavia E Butler, there are many issues discussed like race, gender and discrimination. Octavia Butler helps portray these issues through her use of time travel in the book as well as using other authorial choices. Because she chose to have the main characters time travel she was able to use foreshadowing and elements from the past to help portray the concepts to the reader. While doing this she also used it to show how the perspectives of people from back then and now differ. Also, how people's views and values changed and grew as time passed. Furthermore, she used different authorial choices like imagery, descriptive word choice and her use of dialogue to expand her ideas on race and gender problems. She uses these …show more content…

Knowing that Rufus made assumptions about Dana and Kevin's relationship just because of their race is an example of how people from back then had small minds. Octavia uses her book to show the change in time and the growth society has had, but she also displays that even though it has improved, there is still a lot of racial and gender based discrimination made in modern times. Because Dana and Kevin have two very different lives and past experiences they act and think in very different ways. From the text you can see how someone acts and their thought process, the audience is able to understand if the character has ever faced racial or gender based discrimination. The growing up of a white man and a black woman would be very different. With not only racial factors in the mix but also gender factors. Everyone can face discrimination and hardships but some factors highly increase the chance of it. Going through that changes your overall personality and the way you think. When Danna and Kevin were back in time automatically people assumed things about Dana purely based on her appearance while on the other hand no one assumed anything about Kevin. After seeing …show more content…

This is shown differently with white and black women from both times. The readers see how white women, for example, Margaret is seen as less than their husbands. In addition, society expects them to be nothing more than wives and mothers. On the other hand, black women are constantly victimized and treated inhumanely. In the novel, it is repeatedly shown that black women in the 19th century were even more oppressed than they are today. For instance Rufus constantly asserts his “racial superiority” over African Americans. Such as when he sexually abuses Alice without anyone saying anything or stopping him which he could do because of his power and privilege as a white man during this time. Although his cruel behavior could be a result of his family and society constantly reminding him that his gender and race gives him authority, it's almost not his fault he has this mentality because of the way he grew up and what his parents taught him. When Dana was forced to work for the Weylins she starts to notice the unhealthy relationship between Rufus and his mother, Margaret. She states, "I remembered suddenly the way he used to talk to his mother. If he couldn't get what he wanted from her gently then he stopped being gentle. Why not? She always forgave him" (218). Dana realizes that Margaret’s behavior toward Rufus is what influenced him to grow up feeling misogynistic towards not only

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Using time travel, Octavia Butler creates a new view of racism in her novel, Kindred, by having Dana experience the life of a slave from an outsider's perspective. Though Dana’s present is far from a race utopia, it has drastically improved the problems of the past. In the past, Dana is surprised to find herself growing used to the injustices which surround her. Overall, traveling gives Dana first-hand experience at how slavery warped slaves’ perception of freedom.

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Tom Weylin has grown much older and frail, and tells Dana that as long as she cares for Rufus he will allow her to stay, and he will hurt her if any harm comes to him. Dana believes him. Tom soon dies of a heart attack, and Rufus believes that Dana could have saved him. Rufus sends Dana to work in the fields as a punishment for not saving him, and she is whipped. Rufus is just as controlling as ever and forces Dana to stay, and when she does he becomes gentler.

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Their difference in race also causes a disruption. Specifically, on page 124, when Rufus tells Dana how he “begged her not to go with him” (124), dana realizes that he loves Alice but that “there was no shame in raping a Black woman, but there could be shame in loving one” (124). This presents the imbalance between a white man and Black woman in the 1800’s because if he were to publicly love Alice, it would be seen as though he is only looking for someone to control, he is looking for a person to have power over, because he will always have more power over Alice no matter what, in the fact that he is white and she is black, he can own land, she cannot, he can have a career, she

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Jenny Wolmark, a renowned lecturer at the University of Humberside, suggests “that contemporary science fiction texts increasingly include both utopian and dystopian elements” (91). Butler include both a utopian and dystopian society in her novel. Traveling back into time towards slavery is considered a dystopian society, especially for a black person, as slavery existed. The utopian part of her novel is the present day time where Dana and Kevin are happily married and just bought a new home. The time travel science fiction aspect of her story where Dana inexplicably “fell, slowly it seemed, into a deep starless darkness,” (43) and returned back to present day 1976 to her unsuspecting husband, really helps fit push Butlers comparison of the two time periods.

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As someone who helped raise Rufus, she hoped that eventually he would be able to see black people as human beings and treat them better than his father and other racist white men during this time period, but society’s influence on his life overshadowed Sarah’s and Dana’s influences. Once Dana realizes that Rufus is a man of his time, affection becomes replaced with weary acceptance of who he is, and she begins to anticipate the day when should would no longer be able to forgive Rufus’s trespasses. Here, Butler is able to highlight the futile position of the mammy figure in the lives of the white family member. Though she takes care of them and attempts to subversively create a more humane generation, the institution of slavery and American culture

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Similarly, Rufus doesn’t ever take in to account Dana’s emotions, so the beatings and slave trade which are normalized in the 1800s are not normal for Dana, but Rufus ignores her feelings and does what he wants in order to keep power over her (Butler 214). Both Kevin and Rufus simply think that Dana is not used to the situation or is

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Butler used this to set the tone for the past travels as well as the present. In the past, clearly blacks are not respected. On her first trip back, Dana had just saved Rufus from drowning and was not only referred to as a nigger by Rufus’s mother, Margaret Weylin, but even had had a rifle pointed at her by his father, Tom Weylin. Dana is not used to being called by racial slurs, and surely does not understand why she would have her life threatened for saving Rufus, in her time she is not judged on her skin color. These scenes helped me to feel how frustrating it must have been and is today for blacks to experience racism, they don't even see them selfs as anything different from anyone else, but some people seem to view them as evil animals with

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In the book, Hurston showed repeatedly how African Americans were not treated the same way as people who were White. As a challenge to the Harlem Renaissance, Hurston expands her portrayal of inequality to gender. Some examples of views within the book that depart from other people within the Harlem Renaissance is that she had a very strong feminist view in a movement that focused on African Americans. An example in the book of her discussing the role of women is, “Uh women by herself is a pitiful thing … Dey need aid and assistance” (90).

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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

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Today, oppressed women around the world still face difficulty regarding their personal survival, and the survival of their children in their communities. Butler, however, does a tremendous job in presenting the struggle of a woman with their limited ability to help themselves and their love ones. Another key contribution to women oppression is young men and the examples that they have in their lives. Rufus the boy/men from Kindred doesn’t respect the females slave, not even his mother. “He had spent his life watching his father ignore, even sell the children he had had with black women.

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The white people viewed slaves as sub-human, and a black woman who was mentally superior was not something they would have encountered before. Dana explains what Margaret, Tom’s wife, may have been feeling; “I don’t think Margaret likes educated slaves any better than her husband does…. He can barely read and write. And she’s not much better” (Butler 82).

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Whether it is reality or books, there are always different types of relationships involved with the main characters. In the antebellum South, white people are taught to be dominant, leading to a feeling of superiority over black people. This leads to a stereotype of what types of relations you should have with those around you, though this leads to the white man doing what he wants and thinks is ok. Rufus is no exception to this matter, as he is raised in an environment with role models who exemplify this stereotype. In Octavia Butler’s Kindred, this environment leads to Rufus and Alice having a warped relationship because of their social standing, Rufus’ thoughts as he grows up with the conflicting views of a white man’s mentality, and Rufus’ action as he realizes the power he holds over Alice.

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In addition to that, the black community isolated Sethe because she did something that the community considered wrong. Black feminism will be the approach utilized here to see the oppression of woman of color because it includes sexism, classism and racism. Since the female characters are very dominant in the novel, a black feminist approach should be very effective and it enables one to see how the female characters deal with the past and live with it in the present, what motherhood mean to the female characters, and how much the past influences the female characters who lives in the present. The end of the novel reveals the forgiveness and the acceptance not only of the black community toward Sethe’s choice (killing her daughter) but also of the white people (the Bodwins) who accepted Denver to work for them. This reconciliation shows that the courage and the will to get rid off from the past to live side by side peacefully and to move toward the future together.

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