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Whoever Controls The Future: Kindred By Octavia E. Butler

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Landon Szabo Ari Finkelstien Language Arts Period 3 4/8/24. Whoever Controls the Past, Controls the Future: An Essay About Kindred Kindred, by Octavia E. Butler, is a book of many talents. Those talents include the themes. Dana’s journey throughout the book takes her to the past, where she learns valuable themes. The themes of violence, choices and their relationship with power, and kinship, which can relate back to the experiences of African Americans in our history. What’s affected in the past can change the future. We can learn from this past and we have to, we just need to know how. And Kindred can teach us. To start this off, we need to talk about violence.Violence is a main force that has been used by humans for centuries. Our ancestor’s used violence to win wars, enslave people and control people. The book takes place in the South during …show more content…

But this book did not deliver, (SPOILERS:) the only fight scene was at the end, and it wasn’t that big, the heroic save wasn’t that cool, and Dana’s arm was gone at the end of the story. But hey, I loved it either way. This book gives us a realistic look into how the slaves were treated back then, leaving no room for interpretation and all the room for learning and experience, along with a good story to it too. The themes of the story have been done in a way that someone can link it to real life. The points of violence, control and power all have attributes to our past and our history. Kings used these themes on people. Slave masters used them on slaves. Whites used them on blacks during the civil rights protests. History always repeats itself. Kinship is a major aspect too, to the characters in the story and everybody around you outside of the story. Kindred proves that your past is certainly not you’re future and that you’re kinship does not mean who you exactly are. Take Rufus and Alice for example. Now we have Dana and Kevin. This is an example of doing well

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