Kindred

In the fiction “Kindred,” the author Octavia Butler revealed the darkness of slavery, denounce the anti-humanity of racial oppression, the tragic slave life in nineteenth century was revealed. The main character Dana Franklin is a married black woman from California in 1970s, she time travels to the past several times to save her ancestor Rufus Weylin. While Dana Franklin stays and trys to survive in the slavery society at the Maryland plantation in the nineteenth century, she witnesses the tragic…...

Trust and sympathy go hand in hand, as without trust there is no sympathy. In the novel Kindred by Octavia Butler. The setting that the story is mainly based around is the early 1800s in Southern California during the slave era, and the one that the protagonist and the secondary protagonist - her husband originated from is Los Angeles in 1976 . Dana is the protagonist of the novel that is characterized in a sympathetic way throughout the novel, which…...

When we think of love, we think of something pure and beautiful. Although there are various stages of love, we assume that at the end of the day they all fall under the same category. We also believe that everyone we love is good because that’s why we care so deeply about them and you would be wrong to think that. Don’t believe me? Ask Dana, the main character of the science fiction novel, Kindred. In Kindred, Butler uses a…...

When were in position of power we usually lose our understanding of distinguishing the difference between being wrong and doing something because we “have to” we often forget there’s many ways to accomplish a certain goal. In the book Kindred by Octavia Butler, an African woman named Dana living in the 1976 time period travels back to 1819 a time where slavery is legal. Dana comes across her ancestors Tom & Rufus Weylin who are white men, and because of…...

Science fiction often connects with a wide range of people by authors writing about the human condition and how to fix or destroy it. Unlike other genres, fiction gives characters relatable feeling and emotion, allowing readers to visualize the story on a deeper level. In Kindred, by Octavia Butler, the close to death experiences of Rufus Weylin transports a 20th century African American woman named Dana to the antebellum South to experience exactly what it’s like to be a slave.…...

Over the years, humanity has made a significant effort towards removing the inequality many people experience. After many years of fighting, segregation has been banned in America and the fight for equal gender pay still perseveres. Unfortunately, discrimination is still present even when inequality is removed. Lewis R. Aiken defines discrimination as “differential treatment of people according to race, ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation, disabilities, and other physical or behavioral characteristics” (85). This definition of discrimination gives several examples of…...

Throughout the history of humankind, there have always been people in power and people oppressed by those in power. Race and gender are often the lines oppression is based upon; however, there have always been individuals who have fought against this harsh reality. In Kindred, by Octavia Butler, the author uses the science fiction genre to allow Dana to break the barrier of time in order to learn about the oppression of black women in society; Butler expresses that the…...

Selfishness, insecurity, pridefulness, and loathsomeness. These are all words that can be used to describe Rufus from the novel, Kindred. The personality and characteristics of Rufus do slightly change over time, but in the end he was still the malevolent man he always was. This has happened because of the different influences he has had in his life, the amount of loneliness he went through, and the way white people treated blacks. Because of all these effects that Rufus dealt…...

Often, man resorts to story-telling as a way of reconciling with a formidable incident in the past. By re-telling the story to another party, he comes to accept that this is a reality to be faced. He realizes that acceptance, rather than denial, is the best way of going about this trouble. Aside from the rehabilitating ability of story-telling with its contributory effect in dealing with a painful memory, others simply do this as a way of remembering. Concretizing the…...

There are various connections that can be made between the characters within the novel “Kindred” written by Octavia Butler. The majority of these connections relate to four of the course themes we’ve visited in past few weeks: double consciousness, collective trauma, diaspora, and power relationships. The protagonist, Dana Franklin, traveled between the past and present and in her travels she met a variety of different people, including the enslaved African Americans and their White owners of the 19th century, as…...