The impact of Kindred

Kindred by Octavia Butler is a book that infuses the aspect of history with science fiction. Butler takes two important times in American history: the period of slavery and the year of 1976. Butler uses time travel in order to show how the past has shaped and continues to shape the present.

    I believe that Butler specifically chose the year 1976 because it is the year where the United States celebrated 200 years of freedom. I believe that Butler uses these two different setting in order to show how important the past is to understanding the present.
    There are further similarities with the characters. Butler creates a double of Dana with Alice. Rufus even goes as far as to think that they are the same person. Rudus uses Alice for his physical desires and Dana for emotional comfort. “He likes me in bed, and you out of bed...all that means we’re two halves of the same woman” (229).  By establishing a relationship between the past and present, Butler not only gets the perspective of a free, twentieth-century black women's challenges in the nineteenth-century slavery, but also also a view on the nineteenth-century black woman’s life in slavery.
    Dana seems to be naive as she doesn't know the severity and harsh reality of a black women in nineteenth-century slavery. As time passes and she meets Alice, Dana begins to realize just how much Alice has to suffer. As time passed Alice “adjusted, became a quieter more subdued person. She didn’t kill, but she seemed to die a little” (169). This viewpoint on nineteenth century slavery really hits the crucial aspects of just how terrible slavery was and shows just how we have moved on.
   

Changes in Dana

Dana is the main character in the book Kindred. During the book there are some notable changes about Dana due to the circumstances of her traveling back into time. My first impressions of Dana were not that strong. I felt that she did not really have a purpose in life. Sure she wanted to become an author, but that goal was not really close. Instead she spent most of her days searching for odd jobs to earn money.

As Dana began spending more time in the nineteenth century my views about her changed. At first she seemed strong, she fought against all the opposition she was up against and won. An example of this would be when she started teaching some slaves how to read and write. This stood out to me especially because of how brave I thought Dana was. However, these actions may have been her naivety that she brought with her from the future.

As the novel continues, Rufus gets older, and with that Rufus gains more power as a white male on a plantation. Rufus is no longer that innocent child that we first met at the start of the book. Dana however looks more and more like any other female slave on the Weylin plantation as she does not age.

Near the end of the book it felt like Dana just kind of gave up. She becomes more submissive as she learns what society thinks of slaves. Rufus begins ordering her around doing stuff, and even blackmailing her. She does not have much power to do otherwise. It was only at the very end where she finally could not stand it and she kills Rufus. I guess this just shows how much change Dana goes through as she experiences these traumatic events.

A scar

The book Kindred started off faced-paced as we learn that the main character has lost her arm. However we do not know how she loses her arm till the very end of the book which caused me to feel that this book was very interesting. The ending of the book however was something unexpected to say the least. After murdering Rufus, Dana’s arm merges into the wall as she is transported back to her own time.

Even though Dana had also gone through a lot of physical abuse such as from whippings, I do believe that the most pain she went through was herself.I believe that Butler made Dana lose an arm to compare all her mental struggles. Her feelings toward Rufus are very complex. She has been with him ever since he was a little kid, saving him numerous times from drowning, burning, and getting beat up, however as Rufus starts growing older and becoming more like a slave master, Dana no longer knows what to really think towards him. Dana also had to worry during that five year period where Kevin was alone in the past. She had to worry whether or not Kevin would stay the same, or become influenced by the white supremacy. I do not think that anyone could just normally go back to their way of living, and the physical symbol of this lost arm is a good way to remind her. I agree that slavery leaves a big impact, and the lost arm is Butler showing just how much of an impact it actually made for Dana.