A large message Kindred sends to the reader is how one individual with a large amount of power can destroy other people's lives solely on their own whim. Rufus is the character who exemplifies this theme the most, especially with Alice. When Rufus begins to pester Dana to speak with Alice, she begins to worry that Rufus will exhibit his power on her: “I had thought that eventually, he would just rape her again” (Butler 110). The most disturbing part of this sentence is the casual tone used towards it. Dana already knows the type of power Rufus takes against Alice, which is constantly sexually violating her. Since he already put her through the abuse once, Dana knows he will do it again. In Dana’s last time travel, she begins to truly reflect …show more content…
When Dana first meets Rufus during her time travel, he was just a young kid growing up in an extremely racist period of time. Rufus’ initial innocence is exemplified after Dana saves him, as he begins to insist that she call him her master: “The boy gripped my arm. ‘Yes!’ he whispered. ‘You’ll get into trouble if you don’t, if Daddy hears you” (Butler 30). Notably, Rufus’s immediate response was not to harm Dana when she refused to comply with his demands. Instead, he’s emphasizing that she will be harmed by Tom Weylin if she doesn’t call him master. With his young age, this mannerism displays how Rufus is innately innocent. Although Rufus puts Dana in a demeaning position, he follows through these social norms because he believes it is for the …show more content…
Before going back to the 18th century, Dana was already experiencing hardships for her skin color. She prominently received flack for her marriage to a white man, as Kevin looms about his sister’s prejudice views on his relationship: “I thought I knew her…I mean, I did know her. But I guess we've lost touch more than I thought” (Butler 110). In this sentence, Kevin claims that he knows his sisters both in a literal and figurative sense. He clearly knows her since he spent his life growing up with her. However, he was never fully conscious of her racist viewpoints. When Kevin states he has lost touch with her, it makes it seem that he is living in a more progressive period, while his sister is still stuck in the
Initially, because she underestimates her own courage, which has never been properly tested, Dana doubts that she has sufficient fortitude to survive in the nineteenth century. As Kindred unfolds, it becomes clear that she does, indeed, have abundant courage and stamina. Butler effectively utilizes a common technique in fiction whereby an individual becomes heroic by transcending his or her base humanity by drawing on hidden inner resources. Dana is tested in her second trip to the past when she is nearly raped by a white man who is part of a patrol—the forerunner to the Ku Klux Klan. Never before having experienced physical abuse, initially Dana is reluctant to act. She fails to disable him by gouging his eyes, thereby losing her only chance
The first novel, Kindred involves the main character Dana, a young black woman, travelling through time to explore the antebellum south in the 1800’s. The author uses this novel to reveal the horrific events and discrimination correlated with the slaves of the south at the time. Dana, who is a black woman of modern day, has both slave and white ancestry, and she develops a strong connection to her ancestor Rufus, who was a slave owner at the time. This connection to Rufus indirectly causes Dana to travel into the past where she helps many people suffering in the time period. Butler effectively uses this novel to portray the harshness of slavery in history, and the impa...
Dana and Rufus might look like friends from the outside, but Dana’s feelings for him are quite different from what we think of them. To begin with Dana sees Rufus as a child needing or relying upon her protection. For instance, when Dana saved him from drowning in the river. Secondly, she views him as a man of his time. In another words Rufus’s personality is the way that any other man would have been in that period of time towards his slaves. Lastly, he is a ruthless and vicious slaveholder, which Tom Weylin’s fault. Just as Tom’s behaviour on the slaves and on his son. Finally, I will explain in more details how Dana’s feelings for Rufus are in the following paragraphs.
battle her conscious mainly because she doesn’t know if she is morally bound to let Rufus live or die. Dana begins to slowly understand her life relies on Rufus’s actions after she has been put into several situations in which she has had to save his life. She starts to ponder and make the conclusion that if Rufus survives, she will also survive and make it back to California. Dana continues to go along with this mindset for a while, but eventually she starts to second-guess it, and therefore fights her conscious.
Waythorn is waiting for his new wife, Alice to come down for dinner. Immediately, it is evident that Mr. Waythorn thinks highly of his new wife, thus creating the illusion of perfection. It is clear that Waythorn is excited to have dinner with his new wife at his home for the first time since their honeymoon. He discusses for several lines about how much he adores her poise and grace despite the obstacles she has endured. “It was their first night under his own roof, and he was surprised at his thrill of boyish agitation.”(Wharton, 815) Waythorn is clearly stuck in the “honeymoon stage” and refuses to see the bad in his new wife. “Waythorn seems well aware of his own anxious nature, but he marries without concern about his wife 's past marriages, even when friends advise him to be cautious.”(Neary) At this point in time it was a scandal for a woman to be divorced much less being divorced twice. However, Mr. Waythorn does not let Alice’s previous marriages influence his love for his new wife. Rather, he rationalizes the situation by placing blame on Alice’s previous husbands. This further maintains the idea of his “perfect”
Has evil always been around, or did man create it? One could trace evil all the way back to Adam and Eve; however, evil came to them, but it was not in them. When did evil become part of a person? No one knows, but evil has been around for a long time and unfortunately is discovered by everyone. In many great classics in literature evil is at the heart or the theme of the novel, including Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird. This classic book demonstrates the growing up of two children in the South and illustrates the theme of evil by showing how they discover, how they deal, and how they reconcile themselves to the evils they experience.
Ultimately, time travel lets Octavia Butler convey her own views on slavery, and the brutality of it. However, her main point is that although we have advanced through the last century, bigotry is still a major problem in our society. And, in order for any major progress to be had, each side will suffer losses, as Rufus’ life was taken along with Dana’s arm.
In the featured article, “Beside Oneself: On the Limits of Sexual Autonomy,” the author, Judith Butler, writes about her views on what it means to be considered human in society. Butler describes to us the importance of connecting with others helps us obtain the faculties to feel, and become intimate through our will to become vulnerable. Butler contends that with the power of vulnerability, the rolls pertaining to humanity, grief, and violence, are what allows us to be acknowledged as worthy.
Is the main message of Dracula, by Bram Stoker really about the exploitation of powers and how they affect Victorian People’s lives?
When relating the history of her grandmother, Meema, for example, the author first depicts Meema’s sisters as “yellow” and Meema’s grandfather and his family as “white.” When the two families meet, the author has few words for their interactions, stating that their only form of recognition was “nodding at [them] as they met.” The lack of acknowledgment the narrator depicts in this scene, particularly between those of differing skin pigmentations, would indicate a racial divide permeating the society in which
This rule applies not only to slavery, but also to sexism. In Kindred, Butler concentrates on the powerless position of women in society and continuously relies on unexpected rhetorical tools to approach the problem. On one hand, the story of Alice who was raped by her master Rufus employs pathos to give a very accurate description of her feelings, as well as experiences of Dana who was forced to convince the woman to sleep with Rufus after her body recovered from severe beatings. On the other hand, Butler uses logos to examine gender inequality in society. Despite decades of economic, social, political, and technological transformations, women are still perceived as inferior to men. They are often viewed as a tool to satisfy men’s ambitions and needs. Butler acknowledges this incongruity between human progress and human prejudice as illogical when describing Dana’s choice to return to Maryland after she had spent two months there, and witnessed the evils of slavery. The progressive and seemingly independent Dana feels she owes something to a cruel and narcissistic
The oppressed and the oppressor’s lives are intertwined through their need to protect and maintain their well-being. As seen in the novel, Dana is summoned to the past only when Rufus, her distant ancestor’s life is in danger. Rufus continues to summon her from his childhood through his adult years. ...
In her novel, Kindred, author Octavia Butler addresses the challenges of interracial relationships. She touches on both consenting and non-consenting relationships. While Dana and Kevin are in a consenting relationship, their experiences and difficulties are similar to that of Rufus and Alice. Conversely, there are also many aspects of the two relationships that are very different.
Literary Analysis of Audre Lorde's Power. Audre Lorde uses her poetic prose to express her feelings of anger and fury over an unfortunate incident which occurred in New York City in the late 1970's. She shares her outrage and disgust at a racist society that can allow a child's death to be buried with no true justice found to help resolve the loss of an innocent child. Audre Lorde adopted an African name at the end of her life, Gamba Adisa, which means "Warrior-She Who Makes Her Meaning Known."
The Oxford University Dictionary defines the word power as ‘authority or control’ over an individual and knowledge as ‘the sum of what is known’. In Angela Carter’s story The Bloody Chamber (1979) knowledge and power correlate with each other. The more information a character possesses the greater authority they have. In The Bloody Chamber Carter utilises a variety of literary techniques to express the importance of knowledge and power in the plot. This essay will analyse the way Carter applies these literary techniques to the story to express the importance of knowledge and power.