Kindred by Octavia Butler has been a respected novel since its publication in 1979. In Kindred Butler provides readers with suspense until the last page. It provides readers with two definitions of a home. Home is a place where you feel safe where you have a family to come to when you are having a horrible day at work or at school. Home is a place where you share good and bad times with family and friends. A home is place of stability in your life. A home isn’t a place that you are scared to go to. A home isn’t a place filled with only negative thoughts and hopes. A home is not a place that you endured physical and mental abuse. Dana had a home of stability and a home filled with physical and mental abuse. Dana and her husband Kevin just moved into a new home that they just bought in Los Angeles, California. This is the best birthday gift she could ever receive because before she was living in a congested apartment. This is also the first day she starts to travel back into time to visit her plantation home in the early 1800s in Maryland. The distinctions between Los Angeles and Maryland present the differences in what makes a home.
When Dana experienced her first dizzy spell she is appalled at what just happen and she was not even gone for two minutes. As she tells Kevin he cannot believe his eyes because she comes back wet and muddy. Dana has gone back in time to rescue a boy named Rufus. At this point in time she does not understand why she was called back into time to save this four year old boy from drowning. When she does save him she is awaken by the gun that his father points at her and she fades back into 1976. This has been a weird birthday for Dana.
Dana second dizzy spell happens a few minutes later in the presen...
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...eing freed.
The definition of a home to Dana and Kevin has the definition of a love hate relationship. Throughout the novel there is a roller coaster ride of emotions and how they are expressed in each time period. The book beings in suspense which makes you want to read more and more into the novel. In the first section of the book Dana is happy she no longer lives in her cramped apartment filled with books from the floor to the ceiling. The day of Dana birthday she and her husband Kevin move into a house in Los Angeles, California. They are both excited and filled with joy because they have a home which means stability is established in their lives. Since they have stability they can share meaningful and wonderful experiences in their home. When Dana travels back into time she finds out that the home her ancestors are accustomed does not have as much stability.
Dana is pulled back into the past whenever Rufus is faced with a life or death situation. On her first trip back into time, Dana finds Rufus drowning in a river. She pulls him out safely and begins to give him mouth to mouth resuscitation. Rufus’ mother, who saw the whole thing, begins hitting Dana while screaming, “You killed my baby!” (Butler 14). A few moments later Dana comes to face her first racial encounter with Tom Weylin. She turns to face the end of a long barrel of a shotgun. Almost immediately Dana becomes dizzy and passes out to wake up in her and Kevin’s home in California.
How far would someone go to survive? All through life people go through various challenges, but when someone is facing death, how far would someone will they go to save oneself? Survival can mean many different things; such as making it through highschool without getting into trouble, fighting off a predator, or standing up for what is right to help others. In Kindred, Octavia Butler uses many different situations to show what survival means to her. For example, Dana, the main character, travels through time to save her ancestor Rufus thus experiencing times of near death predicaments. In Kindred, Octavia Butler uses the conflicts Dana experiences in her time travels to suggest the idea that people do things they wouldn’t normally
John Grisham’s book, ‘A Painted House’ places the reader within the walls of a simple home on the cotton fields of rural Arkansas. Within the first few pages, the author’s description of the setting quickly paints a picture of a hard working family and creates a shared concern with the reader about the family’s struggle to meet the basic needs of life. The description of the dusty roads, the unpainted board-sided house, the daily chore requirements and their lack of excess cause the reader a reaction of empathy for the family. Although the story takes place in a dusty setting very unfamiliar to most readers, the storyline is timeless and universal. Most everyone has a desire to meet the basic needs of life, embrace their family ties, and make others and ourselves proud. The crux of this book is that it does an excellent job in showing the reader through other’s examples and hardships to persevere and never give up.
“How could it feel so good when it should be disgusting and painful?” (Butler 75) These words spoken by Theodora, an elderly white woman, about her symbiotic and sometimes sexual relationship with Shori, a black “elfin little girl” (Butler 75), express the societal fear that Octavia Butler exposes in her characterization of Shori as a monster. Shori is a monster because her very existence is a testament to the blurring of historically concrete lines. She is androgynous, vampire and human, black and white, a child with adult strength and urges. Shori’s relationship with her human symbionts and other Ina usually defies normal standards of behavior and acceptance by using pleasure instead of pain as a mechanism of control and abandoning traditional ideas about gender, sexuality, and crossbreeding.
Time is fear's worst enemy, as time goes on; fears only become a worse conflict. For Conor it was the fear of his mother passing away. For Conor it was the fear of his mother passing away. All this time he pretended the fear was not there, every time someone brought it up, he would shut it down. He acted like this mother was never sick, saying of course his mother will get better. He knows inside it is a lie but is willing to listen to them anyway for comfort. Soon though, he learns from the monster that he has to face his fears even though it hurts because if he does not he will never accept it and feel guilty so it is for the better of Conor. After hiding for so long, Conor finally had to deal with his fear; because he had not dealt with it for so long it caused him painful conflict inside of him and the pain was unbearable.
Kevin and Dana’s relationship changes because their view of race change when they are introduced to and live in the antebellum south. Kevin, as a white man, fails to understand the struggles Dana lives through despite his efforts to understand.
After understanding that time traveling wasn’t going to be a one time thing, Dana begins to
... It has almost become a friend. The paranormal encounters and psychological effects of the house made her almost, insane. Dr. Montague and the others all agreed that she needed to be home. It was for her own safety. The morning that Eleanor was scheduled to leave was like any other. Mrs. Dudley set out their breakfast, and all in all, it seemed like a normal day. Everyone gave their good-byes, and Theo was especially sad to see Eleanor go. Eleanor got into her car, but something wasn't right. Her mind was telling her that Hill House belonged to her. How dare they tell me to leave, and what gives them the right to make the rules? Hill House was HER house. In an act to save her dignity, Eleanor presses the gas. She turns the wheel and crashes straight into a tree. Her life had ended. After an ending like this, you begin to think. Was Hill House really haunted? Or was it the psyche of Eleanor Vance that caused these encounters? All in all, Eleanor was never accepted, and she finally found someone that accepted her for what she was. That someone was Hill House. This story became one of my favorites after reading it. I would recommend this book to any person who has been the outcast.
Setting, a major gothic element, can play an important role in a story, including impacting a character’s behavior. For instance, the protagonist of the story, whose name is not mentioned, describes how she gets, “... a lovely view of the bay and a little private wharf belonging to the estate. There is a beautiful shaded lane that runs down there from the house (3)”. The location of the house in the story implies that since it is an estate, it consists of a bigger area of land, meaning it is possibly farther away from the town. Being away from others and confined to the estate causes the narrator to the feel isolated. Additionally, the feeling of isolation intensifies when John, the protagonist’s husband, suggests that his wife resides in the nursery.
In Gloria Watkins’s essay “Keeping Close to Home.” Watkins claims that she connects to her family through communications and being open and honest with them. From her family, Watkins learns that she should respect and value the skills and talents that other people might have, not just focus on those that she likes. Watkins’s family has influenced her perspective on life by telling her to remember her own identity, and never forget about her past and history. There are some that thinks we do not carry much of our own family, but I think we do carry a lot of our own family with us whether is good or bad. We would carry traits such as admiration of others, daily habits, and being respectful to others.
Throughout the tale, one sees clearly the binding ties between house and inhabitants. What was once a proud family mansion is reduced to a crumbling house, whose inhabitants are scarcely less changed. From the wasting disease of the lady Madeline, to her brother's nervous affliction, one discerns a tangible connection with their dark family home. As it weakens, so also do both brother and sister diminish, until both finally perish in a horrible demise no less fantastic then that of their house. And it is these singular features which have contrived to brand the tale upon the mind of the reader, and so inspired generations of both readers and writers. There can be no doubt that future readers will also be inspired by this tale of the horror and mysterious connections between a house and its inhabitants, “The Fall of the House of Usher.”
Architecture by far, plays the greatest role in the book. The house itself causes the events in the book to unfold. Supposedly built in 1720, it has housed approximately 0.37 owners a year, most of who were traumatized in some way. William (Navy) and Karen Navidson, the current owners of the house, are included in this select group. Though they move into the house as an attempt to repair their marriage, it is what that ultimately drives them apart. The first sign of trouble is the appearance of a long, cold, dark hallway. The house, larger on the inside than it is on the outside, causes Navidson to investigate the house and serves as the catalyst for the destruction that follows.
The natural world does not care for the house as the humans did and there is nothing there for the house to accomplish. “It was raining outside.” (Bradbury 1)This rain suggests a sadness and gloom that has fallen over the house from the loss of its “gods”. This happened at eight o’clock, and when ten o’clock rolls around “The sun came out from behind the rain.” The sun represents the shedding of light on the dark world and bringing forth of new information. It is here in the story that one learns that the family is actually dead and not simply on a trip. “The gentle sprinkler rain filled the garden with falling light.” This falling light epitomizes the end of an era of not only humans but the end of the life of this house. This sentence, along with the poem by Sara Teasdale later in the story, foreshadow the end outcome of this story; the death of all man-made
We are introduced to the protagonist, Chelsie, who is a 16-year-old girl. She takes care of her two siblings, as her mother is out of control and not willing to take responsibility for her children. For that reason, Chelsie has to become the mother of the house
...her own home. It is so hard to imagine what life was like for her and her family, but the way the book was written definitely helped to understand and create a mental picture of what she lived through each day.