Alice's Suicide: Her Only Way to Freedom
The Book Kindred, written by Octavia E. Butler, is full of scenes where power, submission and pain are seen throughout its pages. The scene that by far shocked me the most was when Dana discovered that Alice had committed suicide. The whole situation is an act of desperation where a woman has lost the inspiration of her life with nothing to live for.
The scene started when Dana walked into the barn where once she had been whipped. She tried to get used to the darkness. After a few seconds, she saw someone hanging by the neck. The person hanging was Alice. Dana looked at her and touched her not believing what she was seeing. She looked at Alice's dress, shoes and hair. Dana thought that Alice had dressed up for her death. Dana cut the rope to take her down. Rufus finally walked in. He did not want to look at Dana. Dana asked Rufus if she did it that to herself and he answered yes. Then, Dana asked him for the reason but she did not get an answer. She desired to ask about Alice's children. Rufus moved his head and walked out of the bard.
Dana later discovered that Rufus had told Alice that he had sold Alice's children. She also discovered that everything was a lie. Rufus used the idea of the children's sale as a way to manipulate Alice. This time everyone, including Alice, believed that he had sold them.
This scene gives a mix of emotions: sadness and happiness. It made me sad to know that those children would grow without the love and the protection of a mother. Alice was a woman who was willing to give or do anything for the joy and the freedom of her children. She was a mother whose children had become her hope and her motivation to live. On the other hand, the scene made me happy because Alice's suicide act was her only way to escape from a man who was sickly in love with her. That man sexually abused and insulted her and had the power to do anything he wanted with her. She was once a free woman and then brought back to slavery. At one time she was in love but her husband was captured, abused and sold. A rope on her neck is the only trail that she could follow to the freedom previously tasted.
This was from the mind of young Grealy, the girl who had a depressed and angry mother, the mother that taught her that it was never okay to show weakness or cry (Grealy 30). Young Grealy believed that the way she earned acceptance during her first visit to the ER could carry over into her home life. I think that this moment encompassed all that Grealy was feeling at this time. The feeling that she was responsible for her mother’s unhappiness and depression, the feeling that if she showed she was not afraid, no one else in her family would be either, and the feeling that if she was not brave, her family would be unhappy forever. This was important because she felt that she had discovered a way to make her family whole again.
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...
No matter how much he put her through, she kept fighting for her life. I was confused by this because, in my eyes her life was completely over. I did not see how she could ever live a functioning life after all of the things that she went through. I would have thought that this reality would have been a reason for her to give up and choose fiction. Fiction would have been the easy way out of the pain, loses, and suffering that she faces and would continue to face. Then I thought to myself that is what makes humans amazing. Being able to endure the challenges of life and keep going. Originally, I thought she was a fool to keep going then I realized that she was strong. If I was her I would have chosen my reality
Olivia Butler was an American non-fiction writer. She wrote the novel Kindred in the year of 1979. Kindred is defined as a family or a spirit of our relatives. The novel was breaking down into six section regarding the time of each scene. The six sections of the book are the river, the fire, the fall, the fight, the storm, and the rope. This novel is about knowing the character’s ancestors by transporting into two different times. The narrator in this novel is Dana, she has the ability to go back to the past. The story of Dana starts in the year of 1976 and she is able to go back in the year of 1815. In this story, Dana is a writer and she is able to go back in the past because of she in control of his ancestor Rufus Weylin. Since Dana is black, she is transporting to an environment that unwelcoming regarding her physical appearance.
Even though this meant that she would not be able to see or interact with her children for all that time. The pain that she feels is evident when she says, “ At last I heard the merry laugh of children, and presently two sweet little faces were looking up at me, as though they knew I were there, and were conscious of the joy that imparted. How I longed to tell them I was there”(97). She tolerated being locked away in an enclosed dark space for 7 long years in order to free her children from the current master that owned them as slaves, showing how having someone to put ahead of yourself makes you stronger and more resilient as a
Kindred by Octavia Butler is an incredible book that leaves the reader hypnotized. This story educates people on the first hand abuse of slavery. Butler took a woman of the modern era and transferred her back into a period
The author, William Faulkner, has a collection of books, short stories, and poems under his name. Through his vast collection of works, Faulkner attempts to discuss and bring awareness to numerous aspects of life. More often than not, his works were created to reflect aspects of life found within the south. Family dynamics, race, gender, social class, war, incest, racism, suicide, necrophilia, and mental illness are just some of the aspects that Faulkner explored. In “A Rose for Emily” the aspects of necrophilia and mental illness along with the societal biases that were observed in a small-town setting are seen to be a part of this captivating story. These aspects ultimately intertwine with the idea of insanity that characterizes “A Rose for Emily.
Octavia Butler’s novel Kindred is categorized as science fiction because of the existence of time travel. However, the novel does not center on the schematics of this type of journey. Instead, the novel deals with the relationships forged between a Los Angeles woman from the 20th century, and slaves from the 19th century. Therefore, the mechanism of time travel allows the author a sort of freedom when writing this "slavery narrative" apart from her counterparts. Butler is able to judge the slavery from the point of view of a truly "free" black woman, as opposed to an enslaved one describing memories.
Alice Pyncheon dies because her father, Gervayse, allowed her to be hypnotized by a Maule also
On a drive on Highway 50, through Nevada to see a real ghost town, Agnes finds a little girl named Rebecca who has been separated by her family who was looking Leister 's gold. The capper of the whole thing is that Agnes saw the whole thing in a dream, but she gets to the Goldberg Hotel and Saloon, she realizes the whole thing was real, especially the inside of her room. She soon finds out that the entire hotel is haunted by all kinds of spirits from past guests; which only serves to make Agnes 's vacation that much more interesting. She wants to find out what happened to the family. She knows with every fiber of her being that it was not just a dream, and that a little girl really did go missing in the night before Agnes showed up. Will they be able to find the missing kid or will a killer (called “The Cutter”) ruin their
Butler alludes to the significance of the problem by choosing the adjective kindred as a title for her work. Throughout this novel, familial bonds are built up, and at the very end get a perverse form because of gender and racial mistreatments. Throughout time, Dana witnesses families clinging to each other while they are treated unjustly. The veracity of this assertion is confirmed by examining scenes where the heroes stick together with their family because they are put in circumstances where it is impossible to escape racial violation. An example of such a case is the incident between the slave called Tess and Dana. After Weilyn sells the man for attempting to flirt with Dana, other slaves try their best to not displease their masters because they do not want to be separated from their family. This scene suggests that racial violation was so horrifying that African Americans could not even choose to live with their family, and it made them even more dependent on each
One’s sense of identity is shaped by the conception of how one faces challenges in the world. In Octavia Butler’s science fiction novel, Kindred, Butler explores the idea of maintaining one’s identity within an oppressive society. Dana’s experiences in the antebellum South push her to draw from within and around her to persevere through not only the past, but the present too. As Dana completes a journey which is unexpected and complex, it allows her to realize how strong she is because of her ability to preserve her understanding of herself despite any alienation in the past.
Alice and Kevin have an interesting start to their relationship. Initially, it appears that Dana is not interested in Kevin, as she tries to reject communication and his advances through buying her lunch. This distance on Dana’s part allows readers to contemplate whether Dana is put off by Kevin’s obtrusive attitude because he is a man, because he is white, or a combination of the two. As the novel advances, Butler continues to focus Kevin’s faults in his marriage because of his identity as a white man.
Dana’s attachment to Alice and her plan to see her be freed; was suddenly altered when Rufus laid his hands on her. As I have discussed in a pervious assignment “The Storm” and “The Rope,” the word “love” can mean many emotions. Jealousy is one of the emotions that arise when: fear, concern, and suspicion take over our body. “I grinned. ‘Get out of here, Sam.
From the psycho-dynamic perspective Alice's failure is caused by an unconscious motive that drives her to fail. (McLeod, 2013) Her failure in math has a cause that is most likely because of failures or feelings of failure that she has had in the past that are now manifesting themselves and causing her to stop studying. Alice's id or primitive desires for immediate satisfaction are taking over and causing her to stop studying for math and instead do things that she can do without feeling bad about herself. This perspective is lacking the outside forces that are in play because it doesn't consider how the mothers lack of success could factor into Alice's failures.