Octavia Butler's Kindred Literary Analysis

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The human brain has great power and abilities, some of which we fail to realize it uses every day of our lives. This can be exemplified by our brain’s ability to create mental shortcuts by assigning labels to what is around us. Although this skill is typically good and helpful to us, “[it] can also be extremely damaging, especially when it comes to categorizing people” (Kaufman). This statement’s validity true enough that novelists have noticed and incorporated it into their work to raise awareness. Different authors have incorporated this into their work such as Barbara Kingsolver and John Irving. The novel that will be analyzed specifically is by Octavia Butler called Kindred. It is a 1979 novel of an independent, African-American woman who travels back through time to save her kin from death during the time of slavery. The analysis of this novel will present examples of labeling, the rejection of labeling, and real life commentary as it In Octavia Butler’s novel there appears a parallel between the label …show more content…

This rejection of roles has been documented in several novels, including Octavia Butler’s Kindred. Kindred exhibits three types of role denial as they pertain to race in both the novel and reality: denial of a label placed by society, denial of label contradictory of what is desired, and denial of a label given by your own community. All three ways are still present today as the fight to stop human categorization continues due to its negative impact on the citizens, communities, and country as a whole. The end of this will be through continuation of denying the labels that are wrongfully placed on us in order to discourage future labeling, and every person should take the liberty to stop categorizing people and refute the labels placed on them to make this country accepting of all

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