Analysis Of Kindred

Many people often wonder what would it be like to time travel. Would it be fun or scary? Would they change the past and future or keep it the same? Would it change them as a person or break them? For Dana, one of the main characters of Kindred, she went through all of that. Kindred by Octavia E. Butler is about Dana, an African-American woman, who travels back to the antebellum South to preserve her existence in the present. When she goes into the past, she meets her ancestor Rufus, a white slave owner, and she tries to stop him from becoming a racist. Dana's efforts to make her ancestor change his ways fail because he becomes dangerous and racist. This results in Dana killing her ancestor, but this action does not affect her presence in

After the 5 years of being apart from Dana, Kevin finally gets the letter that Dana has come back to get him. He was happy to find Dana on the Weylin's Farm and he tries to get away with her so they can leave the negative experiences behind them. When they try to get away, Rufus comes with a gun and tries to force Kevin into giving up Dana, so he could take her as a slave. Kevin didn't want to give up without a fight so he begins to become possessive of Dana. “Kevin stared at him. Until Rufus began to look uncomfortable instead of indignant.” (Kindred,185). Kevin changes from kind to possessive because he sees the way Rufus looks at Dana the same way he looks at Alice. Kevin understands that Rufus would do anything to keep Dana with him, so he must be possessive in order to keep Rufus in check. When Kevin comes back to the present, he does not come back the same. He has a Southern accent and he doesn't seem to remember how to use technology. He seems to be angry with himself because he struggles to get back into the present. When Dana tries to help him ease his way back into the present, he snaps and glares as at her which is something he had never done to Dana. “He stopped, glaring at me... The expression on his face was like... something I was used to seeing on Tom Weylin” (Kindred,194). In the five years, Kevin was in the antebellum south, he could have adopted the ways of the racist slave owners as he did the southern accent. Kevin is already showing their racist ways when he glares at Dana when she tries to help him, His action was like a white person to a black person in the Antebellum South. The experience negatively impacts Dana and Kevin because Kevin is not the same and kind man he was when Dana married him. Kevin comes back to the present as a stranger living with Dana because she doesn't