Kindred Character Analysis

This shows how he feels about the slaves and doesn't care what happens to them. However, it doesn’t seem that he was born this way, based on what we can see in the beginning of the book, Rufus was kind and liked Dana. But as he grew up around his father, who was the owner of the slaves, his father could have taught him that he is “better” than them. This could prove how Rufus gained this feeling of power from his father, Tom. In conclusion, Octavia Butler's novel "Kindred" offers a stark portrayal of the dynamics of power and control, highlighting the devastating effects on both the oppressed and the oppressor.

In one area of the chapter, Shelby mentions that, “Tom is an uncommon fellow; he is certainly worth that sum anywhere,—steady, honest, capable, manages my whole farm like a clock.” (Uncle Toms Cabin). Mr. Shelby also continues on to praise the fact that Tom is a devoted Christian, and that is why he can be trusted. What image that is typically portrayed in slavery is nothing but negative, and sometimes truly disturbing at times type of aspects. It is extremely odd that Mr. Shelby displays a sense of trust, and devotion to a slave. Many imagine that slave owners were terrible, violent, and cruel people. Yet oddly enough, Mr. Shelby doesn’t come off that way whatsoever.

People today still question about how any slave had the motivation to keep doing the normal habits that they had. As, children slaves aren’t allowed to read, write,or even talk correctly. How is it that some have the drive to go behind their owner’s back to do some of these things? Butler, explains this drive by giving us the main character of the book named Dana in her novel, Kindred.

The Family Crucible is a story about the Brice family who is recommended by Claudia’s psychiatrist to go to family therapy due to the fact that she has not been making progress in individual sessions. The Brice family comes to meet with Dr. Carl Whitaker and Dr. Augustus Napier, who co-facilitate family therapy throughout the story. The family is made up of five people: Claudia, the IP; Carolyn, mother; Laura, the sister; Don, the brother; and David, the father. The family is coming into therapy because there have been mounting concerns about Claudia and her behavior—acting out, staying out late, some fairly typical teenage stuff.

The book follows Dana who is thrown back in time to live in a plantation during the height of slavery. The story in part explores slavery through the eye of an observer. Dana and even Kevin may have been living in the past, but they were not active members. Initially, they were just strangers who seemed to have just landed in to an ongoing play. As Dana puts it, they "were observers watching a show. We were watching history happen around us. And we were actors." (Page 98). The author creates a scenario where a woman from modern times finds herself thrust into slavery by account of her being in a period where blacks could never be anything else but slaves. The author draws a picture of two parallel times. From this parallel setting based

Octavia E. Butler uses her novel Kindred, to communicate how influential one’s environment can be in shaping their thoughts and actions. One’s environment is composed of their conditions and surroundings, and the most significant of these is language. The society in which Dana lives differs greatly from Rufus’s society; therefore, the way these characters use and view language differ. Language dictates the way one thinks, and whether or not they think critically. How one thinks is directly related to how one perceives the world and one’s perception is their reality. Even Dana and Kevin, who live in the same time period, perceive the world differently. They may live in the same time period, but their realities differ because of who they are, a black woman and a white man. Butler makes Dana and Rufus’s impact on one another central to story. Rufus sometimes deviates from the societal norms of his time because his environment has been influenced by Dana, who is also affected by her new surroundings. She begins to lose the ability to stand up for herself. Ultimately, however, Rufus does not change his prejudice, bigotry way of thinking, and Dana does not allow herself to succumb to complacency. Butler consciously made these decisions; she wants readers to recognize that while these characters influence one another, they do not do so enough to overpower the more significant aspects of their respective environments, such as language. One’s environment determines how much

Authors of fiction often write about the human condition as a way to connect with a broad range of readers. Unlike factual textbooks, fiction gives characters feeling and emotion, allowing us to see the story behind the basic details. In many cases, readers gain a new perspective on a period of time by examining a fiction novel. In Kindred, by Octavia Butler, the near death experiences of Rufus Weylin transports a 20th century African American woman named Dana to the ante bellum South to experience exactly what it’s like to be a slave. Through her day-to-day life on the Weylin plantation, the reader begins to understand just how complex slavery is and how it affects both the slaves and the plantation owners; thus, giving new

Tom Weylin’s sexual assaults on his female slave Tess and selling out her children reflects the miseries of the helpless blacks at the hands of the white population. Though Tess has lost her children, yet she has to comply with the orders and wishes of her white master. (The Fight, X) In addition, Weylin’s consistent whipping on Dana, Tess and Alice also reveals the existence of butchery and domestic violence by the whites. Particularly stripping of the Black women and beating them brutally serve as the black mar on the very face of the white community. (The Fight, XIII) History is also replete with the examples of butchery and cruelties inflicted upon the Black slaves in the USA, northern and central Europe, Russia, Turkey (the Ottoman Empire) and other parts of the world, where sexual exploitations, whipping and torture were the orders of the day. Hence, Butler has portrayed the exact picture of the situation prevailed in the olden past in her novel.

In Kindred I choose Rufus and how he changes from beginning to end of novel. In the beginning Rufus is just a little boy who is frustrated with his mean father. He reacts in dangerously immature ways if he doesn't get his way like, when he set a fire. But as Rufus gets older he turns even more into a jerk and violent. This is because of how he was raised.

Octavia Butler displays her brilliance as a writer by creating multiple, complex characters in the novel Kindred, characters who epitomize real people with hardships, passions, and transformations that reflect the strict regulations placed upon the Southern society in the early nineteenth century. Dana faces many hardships from the moment Butler shifts her back one-hundred and sixty-one years to a time of slavery where she is stripped of her freedom. Rufus’s passion for Alice transitions into a fog, where he is unable to distinguish between love and control. On the other hand, Butler gives Tom Weylin a depth that reflects his actions and directly relates them to his experiences. Together all three characters’ ideas come to a screaming halt, when they are placed alongside each other and without a choice lives in a time of slavery.

Lastly, violence in Kindred was used to show how the treatment of slaves was used to dehumanize and put down blacks. In a society where a slave owner had absolute power over its “property”, the importance of a slave’s life was greatly disregarded. Butler used this notion and violence to show how in the eyes of whites, slaves were subhuman. Thusly, they had no rights, and received extremely unlucky treatment. When traveling to the 1800’s as a black women, Dana stated that in that time “there was no shame in raping a black woman,

Slavery used to be a big issue in the past, with the way they were mistreated. The number of slaves was so large and there did not seem to be an end for slavery in sight. In the book Kindred by Octavia E. Butler, Octavia gives some insight into how hard their lives were and how unfairly they were treated. In the book Kindred by Octavia E. Butler, Rufus Weylin is an unsympathetic character. This is proven by his selfishness, how aggressive he is, and how power hungry he is. Rufus Weylin is a complicated character that readers will find themselves trying to figure out.

This story shows us what these families when through. Mixed race people had no voice or place at this time in society. The story tells of Thomas Jefferson having relations with his slaves and fathering children. They had no virtue for human beings back then. They separated the child from their mothers and husbands from their wives. Republican virtue was the government's effectiveness to have control. They were able to use the laws to what they wanted. The miscegenation laws state that a white man was not able to marry a slave. Clotel’s sister was able to pass as white lady and marry her white master.

Rufus Weylin; a character first perceived as a young, curious and innocent boy, turns in to an over-obsessive and miserable tyrant. In Octavia Butler 's novel _Kindred_, the book revolves around the horrors of slavery in the United States in the early eighteen hundreds. White characters are given absolute power and control over black characters, and treat them like animals, making them live a long life of misery and unhappiness. As _Kindred_ unfolds, it becomes clear that Rufus turns in to a stereotypical slave owner and abuser. With every trip that Dana makes back to Rufus, there is a clear distinction of changes in his personality. He becomes more evil, over-obsessive and cruel as he gets older. In fact, he becomes very much like his

To begin with, Rufus was born and brought in the Antebellum South, which was filled with horrible institutions like slavery and the ideas that came with it. Additionally, as Rufus grew up he saw slaves being treated horribly and later through Dana and other slave's experiences, the reader begins to understand just how complex slavery is and how it affects both the slaves and the plantation owners. Moreover, the readers begin to understand that the slaveowners did not see slaves as anything but property; as a result, compassion for human suffering was non-existent. Rufus saw this as he was growing up and applied this by showing no compassion toward many slaves and treating them terribly. Furthermore, Rufus's father, Tom Weylin, influenced Rufus a lot by his behavior and attitude. Weylin was a brutal slave master and he was harsh with Rufus several times like when he whipped him when he set the stable on fire. Also, Weylin sold many of his slaves and the worst thing that he did was that he whipped many slaves and had slaves as his bedmates. Additionally, Rufus saw his mom, Margaret Weylin, shouting at slaves and assigning them work. Moreover, Rufus did a few good things like after Alice died, "early one morning a few days later, he left for Easton Point where he could catch a steamboat to Baltimore" (Butler, 253) to get his children. Also, after he brought the children, Joe came up to Dana