English Lit. Annalysis

Stacia Sawyer

English 102, Spring 2007

March 11, 2007

Reading response # 7

Throughout the novel “Kindred” the reader is witness to Dana’s turbulent journeys’ into the nineteenth century. Each trip ultimately ends when she feels that there is an inanimate fear for her life, gradually her fears begin to acclimate to the brutality that is an acceptable part of that era. With each leap into the past Dana is exposed to what it means to be a black female slave, to have no value, no worth. She becomes something that she most likely never imagined possible, comfortable in a world where she allows others to abuse and demean her. Octavia Butler ties Dana’s gradual adaptation to slavery into the novel’s theme that in reality how easy it is for some to become comfortable (adapt) to abusive situations, to begin to understand or rationalize the situation, ultimately skewing our perception of what is dangerous both to our life a well as to our emotional well being.

During Dana’s first visit to Rufus at the river she had brought with her a strong and healthy sense of self worth seen by her ability to take charge and direct Rufus’s chaotic mother as she tries to resuscitate him after his drowning spell, something that seems to diminish as the book unravels. Her departure is marked only when Rufus’s father places the barrel of shot gun in her face, where at that moment Dana questions the safety of her life. A healthy response to the given situation, something that Dana loses with each trip to the plantation.

We next encounter Rufus as he attempts to set fire to the family mansion. Dana arrives to save the boys life once again but she seems to have one more thing to do; to understand what her role is to become in that house hold. She learns that she is viewed as nothing more than a “nigger”, someone’s property, but not a human being. She is also witness to unbearable acts of violence against those “like” her, yet another reinforcement that she is of no worth or value. She is only aware of her fear of death after she has encountered a patroller who begins to beat her, tearing her blouse and knocking her across the face. She is returned home, to safety, to a place where she knows herself, but the process of breaking down of her ideals and independence has begun.

She returns to Rufus next when he has fallen, this trip however brings her into the home and life of Rufus’s parents where they openly treat her as a typical slave, and in order to survive she begins to play along….it doesn’t take long for her distant reality in 1976 to become deluded by the reality she momentarily lives in the 1800’s. She endures much during her stay and becomes detached from the prisoner she has become, the acts of violence