Kindred

Pedro Brand
Ethnic Studies 121
Ms. Prado
04/05/12

                                    Reading Response for Kindred

In the novel Kindred by Octavia Butler, Dana is a modern black woman who is married to a white man named Kevin. Dana who lives in 1976 while she was at her house, faints and travels back into the 1815 where she meets Rufus a young white boy that’s drowning. Dana runs and saves Rufus from drowning, after she saves Rufus she suddenly feels dizzy and faints again, and finds out that she back home in 1976. Throughout the novel Dana travels back to 1815 every time Rufus is in trouble, Dana realizes that she travels back only to save Rufus from danger. But every time she goes back several years have passed. Dana realizes that being in the 1800’s she has to accommodate to the way of living of that time which is her to become a slave. Dana goes through several punishments like, slap in the face, whipped because back in 1815 it is known that Black people aren’t smart, and they can’t outsmart a white person. As Rufus grows he eventually wants to rape Alice, another black salve. Dana learns that Alice is an important link to her and has to try to help Alice escape without Rufus harming Alice. Eventually Dana is able to get back home and saves herself from the nightmare of slavery that Rufus was putting her into, by actually killing Rufus. Octavia Butler shows in this novel the nightmare of racism that Dana has to go through, a dark period where a black person was denied of their rights as human, and were forced to serve the white community.
To begin, racism is another word for ignorance, or fear, which is what back in the 1800’s white people would implement to the black people, in order to make them become a slave. The thoughts of a black person was that they are dumb, and uneducated and didn’t understand anything and were good to serve, and we can pretty much see this throughout the whole novel of Kindred. In the novel we see the example of racism... [continues]

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