Experiencing Slavery Through Octavia Butlers Kindred Essay -- Octavia

Authors of fiction much bring through about the human condition as a way to interrelate with a broad range of readers. Unlike factual textbooks, fiction gives characters tactility and emotion, allowing us to see the story behind the basic details. In some cases, readers gain a rude(a) perspective on a completion of time by examining a fiction novel. In Kindred, by Octavia Butler, the estimable death experiences of Rufus Weylin transports a 20th century African American char named Dana to the ante bellum South to experience exactly what its like to be a slave. Through her day-to-day life on the Weylin plantation, the reader begins to empathise just how complex slavery is and how it affects both the slaves and the plantation owners thus, giving new meaning and an added sense of realism to this nineteenth century practice of exploitation. On the surface, slavery was a system in which Africans were bought and sold as property. However, by reading Kindred, the reader begins to realize that the system was much more complex. In other words, both plantation owners and slaves focused on retaining their property or staying alive, respectively. Butler illustrates this throughout the text. Seen as inferior and subhuman by whites, slaves were often only able to trust and rely on each other. When Dana is transported to the 19th century, she realizes her need to escape. However, the only way she can do this is by allowing Rufus to last her in the right direction. As he does this, she wonders whether he is setting a trap for her. She says, I realized suddenly how easy it would be for him to fail meto open the door and run away or shout an misgiving (32). In addition to illustrating a lack of trust for whites, this scene besides depi... ...up call. Work CitedButler, Octavia. Kindred. Boston Beacon Press, 1979.Hairston, Andrea. Octavia Butler Praise Song to a Prophetic Artist. Daughters of Earth Feminist Science Fiction in the twentieth Century. Middeltown Wesleyan University Press, 2006.Works ConsultedAlaimo, Stacey. Skin Dreaming the Bodily Transgerssions of Fielding Burke, Octavia Butler, and Linda Hogan. Ecofeminist Literary Criticism. sugar University of Illinois Press,1998.Francis Consuela, ed. Conversations with Octavia Butler. Jackson University Press Mississippi, 2010.Govan, Sandra Y. Homage to Tradition Octavia Butler Renovates the Historical fabrication Melus 13 Nos. 1-2 (spring-summer 1986) 79-96Mitchell, Angelyn. Not Enough of the Past Feminist Revisions of Slavery in Octavia E. Butlers Kindred. Melus, Vol 26, No , 2001