Experiencing Slavery Through Octavia Butlers Kindred Essay -- Octavia

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 meaning and an added sense of realism to this 19th 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 lead her in the right direction. As he does this, she wonders whether he is setting a trap for her. She says, â€Å"I realized suddenly how easy it would be for him to betray me—to open the door and run away or shout an alarm† (32). In addition to illustrating a lack of trust for whites, this scene also depi... ...up call. Work Cited Butler, Octavia. Kindred. Boston: Beacon Press, 1979. Hairston, Andrea. â€Å"Octavia Butler – Praise Song to a Prophetic Artist.† Daughters of Earth: Feminist Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century. Middeltown: Wesleyan University Press, 2006. Works Consulted Alaimo, Stacey. â€Å"’Skin Dreaming': the Bodily Transgerssions of Fielding Burke, Octavia Butler, and Linda Hogan.† Ecofeminist Literary Criticism. Chicago: University of Illinois Press,1998. Francis Consuela, ed. Conversations with Octavia Butler. Jackson: University Press Mississippi, 2010. Govan, Sandra Y. â€Å"Homage to Tradition: Octavia Butler Renovates the Historical Novel† Melus 13 Nos. 1-2 (spring-summer 1986): 79-96 Mitchell, Angelyn. â€Å"Not Enough of the Past: Feminist Revisions of Slavery in Octavia E. Butler’s â€Å"Kindred.†Ã¢â‚¬  Melus, Vol 26, No #, 2001