Entry #10 Butler, Octavia"Kindred"

Brian Gerker
ETHN 101
Reading Journal Entry #10
10-1-2007

Butler, Octavia E. “Kindred”

In “Kindred,” the thesis, or main point seems to be about power and privileges that occurred during the time of slavery. “Kindred” shows that power can turn even initially good people into brutal people. Also, there are many encounters of racial differences within the novel, many of which refer back to power and social order.
To summarize “Kindred,” it would be best to start at the beginning. Dana is a black woman married to a white man from the 1970’s. She comes to be the sort of guardian of Rufus from the 1800’s, as Dana flashes back in time. On her first account going back in time, Dana saves Rufus from a river where he is drowning. Immediately following the rescue she is held at gun point by Rufus’s father. On another account, Rufus burns the curtain in his room, where after she goes to Alice’s home where Alices parents are found and beaten, and Dana is also beaten. The next time she goes back in time she takes Kevin with her, when Rufus breaks his leg. Dana and Kevin stay on the plantation for several days and when Dana has been teaching a slave to read, she is found and whipped for it. The next time she travels back, Rufus is getting beaten by Isaac, Alices husband. Dana gets Isaac to let Rufus go. From here, Rufus buys Alice because he loves her. Later Dana meets up with Kevin again because Weylin sent letters to him. When the two try to escape, Rufus shoots his gun at them, but they safely get back to the 1970’s. Later, Dana goes back again to the plantation and is forced into slavery by Rufus because his father died and she couldn’t save him from his heart attack. During her time as a slave, Alice has her baby, Danas ancestor. Also, Rufus sells off several slaves and has become a power crazy plantation owner. After a slave was moving in on Dana, Rufus got mad and sold the slave and hurt Dana so she cut herself so she would return home. When Dana returns a final time, Rufus has “sold” Alice’s children which leads to her killing herself. Later, as Rufus used to rape the women slaves, he tries to rape Dana, but she wouldn’t have it and stabbed Rufus, killing him, and returning herself back home, but with a terribly crushed arm. After she returns home she talks with Kevin to decide what to do, and they dicide not to tell anyone about the events that happened to them, because people would think thy were insane.
In “Kindred,” Dana goes to the plantation many times, and every time she fears for her life. This fear that strikes Dana is a result from the white men abusing their power as plantation owners. One big example is of Rufus. After his father dies, he inherits the plantation and uses his power to force Dana to work as a slave. Rufus is very brutal using whippings and selling slaves because he was thought himself superior to those who worked for him. He also used them for sex slaves and raped them. This shows how whites created differences in race. It shows that white men believed they were better than blacks and therefore used them for their own personal gain. This abuse of power is also reflected in Takaki’s “The ‘Giddy Multitude,’” as well as Ethnic Notions and Johnson’s “Privilege Oppression and Difference.” These all have examples of how whites abused their power and gained privileges over all other peoples.
After reading the book, I really felt bad for Dana. It did not seem fair what she had to go through. She was just randomly taken from her home in the 1970’s where she was a free women and had privileges and rights and thrown into a world of work and torture. “Kindred” is a very important novel to recognize, especially from how it displays the abuses of slavery and how white men created racial differences.