[Name]

[Instructor Name]

[Course Title]

[Date]

KINDRED

Introduction

Kindred is one of those rare books that have concentrated on the topic of scientific fiction and slavery. The author of this book, Octavia Butler, has taken the whole book in the narrative of the first person and has made this book a unique case among all the books that have been written on the said topic. According to Butler, she got such a unique idea when she heard a male class fellow at Pasadena City College, who was complaining that his parents had always held him back & that he had a strong desire to finish the elderly generations of Americans, with African ancestors. Octavia Butler had developed a desire to develop a story in her response to that boy, a story that would demonstrate the history of Afro-Americans in a instinctive manner. In her novel, Octavia Butler has attempted to describe the slaves as individual persons, rather than dividing them into different casts. She has also attempted to present the people holding slaves with fairness, describing the cruelty from them as well as the humanity of such slaveholders.

In this novel, Butler has tried to discuss the problem of resistance in the context of history and culture. She has used the character of Dana to prove her point and point out the problem of resistance from the black slaves by describing the way Dana visits the time of the 18th century, when her ancestors were among the slaves.

A discussion of the story

Octavia Butler has started the story by describing the time when Dana & Kevin were shifting from old home into their new home in the suburban Los Angeles in the year 1976, during that time all of a sudden Dana disappears from the scene for a short period of time. She has to spend some time in an unknown place, where she has to save a little boy from being drowned, but the father of that boy aims a gun at her.  She feels lost & suddenly, she finds herself back at her apartment but she is covered with mud. Her husband had witnessed that Dana vanished from the scene and then she had reappeared in the room, yet, he cannot believe that Dana has managed to travel somewhere else. (Friend 1982, pp.50)

Then there is another incident of the same type with Dana, which gives her a chance to understand the whole situation in a better way.  This time disappears from home in California and appears again at the same place with the same boy, whom she had rescued from the drowning, the boy was few years older by then, and this time around, he was facing danger of being hurt from a fire. She finds out that she is in Maryland and it is the 18th century, i.e. year 1815, her skin color shows that she is among one of the slaves and she does the papers to declare herself as free person.(Crossley 1988 pp. 09)

At that time, she realizes that this boy, whose name ...