Kindred

Kindred

Introduction

The novel Kindred is penned down by a great literary African-American novelist and writer Octavia Butler. This master piece of Butler encompasses the most key problems and issues faced by the community of African American. This novel puts the lights on the worst condition of the African American slaves and heatedly condemns the internal slavery and violence imposed and inflicted upon the division of Black in the society of America. Butler also talks about the hatred and atrocities exercises upon Black on the grounds of ethnic and racial discrimination dominating in the society. Moreover, he observes the communication gap among family members and spouses, which greatly contributes to the misery of black community on greater extent. The corrupting influence of power and racial discrimination becomes the reason to degrade the entire nation.

Discussion

In this novel, the prologue is very mysterious as the injuries of Dana give the idea of violence, specifically against the Black woman. The police presume that her case considered as the internal or domestic violence, as these violence usually common. They were all ready to punish the man who did wrong with Dana. The internal or domestic violence would become a key theme in the entire novel “Kindred”. The prologue of the novel portrays the idea that domestic violence is punishable, but it was soon found by Dana that violence does not only exist, but the victim usually get blamed for that violence.

The novel revolves around the corruption of power and Rufus is the key embodiment for this feature. When we first discover Rufus in the novel, he is a young boy. But we observe that his gender and race give him power at that stage of life. In the starting of the writing piece, he was humane and kind hearted person but eventually his end made him a brutal man. It has been observed that good instincts of Rufus still does not make him a perfect match for the power he was assigned. When he became the slave owner, he started believing that he has gained the right to control the lives of other (Gates & Henry, 2004). This small tyrant became worst for the Black slaves and began treating Nigel as an inferior and abusing Alice. Even his son did not leave any occasion to use the corrupt version of the power. It is essential to notice that we never discovered Rufus as a child; therefore, we cannot find any inherited background of the cruel nature that his son adopted. Whereas, we found him growing worse by a cruel master that uses the violence to keep a tyrant image and whips slaves for minor mistakes.

Undoubtedly, the novel is chiefly about the slavery, and racism. The author emphasizes over the deadly constancy of race as a key issue in the life of Dana and also in the lives of African Americans on the plantation of Rufus (Butler, 1979). It has been observed in Maryland that the skin tone of Dana was the key issue which ...