write a paper about analyzing the book called Kinderd please follow the files that I show to you. This paper should basical
write a paper about analyzing the book called Kinderd
please follow the files that I show to you.
This paper should basically on the text and just analysising what you're reading in this novel.
I give you my presentation by powerprint, there has a topic that I show.
In this presentation I write some chapters summary but this paper should include the whole text.
Slavery is my topic. and I said "Butler, through her white characters, shows not only how easily slaves are made, but also how easily slaveholders are made." I hope you write the paper to encompass this sentence.
I will give you some summary for this novel.
You can reference these files but it will be your words. And it is better for you to read this novel because you can quote some sentences in the pape
The River On her twenty-sixth birthday, Dana, the protagonist of Kindred, is overcome by nausea and finds herself on the bank of a river. When she sees a young boy drowning in the river, she jumps in and saves him. She is shocked when the boy's father points a gun at her head; it is clear that he is suspicious of Dana, a young black woman. Suddenly, she finds herself back in her living room. Although she was by the river for minutes, she has been away from home for only a few seconds.
Traumatized by the event, she calms down and begins to recover her wits. Suddenly she finds herself next to the same boy, named Rufus, in a burning bedroom. As she saves him again, Dana realizes that Rufus is calling her when his life is in danger. She discovers that the year is 1815, and although he is a white, Southern slave-owner, he is the future father of the first woman listed in her family records—Hagar Weylin. The woman listed as Hagar's mother, Alice Greenwood, is a free black child and Rufus' friend. Dana realizes that she has just saved the life of her ancestor.
Dana decides to visit Alice, but ends up watching as patrollers drag Alice's father out and whip him. He is a slave, and has come to visit his family without permission. A patroller grabs Dana and tries to rape her. She hits him and returns to her life in 1976. When she shares her experiences with her husband, Kevin, he has a hard time believing her. He realizes that Dana can only come back to the present when her life is in danger.
The Fall The next time that she begins to disappear, Kevin is pulled back in time too. They arrive in a clearing next to Rufus, now twelve years of age, who has a broken leg. Rufus' father, Tom Weylin, arrives. Kevin—a white man—invents a cover story to explain their presence, asserting that Dana is a literate slave whose job is to help him with his writing. Rufus insists on having Dana by his side in the sickroom, which leads to tension with his unstable mother, Margaret.
Dana makes friends with the other slaves and Tom hires Kevin to teach his son. They settle into a routine, until Dana becomes uncomfortable with how easy it is. She realizes that slavery is a mental degradation, not just a physical one. When Tom discovers her teaching slave children to read, he knocks her to the ground and beats her. Before Kevin can reach her, she is returned to 1976.
The Fight After eight days Dana is dragged back to a clearing where Rufus is fighting for his life. He has attempted to rape Alice Greenwood, and her husband Isaac is beating him to death. When Dana intervenes, Isaac and Alice flee the scene. She and Rufus return to the house—a large, wealthy Maryland plantation—and she learns that Kevin has been gone for two years, and Margaret has left. Dana nurses Rufus back to health, and he mails a letter to Kevin for her.
Alice and Isaac are caught, and his ears are cut off before he is sold. Rufus buys Alice and brings her home near death. Dana nurses her back to health. There is still no word from Kevin, and Dana sends more letters. Rufus gives Dana a horrible ultimatum—either she makes Alice consent to having sex with him, or he will have her beaten into submission. Alice, weary and terrified, agrees.
Discovering that Rufus never sent any of her letters to Kevin, Dana escapes, but is caught and whipped. Tom sends for Kevin, and he arrives as Dana reaches her breaking point. Riding away, Rufus shoots at them, and they are dragged back to the present.
The Storm Back in 1976, Kevin finds it impossible to adjust. Dana finds herself pulled back again. Rufus is very ill. Dana helps him recover, but is unable to help Tom when he collapses with a heart attack. Blaming her, Rufus sends her into the fields, and then pulls her back out to help his mother, now a laudanum addict.
Alice and Rufus have a child, Joe. She teaches Joe to read, and Rufus begins to love his son. Alice has a daughter, Hagar—Dana's ancestor. Dana agrees to help Alice escape as soon as Hagar is old enough. When Rufus sells a slave as a punishment for being too friendly with Dana she tries to stop him, but he punches her in the face. She slits her wrists and awakes in 1976.
The Rope Fifteen days later, on the Fourth of July holiday, Dana is pulled back for the last time. She finds Rufus on the brink of suicide because Alice is dead. As a punishment for trying to run, Rufus moved their children to Baltimore, and told Alice that he'd sold them. Despairing, she took her own life.
After the funeral, tension mounts between Dana and Rufus, culminating in a confrontation in which he tries to rape her. She stabs him, and he dies clutching her. She is pulled back to the present with her arm crushed in the wall. Everything below her elbow—where Rufus grabbed her—is pulverized.
Epilogue Dana recovers; she and Kevin discover that Weylin plantation was burnt to the ground the night Dana killed Rufus, and his death was attributed to the fire. The slaves were all sold. They realize that the murder was covered up, and accept that they will never know the rest.
Butler’s portrayal of the two main characters, Dana and Rufus, conveys many of the novel’s complex themes. The depth of the characterizations is contingent upon the narrative technique: By making Dana the first-person narrator, Butler makes readers not only understand but also empathize with her psychological and physical dilemmas as she lives in the slavery era. Moreover, the empathy that Dana has for the slaves marks her narration, enhancing readers’ knowledge of the brutality they suffered.
One of Kindred’s central themes is the role of environment in shaping people’s attitudes and personalities. Moreover, Butler makes clear her belief that environment and training shape one’s self-image and, thus, one’s feelings toward one’s own and others’ power or powerlessness. Butler’s principal concern regarding these themes is the development and acceptance of racism. Similar to the main plot of Mark Twain’s The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson(1894), these themes are enacted in Rufus’s development, for Dana realizes that from childhood Rufus is being steadily trained to assume both his position as master and the related racist attitudes and behaviors. Kevin sums up this theme when he discusses Dana’s hopes to prevent Rufus from becoming more racist as he grows up:After all, his environment will be influencing him every day you’re gone. And from what I’ve heard, it’s common in this time for the master’s children to be on nearly equal terms with the slaves. But maturity is supposed to put both in their “places.”
Another central theme is the relation of both race and gender roles to privilege and power. This theme is especially striking when one compares Rufus’s and Kevin’s experiences with Dana’s and Alice’s. Rufus asserts more and more boldly that racial superiority and abuse of African Americans, including his sexual abuse of Alice, are a part of his power and privilege as a white man. In comparison, Kevin’s initial belief that it would be fun to live during the slavery era shows the racial naïveté and insensitivity afforded by his position as a white man who has lived free from oppression. In contrast, Butler portrays the sexism, sexual exploitation, and abuse that are symbolized especially by Alice’s treatment at the hands of Rufus. Factors of race and gender are central to the oppression and exploitation Dana experiences, again mostly at the hands of Rufus.
Human Condition As Dana soon discovers, the reality of slavery is even more disturbing than its portrayal in books, movies, and television programs. Before her journey into the past, Dana called the temp agency where she worked a "slave market," even though "the people who ran it couldn't have cared less whether or not you showed up to do the work they offered."
This turns out to be an ironic contrast to life at the Weylin plantation, where a slave who visits his wife without his master's permission is brutally whipped. Perhaps a more painful realization for Dana is how this cruel treatment oppresses the mind. "Slavery of any kind fostered strange relationships," she notes, for all the slaves feel the same strange combination of fear, contempt, and affection toward Rufus that she does.
At first she has difficulty comprehending Sarah's patience with a master who has sold off three of her children. Likewise, she observes that Isaac Greenwood "was like Sarah, holding himself back, not killing in spite of anger I could only imagine. A lifetime of conditioning could be overcome, but not easily."
"After being beaten following her attempt to run away, however, Dana is tormented by doubts about her own resistance: "Why was I so frightened now—frightened sick at the thought that sooner or later, I would have to run again? … I tried to get away from my thoughts, but they still came. See how easily slaves are made? they said."
In the end, however, Dana realizes that she cannot bring herself to accept slavery, even to a man who would not physically hurt her. "A slave was a slave. Anything could be done to her," Dana thinks as she sinks the knife into Rufus' side.
Choices and Consequences The whole reason behind Dana's travels into the past is survival. Dana finds herself driven to save Rufus not just to ensure his existence but also that of her whole family. Despite her modern education, Dana doubts that she has the strength and endurance that her ancestors had: "To survive, my ancestors had to put up with more than I ever could," she tells Kevin.
On her second trip to the past, her squeamishness keeps her from defending herself from a patroller. The next time, however, she is ready to maim to escape: "I could do it now. I could do anything." Nevertheless, she finds it ironic that her job is to protect a white man: "I was the worst possible guardian for him—a black to watch over him in a society that considered blacks subhuman, a woman to watch over him in a society that considered women perennial children."
Despite her doubts, she manages to save Rufus on several different occasions, and learns more about survival in the process. As she listens to the field hands talking in the cookhouse and observes the other house slaves, she gains information: "Without knowing it, they prepared me to survive."
The drive for survival is very strong, and for slaves this means making many painful choices. "Mama said she'd rather be dead than be a slave," Alice recalls, but Dana disagrees: "Better to stay alive.… At least while there's a chance to get free." Because she thinks she will have a better chance of survival if she befriends the Weylins, she accepts the role of slave during her stay on the plantation. As long as this is her choice and she still has some semblance of control over her life, she finds she can endure more than she ever anticipated.
Accepting this role, however, means that Dana must make some very painful choices. For instance, she agrees to convince Alice to sleep with Rufus willingly because she does not want to see her suffer another beating. She is a quiet and compliant worker, even though this makes the other slaves look at her suspiciously. As she explains to Sam, the field hands "aren't the only ones who have to do things they don't like to stay alive and whole." It is only when Rufus tries to take away the final bit of control she has—control over her body—that Dana kills him.
Appearances and Reality The strange nature of their time travels causes Dana and Kevin to examine how much their perceptions truly reflect reality. When Dana returns from her first visit, Kevin has difficulty accepting her explanation of where she has been. Yet he has no alternate explanation for her sudden disappearance. "I know what I saw, and what I did—my facts," Dana tells him. "They're no crazier than yours."
After Dana's second trip, however, Kevin admits, "I wouldn't dare act as though I didn't believe. After all, when you vanish from here, you must go someplace." That he finally gets proof when he accompanies Dana on one of these trips does not lessen his point: to communicate with others, sometimes you must accept their perceptions of reality—no matter how strange—as valid.
While Dana and Kevin are living together in the past, they discover another aspect of the connection between appearances and reality: sometimes when you fake an appearance, it begins to feel like reality. At first, Dana is only "pretending" to play the part of a slave, one who sleeps with her master because she has no choice. Although she knows in her heart that she and Kevin are married equals, she nevertheless feels strange when she sneaks in his room: "I felt almost as though I really was doing something shameful, happily playing whore for my supposed owner."
Later she realizes that she cannot continue to be just a modern observer playing the "role" of slave. She becomes involved: she quietly teaches Nigel to read, befriends Carrie and Alice, and plans her escape after being beaten. In the end she cannot fully accept the reality of life as a slave, however, and leaves the past by killing Rufus.
Difference As a modern woman living in the past, Dana is different in experience and perspective from everyone around her. She is bound to feel alienated because she is so out of place. Ironically, however, it may be a shared sense of alienation that attracts her to others. When she wonders why she is drawn into the past to save Rufus, for instance, she thinks that their blood relationship does not quite explain it: "What we had was something new, something that didn't even have a name. Some matching strangeness in us that may or may not have come from being related."
Her relationship with Kevin is based on a similar sense of shared difference. When they first meet, Dana thinks he "was as lonely and out of place as I was." As she gets to know him, she understands that this loneliness makes him "like me—a kindred spirit crazy enough to keep on trying." On the plantation, Dana's closest friends are people who are similarly alienated from the slave community: Carrie because of her muteness, and Alice because of her role as Rufus' mistress.
Returning home does not cure Dana and Kevin of feeling out of place; it takes them a while to readjust to the twentieth century. Again, however, this alienation brings them together: "It was easy for us to be together, knowing we shared experiences no one else would believe."
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Choosing the Kinderd novel.
It’d better to be half of four pages not including the reference page.
I hope you can do a right way for managing site.
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Edana (Dana) Franklin
Edana (Dana) Franklin, the protagonist and narrator. A newly published author, Dana is a twenty-six-year-old black woman who has been married to Kevin Franklin, also an author, for four years. Dana is a modern American woman who is suddenly transported to the antebellum South. Her knowledge of medical practices allows her to help Rufus and some of the slaves.
Kevin Franklin
Kevin Franklin, Dana’s husband. Kevin, a white man, and Dana have a successful and mutually satisfying interracial marriage. When Kevin is transported to the past with Dana, he must pose as her master because no other relationship would be tolerated. This is as problematic for Kevin as it is for Dana.
Rufus Weylin
Rufus Weylin, Dana’s great-great-great-grandfather, a white plantation owner in antebellum Maryland. Rufus, by means Dana never discovers, summons Dana from the present to aid him in the past whenever his life is endangered. Rufus and Dana’s relationship is based on mutual need. Rufus requires Dana’s assistance in order to stay alive, and Dana must safeguard Rufus’ life long enough for him to sire Dana’s great-great-grandmother. Their relationship is brutally unequal, however, as Rufus is a white male slaveowner and Dana is a young black woman whom he enslaves. He resists Dana’s efforts to rid him of his racism.
Tom Weylin
Tom Weylin, Rufus’ father. Tom is a stereotypical white slaveowner. He is unpredictable, taking offense at the slightest infraction of his rules, and is without compassion for his slaves, beating them mercilessly when he deems it necessary. He uses female slaves sexually and discards mistresses when he tires of them. He separates families by selling fathers and children whenever he chooses.
Margaret Weylin
Margaret Weylin, Rufus’ mother. Margaret, who is emotionally unstable, dislikes and is jealous of Dana because of Dana’s relationship with her son.
Alice Greenwood
Alice Greenwood, Dana’s great-great-grandmother. Rufus passionately loves the freedwoman Alice but uses her without regard for her feelings. He rapes her, beats her until she is near death after she attempts to escape with her slave husband, sells her husband, enslaves Alice, and keeps her as his mistress. Dana nurses Alice from the brink of death, helping her to regain memories that fled as a result of the trauma of her capture and her husband’s torture and sale. Alice and Dana, who look much alike, have an ambivalent relationship. Although they aid each other, neither apparently likes the other. Alice forces Dana to confront her role on the plantation and challenges her loyalties to the other slaves. Alice eventually kills herself to be free of Rufus.
Sarah
Sarah, the plantation cook. Sarah, a middle-aged, plump woman, appears to Dana almost as a stereotyped “Mammy,” in that she looks out for the other slaves and fiercely protects the children. Sarah is a multidimensional character, an able and compassionate woman who helps Dana learn the skills she needs to survive on the plantation.
Carrie
Carrie, Sarah’s daughter. All of Sarah’s other children are sold, but Carrie, who is inexplicably mute, is allowed to remain with Sarah as a means of preventing Sarah from attempting to escape.
Nigel
Nigel, a slave child and friend of Rufus in their youth. As an adult, he exerts a slight influence over Rufus. He is Carrie’s husband and the father of her children.
Carrie A mute slave, Carrie is a good friend to Dana. Most people believe that she is mentally impaired because of her handicap, but she is not. Carrie comforts Dana after Tom's death and explains that the slaves are better off under Rufus' ownership; if Rufus were dead, the slaves would be separated from their friends and families. She also comforts Dana when she is derided as being more white than black. Dana appreciates and values her friendship.
Jake Edwards Jake Edwards is one of the overseers hired to manage the field hands. "It was amazing how much misery the man could cause doing the same job Luke had managed to do without hurting anybody," Dana observes. He forces Dana to do laundry by threatening her with a whipping.
Evan Fowler Evan Fowler is the second overseer Dana encounters on the Weylin plantation. At first she believes that he is harmless, but his brutality proves that he is a cruel and unforgiving man.
Edana Franklin See Dana Franklin
Alice Jackson See Alice Greenwood
Isaac Jackson Isaac Jackson is Alice's husband. When he discovers Rufus trying to rape his wife, he beats him, which brings Dana into the past for the fourth time. After the incident, he and Alice attempt to escape. They are captured, however, and Isaac is sold after being beaten and mutilated.
Sam James Sam James is a big, muscular slave who attempts to get Dana to dance with him at Christmas. She warns him not to speak to her after Rufus threatens to sell any slave she might want to "jump the broom" with. After Rufus allows Dana to teach some of the young slave children to read, Sam James asks her to teach his brother and sister as well. When Sam is sold three days later, Dana's anger with Rufus leads her to attempt suicide and return to the present.
Liza Liza is a slave who is sent into the fields after Alice has healed enough from her beating to take her job. Her resentment of Alice—and by extension Dana, who healed Alice—leads her to betray Dana. Alice, Tess, and Carrie perceive this as a betrayal of the slave community, and beat her severely as a warning. "Now she's more scared of us than of Mister Tom," Alice says.
Luke Luke is Nigel's father. Dana meets Luke after Rufus breaks his leg. He is the "driver" of the plantation, a type of black overseer whose job it is to manage the field hands. She learns later that Tom grew tired of his attitude and sold him.
Aunt Mary Aunt Mary's job is to look after the children; unfortunately, she is senile. Yet people are more likely to rely on her knowledge of herbal medicine than on the white doctor.
Nigel Nigel is a slave and Rufus' playmate. As an adult, he becomes a house slave—one with a privileged position. He grows into a big, handsome man like his father, with the same desire for freedom. After an attempt to run away, he is severely whipped.
Nigel has enough influence with Rufus to stand up to the overseer Jake Edwards. After he marries Carrie and starts a family with her, the Weylins feel assured that Nigel will not make another attempt to run away. He still dreams of freedom, however. As he tells Dana, "It's good to have children.… But it's so hard to see them be slaves."
Sarah Sarah is the plantation cook. She is kind and patient with Dana and is fond of Rufus. Nevertheless, she resents him for selling away most of her children. She does not trust whites, for she learned from her first master—the father of her first child—that even promises made in love are "just another lie."
Sarah is outspoken and opinionated. After Luke is sold, however, Sarah appears more cautious. "She had done the safe thing—accepted a life of slavery because she was afraid." Dana comes to appreciate the warnings and wisdom Sarah shares with her.
Tess Tess is a young slave Dana meets on her fourth trip into the past. Dana helps Tess with her work because Tom injured her during a sexual experience. Tess loses her laundry job after Tom discards her, leaving her to the attentions of Jake Edwards. Edwards sends her to the fields so he can keep watch over her. Eventually she is sold. Her experiences exemplify the inhuman conditions slaves face. As Tess says, "You do everything they tell you … and they still treat you like an old dog."
Doctor West Doctor West is the Weylin family doctor. He is "pompous, condescending, and almost as ignorant medically as I was," as Dana describes him. His use of such methods as bleeding and purging, despite his good intentions, is harmful to his patients. Doctor West serves as another reminder to Dana that she is living in a very different age from her own.
Joe Weylin Joe is the oldest surviving child of Alice Greenwood and Rufus Weylin. Initially a sickly child, he is also lively and bright. He is a good student and excels at his lessons. Rufus gradually comes to recognize his son, allowing him to call him "Daddy" after Alice's death.
Margaret Weylin Margaret Weylin is the second wife of Tom Weylin. At first, she is ignorant and mean-spirited. Margaret hates Dana not only because she is an educated black but also because she is jealous that Dana has both Kevin's and Rufus' favor. Dana comes to understand that a great part of Margaret's problem is boredom—she has nothing to occupy her time, and so spends it supervising and criticizing people in order to prove her worth.
After giving birth to stillborn twin boys, Margaret has a mental breakdown and is sent to stay with her sister in Baltimore. Rufus brings her back to the plantation after his father's death and asks Dana to care for her. While Margaret still insists on having things a certain way, she is calmer and introspective. Dana and Margaret eventually become friends.
Analysis of Kindred by Octavia Butler
Pgs.169-237
Sha Hongkun
ENG204
SUMMARY
Pgs.169-237
START
Dana nurses Alice back to health. There is still no word from Kevin, and Dana sends more letters. Rufus gives Dana a horrible ultimatum—either she makes Alice consent to having sex with him, or he will have her beaten into submission. Alice, weary and terrified, agrees.
Discovering that Rufus never sent any of her letters to Kevin, Dana escapes, but is caught and whipped. Tom sends for Kevin, and he arrives as Dana reaches her breaking point. Riding away, Rufus shoots at them, and they are dragged back to the present.
Back in 1976, Kevin finds it impossible to adjust. Dana finds herself pulled back again. Rufus is very ill. Dana helps him recover, but is unable to help Tom when he collapses with a heart attack. Blaming her, Rufus sends her into the fields. Fowler beats her into working until she loses consciousness .
Slavery
Pgs.169-208
The Fight
Butler, through her white characters, shows not only how easily slaves are made, but also how easily slaveholders are made.
For example, Dana realizes that Rufus is conspiring to keep her captive by not sending her letters, and she runs away that night. And than she realizes firsthand how easily fear and helplessness work to make a person accept slavery.
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Dana realizes that Sarah has made her choice, and for her, it is a choice informed not only by fear of physical harm, but by the suffering she has already faced in seeing her own children sold into slavery, seeing her only remaining daughter, Carrie, remain a slave, seeing her grandchildren born into slavery, and her fear for their safety as well.
After Dana fails to escape and is captured and brutally beaten by Tom Weylin, she learns firsthand the consequences of making a choice opposite to Sarah’s. She realizes that “nothing in my education or knowledge of the future had helped me to escape. Yet in a few years an illiterate runaway named Harriet Tubman would make nineteen trips into this country and lead three hundred fugitives to freedom. . . . Why was I so frightened . . . that sooner or later, I would have to run again? . . . See how easily slaves are made?”
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Rufus Weylin can grow up to rape a woman, see her husband sold, and purchase her for himself—but at the same time, feel love for Alice and for Dana.
And Tom Weylin can beat his slaves with horsewhips, separate their families, and rape the women, because the society he lives in not only gives him the power to behave this way, but expects it of him.
The beatings he gives to his slaves, and to Dana, are motivated not so much from sadism as from a calculated need he sees to maintain order and not lose his investments – that is, his slaves.
MOST
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Pgs.209-237
The Storm
Financial Accounting
2013
Despite Dana’s continued attempts to influence Rufus to become a more sympathetic and enlightened slave-owner, Rufus seems to have turned into the callous and unsympathetic man his father was.
He, like Tom Weylin, has mastered the means by which to use his power to force his slaves into submission. He demonstrates this ability aptly by threatening to send Dana to the fields should she ever disobey him.
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Questions
Let’s do it!
1.Rufus is key in bringing out the theme of slavery. How is slavery demonstrated through his character?
2.Outline the theme that comes out clearly in the fight between Isaac and Rufus?
3.Kevin is stranded in the past for five years, while Dana is there for less than one year. Why did Bulter feel Kevin needed to stay in the past so much longer than Dana?
4.How have their experiences affected their relationship to each other and to the world around them?
5.Dana finds herself caught in the middle of the relationship between Rufus and Alice. Why does Rufus use
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