Analysis of The Book Kindred by Octavia Butler

Octavia Butler’s Kindred features Dana, a young woman, who winds up losing an arm and has to live with a scarred face from her adventures to Maryland. These are considered some of the many symbols we learn that impacted Dana along with Rufus trying to sleep with her along with her first trip to her last. 

A moment that would scar Dana is when she first started to teleport into the time of her great ancestors Rufus Weylin and Alice Greenwood in the early eighteen hundreds. “[Dana] lost about a year of [her] life and much of the comfort and security [she] had not valued until it was gone” (9). Like anyone whose life has been turned upside down, Dana likely would never feel safe in her own home and I think that she would most likely experience side effects such as hallucinations and Rufus and some of the other people from the plantation would start to appear in her dreams for a while. 

Leaving her life every couple of days and never knowing how long she was going to be stuck in the eighteen hundred left an impact on Dana. Considering Dana and Kevin had just moved into their new home in California days prior to her first teleportation, she felt that Maryland in the eighteen hundreds is more of a home to her rather than her own home in the mid-nineteen hundreds. After trying to have a conversation with Kevin he ended with questioning whether he had a home, Dana recalled once thinking a “feeling of relief at seeing the [Weylin] house, feeling that [she] had come home” (190). Although Dana corrected herself saying that she had a real home in her lifeline, spending more time and exploring Maryland and what life was like back then would have left a mark on Dana even if she was just there for a split second because she got to experience her heritage and find a piece of herself. 

While trying her best not to physically show that she had been living through a strange and chaotic time, Dana did something she should not have done forcing Tom to kick her in the face leaving a scar--which she then had to tell her cousin that the reason behind it was because Kevin had hit her(174, 243). She was kicked in the face because it was starting to get obvious that Rufus was going to be no help in finding her husband, so she ran away. Dana had tried hard during her time there to not get into any sort of danger--especially not anything that people in her timeline would be concerned about. 

The symbolism of Rufus threatening Dana as he gets closer and closer to assault scarred her because she knew that she could never tell Kevin about it even though he had previously stated that he would understand if Rufus had slept with her (245). The reason Dana felt uncomfortable sharing this fragment of information was because she almost let Rufus sleep with her (260). 

The final moment that would forever scar Dana is the moment she lost her arm as it was being crushed by her living room wall (261). During Dana’s final journey to Maryland where it seemed she was supposed to stop Rufus from killing himself, he tried to sleep with her, resulting in Dana stabbing him (260). I think that the reason the storyline shifted from Dana stabbing Rufus to her arm being crushed in a wall was because she messed with the time travel process. Usually the only way for Dana to get home was if she thought her life was in danger, and she got there because Rufus was. Now Rufus was in danger but since she was already there and it was her fault that he was in danger, she was able to get home but had to pay a small price. 

Butler seems to be suggesting that in order to come to terms with the past, something must be sacrificed. Sometimes we need to work for what we want in life. In the slaves case, they worked every waking moment of their lives in hope that one day they will have freedom and be able to live their own life how they want to. In Dana’s case she shared those slaves thoughts while she was on the plantation, but when it really came down to it all she wanted was to go home. She would work hard and keep her distance but once she has had too much and it seems like she will never get home, she takes matters into her own hands like when she slit her wrists and stabbed Rufus (239,260). Although it may seem that Dana was too weak for this life, she tried her best and worked hard each day. 

Throughout the year of twenty-twenty there were many deaths in the black community including George Floyd. The cops were first called on him when the cashier at the grocery store assumed that he used fake money to pay for his items--which later turned out to be false. Once the cops arrived they had investigated the situation further they had taken control and removed all bystanders to remove the scene while one of the officers proceeded to kneel on George which he proceeded to do not caring that he had previously stated that he could not breath--not caring that George Floyd had a family and people who loved him. There is a slight connection between this story and Kindred, although not as severe. The connection is that although Sarah had pleaded with Tom not to sell her children, he had done so anyways--just like Derek Chauvin had done while kneeling on George’s neck.

It seems as though Butler is trying to get through to us that all lives, no matter their skin color, are important and should not be treated as anything but. Throughout the novel she was trying to give us the perspective of the slaves and what life was like for them during the time of slavery and how they were not considered real people with feelings.