Kindred by Octavia Butler | Themes

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Course Hero Literature Instructor Russell Jaffe explains the themes in Octavia Butler's novel Kindred.

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Octavia Butler’s Kindred tells the story of Dana, a black woman from the 1970s who time travels to a 19th-century slave plantation by unexplained forces each time her ancestor Rufus is in danger.

The son of a white slave owner, Rufus is her great-grandfather. Her jumps in time ensure that he in fact fathers her grandmother, despite the violence that this entails. On each trip, the choices she makes to stay alive become more difficult.

In Kindred, sci-fi author Octavia Butler uses the conventions of her chosen genre to illustrate the generational conflicts defining contemporary black America.

The genealogy of many, if not most, black Americans at some point merges with that of white Americans due to this tortured history. The sexual relationships—consensual or not—between slave owners and their slaves complicate black American history.

Using the conceits of science fiction, the story explores the genesis of contemporary African American life. Through a fantastical but internally plausible narrative, Butler creates a disturbing and beautiful portrait of American history.

African American science fiction writer Octavia Butler’s Kindred was first published in 1979. Published three years after her first novel, Kindred was a breakout success. Butler's masterful writing won her two Hugo Awards (1984 and 1985), science fiction's highest honor.

The science fiction novel Kindred contains many powerful motifs, including slavery, as Dana, a modern woman, bears witness to and endures the horrors of slavery; time travel, as Dana experiences slavery through the recurrent element of time travel; and self-inflicted wounds, as Dana cuts herself in order to time travel home, just as slaves sometimes kill themselves to escape bondage. Important themes include power, kinship, and violence.

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