Octavia E. Butler was born in a African American family. Her grandmother was a slave who did the laundry for a white family. When she was in child, she felt ashamed that her mother was a housemaid. However, when she grew up she realized that her mother endured a lot of disrespect, such as employers treating her like dirt and talking to her like she was less than a human being.The reason her mother endured that was because she needed to raise Butler. Later on, she developed such a novel “Kindred”, because she had different views from a young man in her college. 50 she traveled to Maryland and did some research, and finally wrote a novel about a modern person has to endure more and sacrifice more when she time travel to the slaveryjust as Dana in her novel. In “Kindred”, Dana is a black woman who lives in 19705 and gets marry to a white man, Kevin. Dana experiences time travel to the pre-Civil war in Maryland plantation in order to save her ancestor, Rufus, a white slavemaster, and meet her other ancestor Alice who was born in free but back to slave.
The story is based on the slavemasters and slaves. However, in this novel, Butler makes Dana, Alice and Sarah (another slave who works in Rufus family) heroic because all of them are endure and sacrifice more than usual. Nevertheless, throughout the novel, I believe that Dana shows the most heroism because of how much she endured and sacrificed being a free woman who now has to learn to be a slave. Sarah, the oldest female slave on the plantation had many challenges and sacrificed her whole life. However, she endures that and work so hard, never has any idea to kill her master or escape, The most important reason she works so hard is to protect her fourth child. Because her other three older children were sold out by Tom Weylin, to meet his wife’s material comforts. She does not want to her youngest child was sold out as well.
She wants to protect this child from whipping and being a slave. She wants to raise up this girl by her effort in working and gets some sympathy from her master to her child. I believe that Sarah’s endurance is the same as Dana’s mother in a way. As a mother, she absolutely feels guilty because she lose her three children. So she never can lose the last one and she has to raise up the fourth. However, as a mother, I think it is the responsibility for raising children and protect them despite they are in such an unfair society If she can not raise them up or protect them, why she brought them into this horrible society and let them suffer the abuse? Therefore, Sarah can not be the most heroic person in this novel, she endures those because she has duty to her last childt Many readers will consider Alice is the most heroic person in this novel. She was born in free but sold to Rufust She got married with a slave but was separated from her husband by Rufus.
“Dana watches as Alice, who received a beating far worse than Dana’s when she was caught as a runaway, becomes her owner’s sexual slavet” (Pamela Bedore). All of these evidence shows that Alice suffered a lot of horrible things, she was beaten and raped, but she endures that. However, from my own view, because she was born in a such horrible society, sometimes she has no choice. Even she received beating far worse than Dana or raped by Rufus, she has to endure that because she needs to protect herself from being killed. And finally, she has some children. The situation is the same as Sarah, she has to protect her children and raise them up. However, finally she makes a decision to suicide and I don‘t think it is a heroic action. Once she left this world, who takes care of her children? Who raises up her children? Who teaches her children? Depends on their father Rufus?
If the child is light, maybe Rufus can take a little bit more care on that child But if the child is black, who knows the situation the child will suffer in the future without mother. Although Alice suffered too many things that we can not imagine, sometimes she has no choice but accept that, or she will die, Because she was born in that terrible society during the pre-Civil war, Dana, the most important character in this novel, She lives in 19705 as a free black woman who married with a white man. However, she experiences time travel to the pre-Civil war in Maryland and meet her ancestors Alice and Rufus). Unexpectedly, although she saved Rufus’s life many time, she still becomes a slave and gets whip and abuse from Rufus just because she is a black woman She thought Rufus was her best friend, but she received the words from him, “You think you’re white!” he muttered.
“You don’t know your place any better than a wild animal.” (Butler, Page 164) Can you imagine that Rufus treat her as a wild animal? All the people treat the home animals as their children, but he treat Dana as a wild animal, Obviously, he considers that Dana is worse than an animal How can a usual modern person endure being a slave when she time travel to before. Like Mary E, Virginia said, “Once he sees her working quickly, he will always expect a high output from hert” (2) She is from future, and every time she comes back in order to save her ancestor Rufus, they should treat her as a god instead of a slave. Unfortunately, they still beat her, whip her or even finally, Rufus wants to rape her. Despite she kills Rufus eventually, I think this the most heroic action she did and it makes her more heroic than Sarah and Alice Firstly, at that time period, it was a white people’s world, they control everything. How will they treat a black woman who kills her master?
The only one result is being abused and going to die. Secondly, Rufus was her ancestor. Although he wanted to rape her, she can run away instead of killing him. In the end, no matter she was mean to kill Rufus or by accident, she releases all the slaves in Weylin’s family. In conclusion, Dana is the most heroic character in this novelt In spite of Sarah who was separated from her three children, she worked as a slave in her whole life, Alice back to slave from freedom and constantly raped by Rufus. Both Alice and Sarah still did not endure and sacrifice as much as Dana. Alice and Sarah never thought about helping Rufus, on the other hand, they just accepting or tried to escape, However, Dana saves Rufus many times and stay with him even though she got abused from Rufus many Limes.
