AP Literature

Tuesday, February 1st, 2005

Kindred Essay

Through race, class, and gender, Dana, narrator of Octavia Butler's Kindred, is alienated by society, revealing its values and assumptions.

Society's view of pigmentation caused Dana to be degradated, especially when she travels to the time of slavery. When Dana is in the 1800`s she is reduced to a slave. She is called not by her name, but is rather referred to as a nigger by her master and even some of the fellow slaves. She fights with Rufus to call her by her politically correct title of "black." She explains to him "I'm a black woman, Rufe. If you have to call me something other than my name, that's it." Her ancestor, Alice, implies to her that she has brown-nosed the white man so much that she has forgotten the color of her own skin. In the eleventh...