Rhetorical Analysis of Kindred by Octavia Butler
Octavia Butler’s novel Kindred raises a number of social problems. In this essay, I would like to analyze the role of kinship in shaping and addressing social problems, particularly racial inequality and gender discrimination. While relying on scenes from Kindred, I plan to prove that the effect of kinship on social relations is ambiguous. On the one hand, it ensures the survival of specific groups of people. To prove this idea, I will refer to an instance where the slave community is doing everything possible to please their master Weilyn, so he does not sell them like Sam. On the other hand, I argue that perverse sense of kinship generates social impunity. Notwithstanding the time traveler Dana understands the horror of slavery and the injustice of discrimination, the sense of kinship makes her looking for an excuse for Weilyn and Rufus.
To prove this idea I refer to Dana’s decision to return to Maryland, although her two-week stay there made the woman witness numerous horrors of slavery. I also cite Kindred to prove that kinship makes people think illogically, thus exacerbating social problems. The purpose of this essay is to explore how the sense of kinship impacts social relationships. I focus on several major scenes and cite evidence from secondary sources to prove that kinship is an ambiguous feeling that can save families, but also exacerbates social problems, particularly social inequality and gender discrimination by finding excuses to these practices.The Ambiguity of Kinship Kenan notes that Octavia Butler “is something of a phenomenon” (495), and her novel Kindred confirms this assertion. Although Flagel argues that Butler suggests an emotional narration that compromises literary or discursive representation (216), the true value of the novel is in the fact that it raises questions about the complex nature of social phenomena, especially kinship.
In Bartlet’s novel, it serves both as security seal and exacerbates social evils. While traveling between the 1976 California and the early 1800s Maryland, Dana, a young black female writer, witnesses both incarnations. Eventually, the latter one becomes more powerful.For Dana, the sense of kinship is one of the most important feelings; and at the very beginning of the novel she has extremely positive attitude towards it. Such attitude is for example evident in Dana’s description of her marriage with Kevin: “He was like me – a kindred spirit crazy enough to keep on trying” (Butler 57). The sense of kinship makes Dana’s family a happy unit, and it later preconditions the woman’s efforts to save her marriage that is going through hard times when she discovers the ability to time travel. When taking Kevin to Maryland, Dana tries to reinforce the sense of kinship by demonstrating her husband what occupies her thoughts and time.While travelling between the 20th century California and comparing it to the 19th century Maryland Dana is even more convinced of the opinion that kinship is a lifeblood that …
