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———. “Homage to Tradition: Octavia Butler Renovates the Historical Novel.”
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Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written By Herself
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Discussion Questions
1. Both Kevin and Dana know that they can’t change history. They say: “We’re in the middle of history. We surely can’t change it” (p. 100); and “It’s over. … There’s nothing you can do to change any of it now” (p. 264). What, then, is the purpose of Dana’s travels back to the antebellum South? Why must you, the reader, experience this journey with Dana?
2. How would the story have been different with a third-person narrator?
3. Many of the characters in
Kindred
resist classification. In what ways does Dana explode the slave stereotypes of the “house-nigger, the handkerchief-head, the female Uncle Tom” (p. 145)? In what ways does she transcend them?
4. Despite Dana’s determination to refuse the “mammy” role in the Weylin household, she finds herself caught by it: “I felt like Sarah, cautioning” (p. 156). Others see her as the mammy as well: “‘You sound just like Sarah’” (p. 159). How, if at all, does Dana reconcile her conscious efforts with her behavior? How would you reconcile them?
5. “I never realized how easily people could be trained to accept slavery.” Dana says this to Kevin when they have returned to the present and are discussing their experiences in the antebellum South. Do we also in the twenty-first century still have conditioned responses to slavery?
6. How do you think Butler confronts us with issues of difference in
Kindred?
How does she challenge us to consider boundaries of black/white, master/slave, husband/wife, past/present? What other differences does she convolute? Do you think such dichotomies are flexible? Artificial? Useful?
7. Compare Tom Weylin and Rufus Weylin. Is Rufus an improvement over his father? How, if at all, is Dana’s influence evident on the adult Rufus?
8. Of the slaves’ attitude toward Rufus, Dana observes, “Strangely, they seemed to like him, hold him in contempt, and fear him all at the same time” (p. 229). How can they feel these contradictory emotions? How would you feel toward Rufus if you were in their situation?
9. Compare Dana’s “professional” life in the present (i.e., her temporary work) with her life as a slave.
10. When Dana and Kevin return from the past together, she thinks: “I felt as though I were losing my place here in my own time. Rufus’s time was a sharper, stronger reality” (p. 191). Why would the twentieth century seem less vivid to Dana than the nineteenth century?
11. Dana loses her left arm as she emerges—for the last time in the novel—from the past. Why is this significant?
12. Kevin is stranded in the past for five years, while Dana is there for less than one year. Why did Butler feel Kevin needed to stay in the past so much longer than Dana? How have their experiences affected their relationship to each other and to the world around them?
13. A common trend in the time travels of science fiction assumes that one should not tamper with the past, lest you disrupt the present. Butler obviously ignores this theory and her characters continue to invade each other’s lives. How does this influence the movement of the narrative? How does it convolute the idea of cause and effect?
14. Dana finds herself caught in the middle of the relationship between Rufus and Alice. Why does Rufus use Dana to get to Alice? Does Alice also use Dana?
15. The needs and well-being of other residents of the plantation create a web of obligation that is difficult to navigate. Choose a specific incident and determine who holds power over whom; assess how it affects that situation.
16. Dana states: “It was that destructive single-minded love of his. He loved me. Not the way he loved Alice, thank God. He didn’t seem to want to sleep with me. But he wanted me around—someone to talk to, someone who would listen to him and care about what he said …” (p. 180). How does the relationship between Dana and Rufus develop? How does it change? What are the different levels of love portrayed in
Kindred
?
17. Discuss the ways in which the title encapsulates the relationships within the novel. Is it ironic? Literal? Metaphorical? What emphasis do we place on our own kinship? How does it compare with that of the novel?
18. Do
you
believe that Dana and Kevin’s story actually happened, or did they simply get caught up in the nostalgia of examining old papers and books? How would their situation’s significance have changed in Dana’s and Kevin’s lives if it had been imaginary? If it were merely nostalgia or an imagined situation, how would that change your perception of the antebellum South and the treatment of slaves? Would that make the events less significant?
19. Butler opens the novel with the conclusion of Dana’s time travels. The final pages of the book, however, make up an epilogue that once again demonstrates a linearly progressive movement of time. How does the epilogue serve to disrupt the rhythm of the narrative?
20. After returning from his years in the nineteenth century, Kevin had attained “a slight accent” (p. 190). Is this alteration symbolic of greater changes to come? How do you imagine Kevin and Dana’s relationship will progress following their reentry into life in 1976?
Beacon Press
25 Beacon Street
Boston, Massachusetts 02108
www.beacon.org
Beacon Press books are published under the auspices of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.
© 1979 by Octavia E. Butler
Reader’s Guide © 2003 by Beacon Press
First published as a hardcover by Doubleday in 1979
First published as a Beacon paperback in 1988
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Butler, Octavia E.
Kindred / Octavia E. Butler; with an afterword by Robert Crossley.
p. cm. — (Black women writers series)
eISBN: 978-0-8070-8370-3
1. African American women—Fiction. 2. Los Angeles (Calif.)—
Fiction. 3. Southern States—Fiction. 4. Slaveholders—Fiction. 5. Time
travel—Fiction. 6. Slavery—Fiction. 7. Slaves—Fiction. I. Title.
II. Series.
PS3552.U827K5 2004
813′.54—dc22
2003062862
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