In the novel best known as Sci-Fi, Kindred, Octavia Butler demonstrates her critique on culture, history, gender bias and racism. Butler uses her main character Dana to travel through time to Maryland in 1815 to help her great grandfather Rufus escape near demise encounters. By trying to fit into 1815, Dana experienced a first-hand look at how slavery affected African American families, the normalized sexual assault black women faced, as well as contrasting ante bellum Maryland in 1815 to a modern Los Angeles in 1976.
In Kindred, Octavia Butler made it known to readers the type of culture that was present. The culture entailed the dichotomy of men in power and reverence, but women having to carry the load. Butler managed to portray the many misfortunes a woman, no matter their color, had to face and overcome. An example of a misfortune would be that despite a woman doing all that she can possibly do, in terms of birthing and raising a child, she had no real rights of her own flesh and blood. Butler touches on the topic when she has Dana question Rufus about taking the children away from their mother Alice, which caused her suicidal death. Rufus, spitefully lied and told Alice that he sold their children into slavery to teach her a lesson. When Dana asked Rufus about why he did it he simply said, “To punish her, scare her. To make her see what could happen if she didn’t … if she tried to leave me” (Butler, 251). Rufus lied to Alice about what he did with the children just to have her fear him more, which in turn just put so much burden on her that she wound up killing herself. Butler uses Rufus to reveal the over-masculinity and superior mindset that men had in 1815. Alice revealed to Dana that Rufus utilizes the children against her the same way a bit is used on a horse, and she was sick of having a bit in her mouth. This was a powerful analogy of slavery, and how the slave proprietors utilized the offspring of slaves to keep them dutiful. Earlier in the story, Butler allows Dana to reflect on how she could keep Rufus safe as a black woman in a time that viewed her as inferior. Dana’s dilemma becomes apparent: “I was the worst possible guardian for him—a black to watch over him in a society that considered blacks subhuman, a woman to watch over him in a society that considered women perennial children” (Butler, 68). Understanding the responsibility black women played in the slave exchange is critical to offer another dynamic to the investigation of slave culture when all is said in done. Slave women were considered lesser as a result of race yet they likewise shared the trials of the mistreatment of the female sex. Women slaves assumed a key part in the improvement of slave groups through the advancement of African Sexuality, Family Structure and Economic Productivity. It is accordingly boundlessly essential that we should comprehend the slave exchange from a women point of view to comprehend the improvement of slave groups (Humanizing Science Fiction).
Octavia Butler speaks about the importance of Dana’s ancestors and the value of their history and racism. Butler contrasts the difference in antebellum Maryland and modern Los Angeles with Dana’s own encounters and when she experienced culture shocks. An example of a contrast between the two arises when Dana speaks about what the people in her modern day considered slavery. After traveling back in time a couple of times, she realizes that what they were calling slavery in 1979 was not nearly as bad as the violence and terror that occurred in 1815. While reflecting on what casual labor agencies were like, Dana recalls that they were unbearable but there was not as much suffering as there was in slavery. “I was working out of a casual labor agency—we regulars called it a slave market. Actually, it was just the opposite of slavery. The people who ran it couldn’t have cared less whether or not you showed up to do the work they offered. They always had more job hunters than jobs anyway. If you wanted them to think about using you, you went to their office around six in the morning, signed in, and sat down to wait” (Butler, 52). Butler frequently said she was stimulated to compose Kindred when she heard the younger generation of Black individuals limit the seriousness of slavery, and firmly state what they would or would not have endured on the off chance that they were subjugated. She needed them to know the realities of subjection, as well as how slavery felt. She needed to influence the younger Black generation to see that their ancestors were nothing but brave and heroic for just simply surviving in a time so dreadful. In addition to the previous example, Butler delves into another by putting Dana in a high risk situation during slavery that she barely made it out of. While facing the situation head on, Dana expresses concern for her safety and freedom: “My squeamishness belonged in another age, but I’d brought it along with me. Now I would be sold into slavery because I didn’t have the stomach to defend myself in the most effective way. Slavery! And there was a more immediate threat” (Butler, 42). Readers can learn to appreciate the intricate perspective that Butler provided for them because most people in the younger generation downplay the adversities their ancestors went through. Dana's voyage into the past and back again is intended to help us to remember the endeavors of the African-American people, and of Americans all in all, to comprehend and deal with the historical backdrop of servitude in the United States. In the same way as other Americans, Dana knew she had slaves in her family line, yet before her time traveling started, she discovered minimal more about her relatives and their own battles than what she could gather from history books. She was detached from her family's history both on account of the absence of a record and in view of her own impassion (Octavia Butler: Writing Herself into The Story).
Butler addresses gender bias as well and the normalization of the sexual assault Black women frequently endured. Her main character Dana encounters the pain and danger Black women in the antebellum period experienced. Dana concludes that society in 1815 was a construed place to be for a black woman after she arrives in the past to find that Rufus has raped Alice and tried to kill her husband Isaac. “So you’ll be rid of the man and have possession of the woman just as you wanted,” I said with disgust. “Rape rewarded.” … “I said nothing. I was beginning to realize that he loved the woman-to her misfortune. There was no shame in raping a black woman, but there could be shame in loving one” (Butler, 124). On the off chance that the power of history is communicated through intuitive and bodily infiltrations, and those penetrations accumulate importance from the longstanding and profound established sexual helplessness of African American women, at that point the dialect of assault turns into a practical method of communicating the infringement of history. Additionally, Dana was faced with an even bigger dilemma when Rufus, her own flesh and blood, attempted to rape her. Dana depicts to readers, on account of the guarantee of a community, love, and self-learning they offer and the detestations they cover up inside. Dana must get rid of her ancestor to whom she has turned out to be connected as opposed to submit to his lewd gestures, which she sees as "a worse thing than being dead" (Butler, 253). As Rufus assaults Dana she struggles, "I realized how easy it would be for me to continue to be still and forgive him even this. So easy, in spite of all my talk. But it would be so hard to raise the knife, drive it into the flesh I had saved so many times. So hard to kill…" (Butler, 259- 60). One may contend that Dana adores Rufus notwithstanding his savageries, putting out a convincing defense for the interracial and perverted nature of the American national family, and for the complicated web of affection, pride, need, self-hatred, and compulsion that predicament the destinies of related people (A Relative Pain: The Rape of History in Octavia Butler’s “Kindred” & Phyllis Alesia Perry’s “Stigmata”).
In conclusion, Octavia Butler displays to readers very detailed examples of gender bias, racism, history and culture that intertwine the year 1815 to our modern world. Butler allows readers to identify with Dana’s initial shock to the horrors of slavery, the cruel treatment of not only women but of Black people as well. Dana is constrained into the past where she sees individuals purchased and sold, sees families torn separated, and encounters torment on account of her "proprietor." It is essential to take note of that the possibility of acknowledgment of this foundation attacks the white and the dark populace alike. Whites grow up to trust that subjugation is a piece of their qualification as the unrivaled race, while blacks acknowledge it, on the grounds that the white race has adapted them to trust that it is their exclusive choice in life. They turn out to be excessively anxious of the whip or of being sold to a state facilitate south to endeavor get away. They are surrendered to being property.