Kindred Essays

9th Grade

Kindred

Octavia E. Butler gives readers an insight on the cruel reality of slavery in the antebellum period through her novel, Kindred. Throughout her narrative, Butler shines a light on the brutal conditions those enslaved must endure by heavily shaming...

College

Kindred

Novels that are centered on traumatic events in history have used different tools to access the past. The Piano Lesson by August Wilson is a film (based on a play) that is set during the Great Depression while Octavia Butler’s Kindred is a novel...

College

Kindred

Home is oftentimes perceived as one of the places where a person feels safest and as one of the places where one likes being most. This seems to be very straightforward, but in her novel Kindred, Octavia E. Butler complicates this concept of home...

College

Kindred

In the novel Kindred, by Octavia Butler, Dana, a modern day black woman, time travels between her present day and the time of slavery in the South. Between her various travels, Dana and her husband Kevin experience a series of both cruel and eye...

9th Grade

Kindred

Octavia E. Butler’s novel Kindred details the harrowing journey of 26-year-old Dana Franklin. A modern black woman from 1970s Los Angeles, Dana is continuously jerked back through time to the land of her ancestors: early 1800s Maryland. Her task?...

College

Kindred

As one may look into a mirror, the reflections that they see may vary. For Dana Franklin in Octavia Butler’s Kindred (1979), she sees her long lost ancestor Alice Greenwood. The story tells the tale of Dana, a young black woman in the 70’s, and...

College

Kindred

Relationships between brothers and sisters can be complicated; relationships between parents and children can be even more so. Family often varies in definition from one person to the next. For the majority of the population, the idea of a “...

College

Kindred

In today’s world, Western society has grown incredibly desensitized to violence. Children play video games such as Grand Theft Auto in which they murder civilians and sexually assault women without a second thought in order to win the game. Turn...

8th Grade

Kindred

If a boy gives a girl a rose, what does this mean? A rose is a widely used symbol of affection or romance, and one as a present would usually signify certain feelings of love. Symbols like roses are used in literature since people first started...