Term Paper

Anthony Jackson
English 333
Dr. Gleason

Term Paper

For the final term paper I chose the novel Kindred by Octavia Butler for step one.
The ten pages that I have chosen are 198-208. During my reading of these pages many
questions came to my mind, such as why do I enjoy this text? One of the reasons why I find myself so intrigued by Kindred is the fact that I can relate to most of the events that occurred during the story. Throughout my life I have had to deal many of the same issues that are faced in Kindred. One of the issues that are dealt with in Kindred that I also had to deal with was racism. One of my most vivid memories of my life comes from an experience in the second grade in which I was subjected to the ignorance and stupidity of another human for the first time. The similarities between my experience and the experiences that Dana faces would include characters and even the roles in which they play in both stories.
While I was in the second grade around September or October, a few friends of mine and one who I believed to be my friend decided to play on the newly built playground and slide set. While preparing to go down the freshly painted yellow slide, one of the boys behind me yelled “Hurry up Nigger”. At that moment my conscience found itself in a state of shock, I honestly did not know how to react to the incident that had just occurred. Initially I felt a sudden burst of rage fill my mind and body, but I managed to hold it in and continue my journey down the slide only to wait for him at the bottom. I stood there at the bottom of the slide waiting to get my revenge on him, but before I could get my revenge, he did not slide down properly and bruised his leg on the way down. He either twisted his leg or scrapped it really good, because the scream he made never left my mind. I choose to confront the issue head on and simply talk to him about what he just said to me, I also offered to help him get to the other side of the playground, but he refused to let me help him he said “get away from me you nigger!”.
This can be compared to Dana’s experience with Rufus when she traveled through time to the Weylin home and tripped over Rufus. Initially she saves his life because he was in a puddle so deep the water almost covered his head. Although Rufus seemed to be somewhat thankful of Dana saving his life, he later turned his feelings into pure hate and rage because he couldn’t have Alice and then later he realized that he couldn’t have Dana as well.
As with any white person that Dana meet from Rufus’s time period the word Nigger was very common and most slaves did not find it offense initially and certainly did not question the hatred and knowledge behind the word but in 1995, I was raised not say this word and I knew the hatred and evil behind the word. The similarities between my story and Dana’s do not just end there. A few moments later I walked to the other side of the playground closer to the classrooms where I found the same boy who had previously degraded me and placed a mental scar in my mind. I asked him one last time why he decided to call me out of my name, he decided to say it one more time. By the time he finished pronouncing the last “r” he was already lifted high above my head and was five seconds away from crashing down to earth. This was my way of showing revenge, giving him the same feeling that he had just given me. While in Kindred Dana found herself hating Rufus and with a passion for everything she had done for him, from the letters to Kevin never being sent out to her saving his life every time they meet. Dana became agitated with being forced to leave her life every time and randomly sent to a time in American history where she is not welcome and is not treated as an equal human. Dana later was forced to make a choice whether or not to take Rufus’s life and she gave into temptation and literally committed a sin, but the question is whether or not it was a sin to wipe the Weylin plantation clean from the virus known as slave owners. I found these two situations to be very similar in the choices and decisions that were made.
One way of interpreting the ten pages that I have selected would be by the text-text stage. For my theorists I chose Toni Morrison from IV Revisiting History. In the text Toni writes about the important work in the history of late twentieth century African American fiction. “Morrison’s narrative of black men and women after the Civil War weighing the value of remembering a traumatic past resonates strongly among a middle class readership itself only thirty years removed from the de facto apartheid of pre-Civil Rights Movement America.” Morrison also talks about other selections and how the authors of the postmodern era revisited the past to elaborate on stories about the present day. Tony Morrison also “in writing about the impeachment in 1998, Morrison wrote that, since Whitewater, Bill Clinton had been mistreated because he "displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald's-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas” Wikipedia. Also during 2008 during the Democratic primary Toni Morrison stated to Time magazine "People misunderstood that phrase. I was deploring the way in which President Clinton was being treated, vis-à-vis the sex scandal that was surrounding him. I said he was being treated like a black on the street, already guilty, already a perp. I have no idea what his real instincts are, in terms of race." One of the biggest and most controversial novels that Morrison wrote was Beloved. The similarities between Kindred and Beloved are also there. In Beloved the story is loosely based on the life and legal case of the slave Margaret Garner. In the book one of the famous quotes that arises states “sixty million and more” which refers to the estimated number of slaves who died during the slave trade. “In this novel, Morrison paints a somber picture of the brutal effects of slavery. It examines both the mental and physical trauma caused by slavery as well as its effect on survivors. The book follows the story of Sethe and her daughter Denver as they try to rebuild their lives after having escaped from slavery. “The story follows the basic traditional outlines of a typical slave narrative and incorporates a painful taboo and certain aspect of slavery. During my search on Toni Morrison and related topics, I stumbled across a song that is very familiar to me and most African Americans. The song I chose is Wade in the water.
Wade in the water (children)Wade in the waterWade in the waterGod's gonna trouble the waterIf you don't believe I've been redeemedGod's gonna trouble the waterI want you to follow him on down to Jordan stream(I said) My God's gonna trouble the waterYou know chilly water is dark and cold(I know my) God's gonna trouble the waterYou know it chills my body but not my soul(I said my) God's gonna trouble the water(Come on let's) wade in the waterWade in the water (children)Wade in the waterGod's gonna trouble the waterNow if you should get there before I do(I know) God's gonna trouble the waterTell all my friends that I'm comin' too(I know) God's gonna trouble the waterSometimes I'm up lord and sometimes I'm down(You know my) God's gonna trouble the waterSometimes I'm level to the groundGod's gonna trouble the water(I Know) God's gonna trouble the waterWade in the water (children)Wade out in the water (children)God's gonna trouble the water
While on the other hand there is a comparison to the text-world. When you compare the choices that Dana had to face, to kill Rufus and set free all of the slaves or to let him live his life tormenting all the slaves he owned. Regardless I chose to compare it to the Civil Rights movements during the 1960’s and the choices the African American leaders had to make. During the 1960’s many blacks followed the teaching of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X. With Dr. Martin Luther King Jr Americans and more specifically blacks found it easy to understand the analogies that he used because most of them were used in a biblical sense. While Malcolm X used more violent protest to get his point across and in some ways threaten the lives of people. These two leaders left Americans with a choice, who would be their savior when it comes to Civil Rights. I compare Dr. Martin Luther King to letting Rufus stay alive and I compare Malcolm X to the death of Rufus.




















Work Cited

http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toni_Morrison
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beloved(novel)
www.cocojams.com/african_american_secular_slave.com