Kindred Summary

1. I think the main point that the author was trying to make in this novel is that so many people think they have it bad off now in the present. After reading this book, the author is showing us how terribly bad the conditions really were for the slaves thirty years before the Civil War.
2. The author begins the book with the account on how Dana, a black woman, saves a little white boy named Rufus from drowning. She is brought back to real life however when Mr. Wyeling, the boy’s father, points a gun at her intending to shoot her. After that Octavia Butler gives us a little bit of Dana’s background in her real world. She is moving in to a new house with her white husband, Kevin. They are both “wannabe” writers who haven’t had success with their writing. But when Kevin gets his first book published, he asks Dana to marry him. They are just starting their new lives together when as summarized earlier, when Dana is taken to Maryland during the year 1815. Each time that she is transported back in time, she is almost killed. When that happens she is transported back to her real life back in California. Similarly whenever Rufus is in danger, she is transported back to Maryland to help him survive sure death. The book continues in these cycles until the end of Rufus’s life. The second time she is transported back in time, she is called to save Rufus from burning his house down. After she does this she tries to escape the Wyelin plantation. As she is wandering through the woods, she comes upon an old house in which a black family was living. She witnesses the black man being taken away from his wife, because he didn’t have any free papers. In the process she is found by a patrolman, who beats her with a stick and probably would have done worse things if she had not caused him to lose consciousness with her own blow to his face. She then blacks out and is taken back to California. The next time she is taken back to Maryland, Rufus has just fallen from a tree and has broken his leg. This time Kevin is taken with her though. They help get Rufus back to his house. Kevin says he is going south and that Dana is his free slave. This helps Dana from being treated like the other slaves on the plantation. She teaches Rufus how to read and makes the mistake of trying to teach a slave boy, Nigel, how to read. Mr Wyelin catches her and takes her out to wip her. She is then taken back to reality, but without Kevin, who is left in Maryland. Before her next visit eight days go by. She is taken back to get help for Rufus after he is almost killed in a fight with Isaac. Dana helps Alice, who needs to live in order to keep Dana’s birth line intact, to get a head start with her husband. She then takes Rufus back to get him help. When she goes back to see Kevin, she finds that five years have past and that Kevin left to go north. Dana stays hoping for Kevin’s return. After almost a year, Kevin does return and they try to escape to the north together. But they are met on the road by Wyelin and Rufus, who threaten to shoot them if they do not stay. This is how they are taken back to reality. She is then taken back to find Rufus as a full grown drunk man about to die as his face is face-down in a puddle. She is then taken back as Rufus beats her, because he thinks she is going to have sexual relations with one of his slaves, Sam. Finally the last time that she is taken back she is brought back to save Rufus from killing himself when he finds out that his wife and Dana’s ancestor has committed suicide. But eventually she is forced to kill Rufus and that ends her fantasy as she will never again be transported back to Maryland after Rufus’s death.
3. I don’t know how much actual documentation she had from the slave time period that she used to validate her writing, but this seemed to be a fairly good description of what the life of a slave was like. She mentioned several hardships that they faced back in that time period. Some hardships she mentioned from the book were the tough labor in the fields, the whippings, the loss of family members through trading slaves, the disrespect, and mindset that they would have to deal with these hardships throughout their entire lives. I think Butler did an excellent job of getting all these negative aspects of slavery mentioned in one story.
4. The reading definitely showed how brutal slavery was. The author did marvelous job of displaying this in her book. I personally thought it was a superior novel and enjoyed reading it. For a person who hates to read, that is saying a lot. But reading this book definitely makes us realize how good we have it in this present age compared to how awful it must have been to live as a slave back in those times.