Commentary On Kindred

If different people started transporting between the past and the present which raise would mostly like be able to survive easier? Kindred was an interesting book about a black woman, named Dana that started transporting between the past and present periods. She would always transport to the past to help a white boy named Rufus before he did something that would kill him. Each time she would transport to help Rufus he would be a few years older and she would be there for a longer period of time.
The passage in the story that connects with me the most was when Tom Weylin whipped Dana for disobeying him by stealing and reading his books. What had happened was Dana was in the middle of Nigel’s reading lesson. She had just given him a spelling test. Probably two minutes after he finished the spelling test and she burned
it up, Tom Weylin walks in on them in the cookhouse. When he saw her holding one of his books with it open he got extremely furious and must of not notice Nigel because he said, “I treated you good & you pay me back by stealing from! Stealing my books! Reading!” (Butler 107). Then he dragged her out the cookhouse and started whipping her in front of everyone has punishment. Also, when she realized Tom Weylin was only angry at her, she said “So far, I was the only one in trouble. If it could just stay that way” (Butler 107). This passage connected to me because it reminded me of what my mother would say. Dana hoping Nigel hid the pencil and wasn’t in trouble too is like my mother because she usually helps others before she helps herself.
I also find this passage powerful because it was Dana’s first whipping and I don’t think several black people were strong enough to receive the types of whippings they gave black people in the 1800s. Especially since it was the same whip they used on horses.
The way Dana changes over the course of the book Kindred was she gain more strength to be able to live through the slavery times.
In the beginning, during the second time Dana transported to Rufus, after she urgently helped him put out the fire, he started in him bedroom. She was on her was to Alice’s house, when she saw patrollers there and they were beating on a black man with their whip. A few minutes after the patrollers left, Dana had gone back outside to get the blank it for Alice and one of the patrollers had returned for Alice’s mother. But when he saw Dana outside and saw how similar Dana as well as Alice’s mother looked he started saying he was going to turn her in as a runaway slave. Dana kind of did try to get away by digging her nails in his elbow. However, she did have an opportunity to make him let go of her ,but she was too much of a coward to do it. Dana thought, “I couldn’t do it. The thought sickened me” (Butler 42). As shown in my scene, in the beginning, she couldn’t even stab someone in the eyes, but in the end, she had acquired enough strength to kill Rufus. Thus here experience in the nineteenth century built on her
strength.
In the middle of the book, when Kevin, Dana’s husband, finally got notified that Dana was back and returned for her, they ran into Rufus on their way out. Rufus told them to go back to his house and wait for dinner because he was sure his father would want to see Kevin. However, Kevin declined, which didn’t sit well with Rufus. Dana was thinking about how she had never seen that side of Rufus before and how so many people had warned her about how Rufus is crueler than he seems. Yet she still didn’t feel frightened of him and started to challenge him. Dana said, “Rufe, if you shoot anybody, it better be me” (Butler 186). Typically, people that are full of fear dare to test if someone would really shoot at them. In this scene, has Dana flashed back to all the hints everyone gave her about Rufus. However, she still hadn’t felt like she should fear him. Therefore, her strength was increasing from when she first began transporting to Rufus.
In the end of the book, during Dana’s final transportation to Rufus, she was trying to comfort him as he talked to her. Then Rufus started saying that she had to take care of his children since Alice was dead. She didn’t agree and his grip on her arm turned into detainment. Also, he pushed himself to her to the point of being on top of her. At first, she was just laying there thinking about her knife, how many times she’s saved his life, and how hard it would be to kill him. But after she thought about how she could never be his lover or consider him her master. Then she transpierced the knife into his side. “[She] pulled the knife free of him somehow, raised it, and brought it down again into his back”, (Butler 260). If her strength hadn’t grown during her experience in the nineteenth century she most like would of probably let him rape her. Thus, she was finally able to kill Rufus, something she would have never imagined doing in the beginning of the book.