Kindred Analysis

There's a pretty big contrast between the two main settings of this book. But, truth be told, Octavia Butler doesn't really spend a lot of time describing her setting. She's much more interested in...

This book makes it very clear from the first lines that we're dealing with a first person narrator who will be at the center of the story we're about to read. The first line of the book reads, "I l...

Critics have had a tough time categorizing Kindred ever since the book first came out. Octavia Butler has gone on record saying that she thinks of the book as belonging to the fantasy genre. Other...

Dana starts this book by saying, "I lost an arm on my last trip home" (Prologue.1) and pretty much stays this blunt and direct for the rest of the book. It's actually this same directness that ofte...

There's a reason why literature and sci-fi fans both love Octavia Butler. It's because she can convey great images and ideas in straightforward and easily readable language. In the opening scene of...

Kindred is an old-fashioned word that means family members or blood relations. It's especially important to the themes of this novel because the black female protagonist Dana is actually related to...

I looked back at the brick building of the Historical Society, itself a converted early mansion. "If we told anyone else about this, anyone at all, they wouldn't think we were so sane.""We are," he...

As far as literature goes, Kindred is as accessible as it gets. The sentence structure is clear, the writing is readable, and the plot is fast-paced. There's not a whole lot in this book that shoul...

Why Am I Going Back in Time?Our narrator Dana opens the book by saying that her arm was crushed on her "last trip home." It's only a few pages later that we find out Dana has been travelling back i...

Anticipation Stage and "Call"The name of this stage is fitting, since Rufus magically "calls" Dana back in time to come save him whenever he's about to die. The first time he does this, Dana doesn'...

Our narrator Dana tells us about how she lost her arm while travelling through time between 1976 and 1815. Then she gets into the nitty gritty details of what happened when she went back in time. I...

Octavia Butler was dyslexic. But like many driven people, she never let that keep her from becoming obsessed with books and writing. (Source)Butler probably took some of the inspiration for the sla...

The book never shows any explicit sex scenes, but there's enough mention of sex and rape to definitely warrant an R rating for this book. Throw in all of the stuff about whipping and amputated arms...

Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (3.5.86)Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels (3.8.54)Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind (4.2.44)James Monroe (3.2.108)John Quincy Adams (3.2.110)California Joins the...