Review: Octavia Butler's Kindred

    Torn between separate impulses to survive, Dana in Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred knows well the “plaguing thing” that Stern lamented about. Dana had the choice to saver her ancestor’s life, and ensure her existence, or to kill him and relieve her hate. The urge to obliterate a piece of history in order to, perhaps, save a part of herself is contrary to what would really save her.

                Initially, Dana is her ancestor, Rufus Weylin’s, determined rescuer. She selflessly, infinitely cares for children, but her other motive soon develops: to preserve Rufus’ family line and herself. By the time Dana is called to rescue Rufus from a fight with Isaac, Rufus is grown and Dana can allow herself to loathe his behavior. At this time her choice is clear: she could dispose of him and save herself the trouble, the misery, the beatings, and any compromise in her conduct. Or, she could save the man who lived to hurt others and protect the possibility of her own birth.

                What could have saved her was too simple, and too impossible. She could have accepted him as the patriarch of her family line, flawed, but human, and accepted the past as a whole. That, the key to wholeness, could have saved her mind from being “torn asunder.” Yet Butler’s tale pitted inconceivable, unacceptable situations against a mind built for sensibility and reason-- survival instinct came out on top.

                Dana chooses to protect Rufus from the elements and certain death, but that lets her see more of his unchangeable character that earns her hatred. After Rufus admitted that Dana couldn’t have caused his father’s death, she asked, “Then why did you send me to the field? Why did I have to go through all that, Rufe?” He shrugged... “I guess I just had to make somebody pay.”(216) Eventually, though, she sees Rufus’ daughter legally freed, and the tension between her two desires is eased. Dana no longer has to keep Rufus alive to uphold the future. Her final decision ends a life before her boundaries are pushed, before he rapes her.