In Kindred, Octavia tells Dana Franklin’s story as she travels through space and time from 1976 to 1815 Maryland in the antebellum South, where her ancestors were slaves. She finds herself in a plantation on which they are still slaves. Dana Franklin and the reader can witness slavery’s tragic and horrifying history through the lense of time-travel. The neoslave tale of Dana’s ancestors is driven by this first-hand knowledge of slavery. Dana is the one who suffers from these consequences, as she experiences physical violence and psychological manipulation.
Dana’s very first experience is frightening and abrupt. She is pulled from the comfort of her home in a moment and dumped on a bank of a muddy rivulet she’s never seen. After saving a child who was later revealed to be Dana’s ancestor she was threatened with a weapon and removed from the scene. She returned home, terrified and confused. “I do not know what I experienced, but the reality was there.” (Butler, 17). Dana becomes aware of the reason for her second transport and its connection to Rufus. Butler’s plot is based on the interplay between history, morality and Dana’s responsibility to Rufus. Dana’s life will be cut short if Rufus is killed. She can’t afford it to learn what she would become if Rufus died. Butler’s decision to put Dana into this situation illustrates the thorny and complex entanglements at the core of Southern plantation slave culture, destroying any myth of an alien encounter.
Butler also complicates Dana’s response to any situation by structuring her text around Dana’s obligations (hers, Rufus’s, and other slaves) (Parham, 1318). Dana is forced to not only make the decisions she had never expected, but to also take actions that she hadn’t anticipated, and to suffer for both herself and others. All to maintain the future existence of her family. “I didn’t even dare to test the paradox”(Butler 29). Butler illustrates Dana’s conscious approach to slavery by using violence and slavery, in particular, violence directed at female slaves.
Dana’s first experience of slavery was when she witnessed a black slave being beaten by a patroller without a reason. Dana’s reaction to seeing something so personal and close up is, to put it mildly, eye-opening. I’d seen people getting beaten in films and on television. But I had not smelt sweat or heard people pleading, praying and being shamed in front of family and themselves. The reader will also have a similar experience to Dana, as she is also from the future.
Butler’s surreal retelling of the events and Dana’s response, while adding to the horror and reality of slavery (we know this already), also conveys a much more real understanding of being beaten and suffering as a servant. Tom Weylin would soon see Dana reading and begin to torture her. Weylin dragged and pushed me, I didn’t see where the whip was coming from. Weylin slapped me with a whip that burned through my light shirt, causing my skin to sting. I was convinced he meant to kill. This is a horrific experience, and the description is even more brutal. Dana is now being treated like a slave.
