Research Paper on:
Kindred by Octavia Butler and the Influences of the Past and Present

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
black woman living in LA in 1976 discovers as she is transported back to 1815 to save the life of a small boy who ends up being a slave-owning ancestor  of hers. While she is there, she assumes the role of a slave and experiences the brutality of slavery first hand. Kindred becomes a novel of many layers, all inexorably  intertwined around the message that the institution of slavery in the United States left deep unhealed scars on us all. Dana is a young black woman newly married to her  white husband, Kevin, in the late 1970s. Just as they are moving in to their new home they have a discussion about how people treat them in the workplace and  in other public places. Kevin, her husband tells her, "Were in the middle of history. We surely cant change it" (Butler 100). But as the story unfolds, they can  affect it, even cause it to shift slightly. Of course, what begins to shift is their perspectives toward many of their internalized ideas and self identity. After Dana has begun  traveling into the past, she begins to view her temporary work as a form of slavery. She is never given the benefits like the rest of the workers, is considered  less skilled because she is temporary. Another parallel is that most of the workers there do not want to get close to her or make her their friend because they  know that she is more than likely going to be going away shortly. This is in direct relation to the attitude of the slaves. No sense in getting attached to  anyone if one were a slave because in all likelihood they could be gone tomorrow, sold off to someone else, or whipped to death. Some of the parallels that she