Kindred

by Octavia E. Butler

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Kindred Questions and Answers

Why is it important to examine history from different perspectives/ points of view, knowing that we can't change history?

What are the similarities and differences between Alice and Dana in Kindred?

Can you point out and explain three types of conflicts that arise in the story? This question requires three different answers for each three examples.

What are the similarities between Dana's relationship with Rufus and her relationship with Kevin in "Kindred"?

How does Kevin and Dana's relationship progress in the book Kindred, even though Dana keeps going back and forth in time?

How does Rufus die in Kindred?

Compare Dana's professional life in the present with her life as a slave in Kindred.

In Kindred, how many times does Dana travel back to the 1800s?

In Kindred, both Kevin and Dana know that they can't change history. They say: "We're in the middle of history. We surely can't change it" (100) and "It's over....There's nothing you can do to change any of it now" (264). What, then, is the purpose of Dana's travels back to the antebellum South? Why must you, the reader, experience this journey with Dana?

In Kindred, how are Kevin and Dana different and similar?

In Kindred, what is the significance of Dana losing her arm?

Why does Dana say this was "some kind of reverse symbolism" when she is called back to Rufus for the last time on July 4, Independence Day in Kindred?

How does Octavia Butler challenge us to consider boundaries in Kindred? (black/white, master/slave, husband/wife, past/present)

Compare Rufus and his dad. Is Rufus an improvement over his father? How is Dana's influence evident on the adult Rufus?

Can Kindred by Octavia Butler be called a love story?

When Dana and Kevin return from the past together, she thinks to herself, "I felt as though I were losing my place here in my own time. Rufus's time was a sharper, stronger reality." Why would the twentieth century seem less vivid to Dana than the past?

Stereotypes are often addressed in Butler’s novels, including Kindred. In Kindred, how does the author, with her various characterizations, reveal the origins of stereotypes? How does she deflate them?

Why are the two settings in Kindred so important?

Why is it so hard for Dana to kill Rufus in Kindred? (Other than the “logical” answer that she needs Hagar to be born and may need him alive to return to the 1970s.) What might the author’s overall message be about human beings, life, enslavement, etc.?

How does Dana influence Rufus and his attitudes toward slavery in Kindred?

In Kindred by Octavia Butler, why does Rufus want to be like his father?

Why does Rufus use Dana to get to Alice in Kindred?

How is Kevin Franklin changed by his extended time in the nineteenth century?

What are the similarities between Dana and Alice in Kindred?

Why is this section in Kindred called "The Rope"?

How do the different characters communicate with each other over time?

On what page does Rufus call Alice and Dana "one woman"?

In Kindred, how does Dana face the problems of race or gender?

Why does Tom Weylin whip Dana in Kindred by Octavia E. Butler?

Why did Alice want to name her daughter Hagar in Kindred?

Why might Octavia Butler have kept Kevin in the past for 5 years in Kindred?

In Kindred, how does Dana come to feel at home at the Weylin plantation? What is Octavia Butler's idea of home in Kindred?

What do we know about Dana’s family in Kindred?

Why does Dana’s aunt accept her desire to marry Kevin?

In Kindred, why is Dana able to survive while Alice is not? Back up your answer with evidence from the novel. Cite examples from the book.

What are 3 examples of how is Rufus kind and caring and 3 examples of how Rufus is cruel in Kindred? Please include page numbers.

Where do Kevin and Dana go on their first date in Kindred?

In Octavia Butler's novel Kindred, what does Sarah teach Dana about becoming a woman? Be specific. How do her advices/lessons conform to or resist the role of African American women under slavery?

How did Dana feel before she disappeared for the first time?

In Kindred, Dana finds herself caught in the middle of the relationship between Rufus and Alice. Why does Rufus use Dana to get to Alice? Does Alice also use Dana?

What role does Rufus' mom have in the formation of his character in Kindred? Is he influenced by her? If so, how?

Are there any allusions in Octavia Butler's novel Kindered?

In Kindred, Dana loses her left arm as she emerges for the last time in the novel from the past. Why is this significant?

How would you describe the relationship between Rufus and Dana in Kindred?

How did Alice's babies in Kindred die?

Why is the chapter in Kindred called "The Storm"?

How would the story have been different with a third person narrator?

In what ways does Dana explode the slave stereotypes of the "house nigger"? In what ways does she transcend them?

How do the characters in Kindred assume the roles assigned them? How do they resist?

Dana's homes are her house in California and the Weylin plantation in Maryland in Kindred. However, the idea of home also applies to the two time periods in which she lives. Where does Dana appear to be more at home?