Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Readings
Hey guys sorry about the delay, but I'm not good with blogger and i had some trouble. Over spring break we were supposed to have read Kindred, by Octavia Butler, which is about a African American women living in the 1970's, who keeps being called back to the 19th century to save a boys live. The boy's name is Rufus, and he is a white plantation owner, in a time when slavery was a big part of life. We see a struggle in this story, between not only two races, but also the sexes. The main character in the story, Dana, continually had to fight to try to get respect from Rufus even after she had saved his life many of times, the fact that she was black, and a women made it extremely hard for him to do that, and as for every other white character in the book from that time period they would not have a black women getting respected. In the book blacks were used and abused. All of the work that was done on the plantation was done by the slaves, and the owners rarely ever showed their appreciation for it. Slave women had it even worse, because not only were they used for work, but at anytime their owners could force them to have sex with them and it was perfectly fine. These women would be rapped, and then they would give birth to their owners children, just to watch them grow up with out a father, and become slaves as well. It just amazed me how low these people were treated in the book. One of the worst things in the book was when slave owners would break apart families to sell. Some owners did it to make money, some did it for punishment, and some did it just out of spite. The beatings that these slaves would get were ridiculous as well. I don't know how anyone could treat a human being that bad. The best part of the book was definitely the end when Dana finally had enough and took control of the situation by killing Rufus. Over all I really enjoyed reading this book and looking at this subject from a different point of view.
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3 comments:
I was surprised that the book was actually good. I agree it's unbelievable how bad not only blacks, but women were treated only a few generations ago. The differences in the culture was amazing.
The book touched a lot of topics, not only slavery, but the rights of minorities, like women. I felt that the book was very different in the fact that it was science fiction. Also,Octavia was in a dilemma in the fact that she was mistreated by Rufus, but she had to continue to save him. In order to save her own life, she had to go through the pain and suffering of slavery. It was sad to see the pain that slaves had to go through and how one group of people can be so cruel to mistreat another group.
I actually really enjoyed this book. I would definately recommend it to other people to read. I was kind of confused at the beginning of the book just cause some random lady was being called into the past to save a random little boy. But, then once you read into it you realize that she keeps being called into the past to save this little boy who ends up being one of her ancestors. She must save him everytime he gets into dangerous situations so that she'll be able to be born! It's crazy! But, the details and gruesome events that Butler includes in her writing is amazing! I read this book in like two days cause I couldn't put it down, just cause everything was happening right after another which kept me interested! And, I remember in class discussion talking about if Tom Weylin really was that mean of a person? I feel that he could've been a lot worse...a lot lot worse! He allowed Dana to teach the slaves to read and write and never really treated her THAT bad! And it made me happy that Dana had such an impact on Rufus's life as a plantation owner. When he got older I think that if Dana wasnt there to convince him not to do some of the things he wanted to do to the slaves, Rufus would've been a lot worse of a plantation owner! I liked Rufus, he always respected Dana and always apologized when he knew he did something bad!
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