Kindred is a novel written by Octavia E. Butler that set scene under the era when slavery wasn’t prohibited. From reading at the prologue and the first chapter “The River”, I found this novel mysterious as there are several surprising scenes especially in the first chapter. I am confused and surprised with the idea of vanishing and reappearing in just seconds as it does not appear naturally in reality. The two scenes presented during the event of vanishing and reappearing seem to demonstrate different aspect of the story. The scene with Kevin seem to be the reality and portray the mysterious part about the another scene which portray the encounter of the protagonist with a family that scared the author due to the threats of the gun and makes her feel insecure. The author claims that these two scenes are actually real and present and reject the idea of hallucination. Overall, the set up of the scene is very intriguing and makes the audience wants to explore further about the context of the story in the following chapters.

Reading onto “The Fire”, the overall context of the story starts to become more visible and clear. I become certain that the vanishing event is has to do with time traveling. The emerging scene in my mind is the “traumatic encounter” faced by Dana. It was a shocking moment for her to see someone being whipped to nearly death live. The sensation of that moment engraved a strong sense of fear in her inner world. The quote stated”I could literally smell his sweat, hear every ragged breath, every cry, every cut of the whip.”, which also demonstrate the cruelty of the traumatic encounter and ultimately stood as a critical point in the story in terms of mentally impact to Dana after the time traveling(Butler 33). The usage of anaphora also strengthen the overall idea of the fearful perception regarding the trauma.

In “The Fall”, Kevin is dragged into the past with Dana and experience different way of treatment because of its race as white, which is considered superior at that period of time. However, it did not make Kevin become egoistic. Both of them experience a sense of culture shock in terms of time especially in one scene about a group of slave children acting out a scene of a slave auction. While Kevin is being more optimistic about how the kids are just imitating what they seen in their lives, Dana acts more pathetic about it saying that: “They don’t have to understand. Even the games they play are preparing them for their future – and that future will come whether they understand it or not”(Butler 106).

As the time Dana stays in the past longer, she begins to influence others from her contemporary mindset, Rufus might be the one that got influenced the most. Without the presence of Dana, Rufus used to called the slaves with the “n” word. However, Dana corrects this insult to African American by giving an example to let Rufus knows the feeling of being insulted, which she asks Rufus that: “How do you feel when someone called you ‘trash’?”(Butler 95). Rufus changes his way to called the slaves and he changes his attitude towards the slaves, not with a strong superior tone anymore.