Dana In Kindred

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Dana is the main character of the story Kindred who travels back in time to the Antebellum South to various points in the life of her slave with her ancestor. Dana who would do everything to survive. Dana gets beaten up a lot because of her color of skin.The choices that she makes are very difficult. Sometimes she would do things before she thinks because she has no choice. She would do things that she never imagined she would. Whenever Rufus has a problem, she goes to him and helps him. Dana saves Rufus when he is a young boy when Rufus drowns in the river. When Rufus’s dad sees Dana, he is about to shoot her because of her race. When Rufus calls Dana the N word, Dana doesn't say anything. Every time Dana travels back to Rufus’ time, she …show more content…
If she hadn't gone back to her ancestor, she wouldn't suffer a lot. It is hard for Dana to talk back to them and not respect them because if she talks back to them they will beat her up very bad. When Dana saved Rufus,Dana heard a guy yelling,she panic because she was scared. “What the devil’s going, going on here”(14). When Dana went home, she was panicking and didn’t know what to do”What happened,tell me”(15) Kevin asks her what happened, she didn’t tell him because she didn’t know what to say and Dana came back to having an ache because Rufus’s mother pounded her with her fist. “Strength.Endurance. To survive, my ancestors had to put up with more than I ever could. Much more. You know what I mean.”, she is unprepared for the everyday hardships her black ancestors underwent just to stay alive. Dana cannot match their endurance either physically or mentally, she thinks.

“He was not hurting me, would not hurt me if I remained as I was. He was not his father, old and ugly, brutal and disgusting”(p.260)Rufus tries to seduce Dana, the reality of the moment is overwhelming, more real than her own time. She finds herself slipping into the same complacency she has observed in other slaves.Rufus tries to rape her,but Dana knows that he wasn’t trying to rape her,but he killed him because he was trying to rape her and stab him
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