Kindred

Chapter-by-chapter summary

Spoiler warning: this section covers the whole plot, including the ending.

Prologue

The book opens in a hospital. Dana wakes up missing her left arm. Police officers ask whether her white husband, Kevin, beats her, and Dana insists the injury was an accident and that Kevin is not to blame. Later she and Kevin admit they are afraid to tell what really happened, because nobody would believe them. The Prologue works as a promise and a warning: from the first page the reader knows this journey will cost Dana something permanent, and that she cannot share the truth with anyone.

The River

On June 9, 1976, her twenty-sixth birthday, Dana and Kevin have just moved into a new home. Dana grows dizzy and suddenly finds herself beside a river, where a red-haired boy is drowning. She pulls him out and breathes air into him. His mother attacks her, thinking she has hurt him, and a white man points a gun at her. Dana grows dizzy again and is back at home with Kevin. The chapter sets up the pattern of the novel and shows that her first act in the past is to save a life.

The Fire

Dana is pulled away again, this time to a bedroom where the same boy, Rufus, is older and has set the drapes on fire after a beating from his father. She puts out the fire and learns that she is in Maryland in about 1815. Rufus sends her to Alice Greenwood and her mother, free Black women. White men break in, and one of them tries to rape Dana before she escapes back to 1976. Only minutes have passed for Kevin. The chapter shows how dangerous the past is for her, and it links Rufus and Alice to her own family line.

The Fall

Dana remembers how she met Kevin at a temp job. In 1976 he is working on a way to forge free papers for her when the two of them are carried back together. They find Rufus with a broken leg and send Nigel, a Black boy, for help. Tom Weylin, Rufus's father, invites Kevin to dinner and then hires him to tutor Rufus, and he wants to buy Dana from Kevin. Margaret, Rufus's mother, sends Dana to the cookhouse, where she meets Sarah and Sarah's mute daughter, Carrie. Dana secretly teaches Nigel to read, and Weylin whips her for it. The chapter shows how quickly the household makes her powerless.

The Fight

Eight days after Dana returns home, she is sent back and finds Rufus being beaten by Isaac, Alice's husband, after Rufus tried to rape Alice. Dana talks Isaac out of killing him, and Alice and Isaac run. Five years have passed in the past, and Kevin has left Maryland. Weylin now knows Dana comes from another time. Isaac and Alice are caught; Isaac is mutilated and sold south, and Alice is savaged by dogs and bought by Rufus. Dana, with Carrie's help, nurses Alice and persuades her to submit to Rufus rather than be beaten again. Dana's own escape attempt fails, and she is whipped. Kevin returns to fetch her, and they leave together. The chapter matters because Dana's choices begin to hurt people she cares about.

The Storm

Kevin struggles to settle back into 1976 after five years in the past. Dana returns to the plantation and finds Rufus drunk in the rain. She nurses him through a fever. Alice has borne children to Rufus, and some have died. Weylin dies of a heart attack, and Rufus becomes the master. He sends Dana to the cornfields, where she is whipped. Alice gives birth to Hagar, who is Dana's direct ancestor. Dana teaches children to read. When Rufus plans to sell a boy named Sam, she begs him not to, and when he refuses she slits her wrists to escape home. The chapter shows the limits of her influence over Rufus.

The Rope

Dana tells Kevin everything, spends a stretch at home, and returns to a changed plantation. While she was gone, Alice tried to escape. Rufus whipped her and lied that he had sold her children. Alice hanged herself. After her funeral, Dana persuades Rufus to take her to town to free the children, Joe and Hagar. Then Rufus makes clear that he wants Dana to take Alice's place. When he tries to rape her, Dana stabs him with her knife. Nigel arrives as Rufus dies, and Dana is pulled home. Her left arm is trapped in the wall and left behind. The chapter finally ends her bargain with Rufus.

Epilogue

Back in 1976, Dana and Kevin travel to Baltimore to look for traces of the Weylin household. In old papers they find a notice that Rufus died in a house fire, and a sale listing that includes the Weylin slaves except Nigel, Carrie, Joe and Hagar. Dana suspects that Nigel set the fire to cover up what happened, and she feels responsible for the sale. Kevin tells her she cannot change the past. The ending offers no neat comfort: history gives only fragments, and Dana has to live with what she knows.

Characters

Dana Franklin

A Black writer in 1976 California and the narrator. She is practical, quick-minded and stubborn. In the past she must decide again and again how much she will bend in order to survive, and she loses her left arm on the last trip.

Kevin Franklin

Dana's white husband, also a writer. He is carried into the past with her, is hired by Weylin to tutor Rufus, and is left behind in Maryland for about five years. He returns changed, and the time apart tests the marriage.

Rufus Weylin

The son of a Maryland slaveholder, whom Dana first saves as a small boy. He needs her, but he is shaped by the power he is raised to have, and as a man he assaults and sells the people around him. Dana kills him in self-defence.

Alice Greenwood

A free-born Black girl who becomes Rufus's lifelong obsession. She loses her freedom after a failed escape with her husband Isaac. She bears Rufus's children, including Hagar, Dana's ancestor, and later hangs herself.

Tom Weylin

Rufus's father, who owns the plantation. He is hard and controlling, and he has Dana whipped for teaching Nigel to read. He dies of a heart attack despite Dana's efforts to save him.

Margaret Weylin

Rufus's mother, who runs the house. She sends Dana to work in the cookhouse. She is anxious and harsh toward the enslaved women who serve her.

Sarah

The Weylin cook and the mother of Carrie. She is guarded and sharp-tongued, and she shows Dana what long-term survival costs on the plantation.

Nigel

A young enslaved man Dana first meets when she and Kevin send him for help. Dana secretly teaches him to read. He is the one who arrives when Rufus dies, and he is not among the people sold afterwards.

Carrie

Sarah's mute daughter. Dana meets her in the cookhouse, and Carrie helps care for Dana after her whipping. She is among the people the sale records leave out.

Writing about this book

Kindred gives you many ways in for a book report or essay. Start with a question rather than a thesis. For example: why does Butler send Dana into the past through a time-travel device but never explain how it works? Or: what does it mean that Dana can protect her own family only by protecting the slaveholder who hurts her friends?

You could compare how Dana's choices change from the first trip to the last. Look at what she is willing to say, what she hides, and when she decides to act. You could also write about the arm in the Prologue and why the author put the cost first.

Another angle is the title. Kindred means family and shared bonds. Ask who counts as kin in this book: Kevin, Alice, Rufus, Nigel or Carrie? Use short quotes from your own copy, and put the page numbers in your essay. Plan your own argument from the evidence you find.