Maybe I can’t ever have that-both wanting, both loving. And you had more luck than I did because no matter what happens now, for a while he wanted you too. Rufus bought Alice so he could try to control her and make her love him, knowing that she never will. The first similarity is that they are both women who were born free and are now enslaved and unwillingly controlled by Rufus. The characters of Dana Franklin and Alice Greenwood share several characteristics. It is important to look at the similarities and differences of these two characters in order to show the theme of the corruption of power. Alice is turned into a slave for her reckless behavior while Isaac is sold for attempting to escape. A few days later they’re caught, whipped, and beaten by dogs. Rufus attempts to break Alice and Isaac up, but he fails, because they run away together. Rufus has had an obsessive love for Alice ever since they were kids, therefore he becomes jealous when Alice does not return his love for her. Rufus makes Alice his slave, because she falls in love with a slave named Isaac James, he does not like this, because he loves her too. She later on becomes a slave of the Weylin plantation, after Rufus arranges for her to be his slave. Alice Greenwood is Dana’s great grandmother who is born a free black. When Kevin reaches out to help her, she disappears and gets transported to the antebellum south. On her twenty-sixth birthday, while unpacking and shelving her books, Dana starts to feel dizzy and nauseated. She’s a twenty-six year old writer who moves into a house in Altadena, California, with her white husband Kevin. Dana Franklin is an educated and progressive young black woman who lives in the modern world. There are many memorable characters, but the two that stand out are Dana and Alice. ‘Kindred’ is about a modern woman named Dana, who travels back in time to the antebellum south, to save her white slave owning ancestor Rufus Weylin, a white man who starts her bloodline. He begins to feel superior to the people and believes that he has the right to control their lives, this causes him to become malicious and oppressive, especially towards the slaves. This quote from the book ‘Kindred’ reveals the powerful theme of the corruption of power, after Rufus inherits the plantation, he gains a lot of power over the lives of many people. Rufus had caused her trouble and now he had been rewarded for it” (149). Now, somehow, Alice would have to accept not only the loss of her husband, but her own enslavement. “Rufus had done exactly what he said he would do: Gotten possession of the woman without having to bother her husband.

Kindred e book