Most of the people in the modern United States most likely wouldn’t be able to survive in an unknown environment because of how we lack survival instincts. Like Albert Einstein said, “Man owes his strength in the struggle for existence to the fact that he is a social animal.” Throughout Octavia Butler’s Kindred, the reader sees the main character Dana get herself into dangerous interactions due to her initial ignorance that she is time traveling back to the slavery era, where she works for a slave owner during her time in the antebellum South. Some of those moments are when Dana fights a slave owner to protect a freed slave who is married to a slave who escaped, another would be when Dana gets whipped for holding a spelling test that a younger slave took, also when Dana tries to pass for a slave owned by her …show more content…
Rufus was just a backstabbing double crosser who killed slaves just to get his way. The first time the reader met him he burned his drapes because he was mad at Mr. Weylin for hurting him for small actions he has done wrong. He spent a lot of money on a slave that was worth absolutely nothing which he only used her to sleep with her and the occasional rape. Later in the novel Rufus asks Dana to leave Kevin to live with him. But when Dana refuses he advances against her, but in the end Dana stabs Rufus to death.

Dana chose to make daring and dangerous decisions based on the situation the average person wouldn’t do. She didn’t double think about how her actions might come around in the future. Dana’s behavior shown in Kindred , by Octavia Butler, shows that when people are in dangerous situations, they usually make bad decisions. Partially because she doesn’t have the modern technology she had to rely on. Just like what Albert Einstein said, “I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interactions. The world will have a generation of