Abstract
This paper endeavors to explore the slave narrative in Octavia Estelle Butler’s Kindred by its writing skills. As Octavia E. Butler is not so famous in China, this paper introduces her and her works in the first part. Then this paper analyses how Butler uses time and characters to construct the novel. Last, it analyses how Butler uses realism to describe the plantation life of antebellum Maryland and the poignancy that Dana encountered in the time traveling. This paper aims to explore how Butler combines constructivism and realism together to highlight the theme of the novel.
Keywords   Kindred   slave narrative   constructivism   realism


本论文拟将从小说的创作手法来展现奥克塔维娅•埃斯特尔•巴特勒的小说《家族》中的奴役现象。由于奥克塔维娅•埃斯特尔•巴特勒在国内还不太有人熟悉，所以第一部分先简单介绍她的生平以及作品。第二部分简单介绍构建主义之后，分析小说作者如何从时间和人物来构造小说从而描述奴役现象，第三部分介绍写实手法后，分析小说作者如何运用写实手法来描述战前马里兰的奴隶种植园景象和女主人公在穿越到黑奴制度下的马里兰所遇见的辛酸事。本文旨在探讨小说作者如何通过构建主义和写实手法相结合来突出奴役现象这一主题。
关键词  家族   奴役现象   建构主义   写实手法

Octavia Estelle Butler (1947-2006) was born in California. Her father died when she was a little baby. She was raised by her mother and grandmother who worked as housemaid to support the family. Her grandmother told her stories of unrelenting labor in the cane fields of Louisiana while raising seven children, so Butler was aware of black women’s difficulty to survive. She was very shy and regarded herself as a daydreamer when she was in school. Later, she was diagnosed as being dyslexic. In order to overcome dyslexic, she began to write when she was 10. At the age of 12, she became interested in science fiction writing after watching a bad science fiction movie called Devil Girl from Mars. She thought: “I could write a better story than that.” (Sela, 2009)About her writing, she says “I write about people who do extraordinary things. It just turned out that it was called science fiction.”