Kindred
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50 free Kindred trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Octavia Butler's Kindred sends its narrator Dana from her home in 1976 back again and again to a plantation before the Civil War, where her survival is tied to a slaveholder's son named Rufus. Few novels bring history so close, which is why it is so widely assigned in classrooms and chosen by book clubs and community-wide programs. This quiz follows the story section by section: the prologue and The River, The Fire, The Fall, The Fight, The Storm and the final chapter, then the epilogue. Along the way it tests what you know about Dana and Kevin, Rufus and Alice, Tom and Margaret Weylin, and the people enslaved on the Weylin place, before turning to Butler's own life, her research and the screen and page adaptations. It works as a chapter check for students, a refresher before a class discussion or book club, and a challenge for anyone who finished the novel and wants to see how closely they followed it. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In the prologue of Octavia Butler's Kindred, which part of her body has Dana lost on her final trip home?
Her left arm
Her left arm is crushed into the wall of her house at the spot where Rufus was gripping it. Butler said she could not let Dana come back whole, because slavery did not leave people whole.
Q 02In Kindred, Dana is pulled back in time to the Weylin plantation on the Eastern Shore of which state?
Maryland
Maryland is where Butler went for field research, wandering Talbot County on the Eastern Shore before writing. Dana learns where she is on her second trip, which lands her there around 1815.
Q 03On her first trip to the past in Kindred, Dana saves the young, red-haired Rufus from which danger?
Drowning
Drowning nearly kills Rufus as a small boy, and Dana wades into the river and revives him on the bank. His mother repays her by screaming and hitting her, sure the stranger is killing him.
Q 04What must Dana feel before the dizziness in Kindred will carry her from the plantation back to 1976?
Terror of dying
Terror of dying is the only thing that sends Dana home, just as mortal danger to Rufus is what summons her. As she grows used to plantation violence, even a whipping stops being enough.
Q 05When Kevin travels to the past with Dana in Kindred, what does he pretend to be to keep her safe?
Her owner
Her owner is the part Dana herself tells Kevin to play, moments after Rufus reacts with violent disbelief to hearing they are married. The act works well enough that Tom Weylin invites Kevin to dinner.
Q 06On which national holiday in 1976 does Dana make her last journey to the Weylin plantation in Kindred?
Independence Day
Independence Day of the Bicentennial year is when Dana is pulled back for the last time. Scholars see the date as Butler tying one woman's ordeal to the nation's unfinished history.
Q 07Which NASA mission's 2021 Mars touchdown site was named in honor of Kindred author Octavia Butler?
Perseverance
Perseverance set down at a spot NASA christened Octavia E. Butler Landing. She already had an asteroid and a mountain on Pluto's moon Charon carrying her name.
Q 08Octavia Butler first planned for the time-traveling hero of Kindred to be what, before deciding it would not work?
A man
A man, Butler concluded, would be seen as dangerous and killed before he could learn the rules of submission. A woman, she reasoned, might be just as dangerous but would not be perceived that way.
Q 09Which occupation do Dana and her husband Kevin share in Kindred, despite both of their families disapproving of it?
Writer
Writer is what both of them are, and Dana supports her fiction with minimum-wage temp jobs. Butler did the same, living on such work until 1978.
Q 10In the final chapter of Kindred, what does Dana use to kill Rufus when he attacks her in the attic?
A knife
A knife she had brought from 1976 is what Dana grabs, and she stabs Rufus twice. He dies still gripping her, and the journey home that follows costs her dearly.
Q 11Which personal occasion is Dana marking in Kindred on the June day she is first pulled into the past?
Her birthday
Her birthday, her twenty-sixth, is the day the dizziness first takes Dana. Critic Angelyn Mitchell reads the timing as pointed: the journey from liberty into bondage begins on the day she was born.
Q 12What are Dana and Kevin doing in their new house in Kindred when she first grows dizzy and vanishes?
Unpacking books
Unpacking books is the chore Dana is in the middle of when the room blurs. To Kevin she is gone only a few seconds before reappearing on the other side of the room.
Q 13In Kindred, Dana and Kevin have just left an apartment in which city when she is first pulled into the past?
Q 21After Alice and her husband Isaac are caught in Kindred, traders carry the mutilated Isaac off toward which state?
Mississippi
Mississippi is where the traders are headed with Isaac, whose ears were cut off as punishment. Alice, born free, is beaten, set upon by dogs and enslaved for helping him run.
Q 22In a flashback in Kindred, where do Dana and Kevin marry with no family present after relatives on both sides object?
Las Vegas
Las Vegas is where they go to marry after Kevin's sister and Dana's uncle both object. Only her aunt favors the match, on the grounds that any children would have lighter skin.
Q 23In Kindred's chapter The Fight, which promise does Dana discover Rufus has not kept just before she runs away?
Los Angeles
Los Angeles is where the apartment was; the couple's new house stands a few miles away in a suburb. The 2022 television version keeps the city but shifts the present day to 2016.
Q 14On Dana's second trip in Kindred, what has young Rufus set alight in a bedroom to get back at his father?
The drapes
The drapes go up because Tom Weylin beat Rufus for stealing a dollar, and the boy wanted revenge. Dana smothers the flames, then learns from him that she has landed in about 1815.
Q 15In Kindred's chapter The Fire, what name is given to the white riders who whip Alice's father for lacking a pass?
Patrollers
Patrollers were gangs of young white men charged with maintaining order among the enslaved. Dana watches them drag the man from his family's cabin, and one comes back and attacks her.
Q 16In The Fall, the Kindred chapter where Kevin first travels with Dana, what injury has Rufus suffered?
A broken leg
A broken leg has Rufus writhing on the ground when the couple arrive. His father's first reaction on reaching the boy is to wonder gruffly how much it will cost.
Q 17In Kindred, what do Dana and Kevin show the injured Rufus to prove that they have come from the future?
Dated coins
Dated coins from Kevin's pockets are the proof, their years far in Rufus's future. The boy promises to keep the pair's secret.
Q 18Which job does Tom Weylin offer Kevin in Kindred, letting the couple stay on the plantation for weeks?
Tutor
Tutor to Rufus is the post, which gives the couple food and shelter while the boy recovers. It also keeps Dana close to the child her own family line depends on.
Q 19Tom Weylin whips Dana at the end of The Fall in Kindred after catching her doing what?
Teaching a boy to read
Teaching a boy to read with a stolen book is what Tom Weylin walks in on, and he drags Dana outside and whips her. The beating sends her home before Kevin can reach her, stranding him for five years.
Q 20Which classic adventure novel is the first that Dana reads aloud to the bedridden Rufus in Kindred?
Robinson Crusoe
Robinson Crusoe comes from a library that had belonged to Tom Weylin's first wife. Rufus, whose schoolteacher had called him stupid, would rather listen than struggle through a page himself.
Mailing her letters to Kevin
Mailing her letters to Kevin is what Rufus swore to do, but Alice finds out he never sent them and tells Dana. Her escape ends when Rufus and his father ride her down and Tom Weylin whips her.
Q 24Which enslaved woman in Kindred betrays Dana's escape attempt and is beaten by the other women as a warning?
Liza
Liza resents Dana for nursing Alice back to health, because Alice then took over her job and Liza was sent to the fields. The other women treat the betrayal as one against the whole community.
Q 25Which virtue does Rufus claim for his father Tom Weylin in Kindred, even though Tom whips and sells people?
Keeping his word
Keeping his word is the one virtue Rufus claims for his father, who honors a promise whatever the color of the person he made it to. Tom also lets Dana choose whether to stay or go looking for Kevin.
Q 26What did Kevin grow as a disguise during his five years stranded in the past in Kindred, after helping people escape?
A beard
A beard hid Kevin from a lynch mob after he helped enslaved people get away. Dana is shocked to find that the gray-bearded rider who comes for her is her husband, his face now lined and scarred.
Q 27In The Storm chapter of Kindred, which modern medicine does Dana give the feverish Rufus, suspecting malaria?
Aspirin
Aspirin from her packed bag is all Dana has to bring the fever down. Rufus survives but stays weak for weeks.
Q 28What kills Tom Weylin in Kindred, a death his son blames on Dana because she could not save him?
A heart attack
A heart attack fells Tom Weylin, leaving Rufus master of the plantation and of his father's debts. He soon begins selling people to pay them.
Q 29How does Rufus punish Dana in Kindred after his father's death, before relenting when she collapses?
Labor in the cornfields
Labor in the cornfields is the sentence, and by the time Rufus changes his mind Dana has collapsed and the overseer is whipping her. He then assigns her to care for his ailing mother.
Q 30In Kindred, which standard medical treatment of the era kills two of the young children Alice bears Rufus?
Bloodletting
Bloodletting was the doctor's customary answer to illness, and Rufus forced Alice to allow it. Of their first three children, only a boy named Joe survived.