Kindred

Dana employs logos in her argument to Kevin that he should leave all thoughts of revenge behind in order to quickly escape from the Weylin Plantation. Earlier, Dana and Kevin were separated when she inadvertently returned to 1976 without him. Upon her subsequent return to the past, she is brutally beaten on the orders of Tom Weylin for teaching another enslaved person how to read. Finally reunited with Dana, a furious Kevin asks her if Tom was responsible for her injuries: 

“Yes! Please forget it. I might have to live here again someday.” I shook my head. “Hate Weylin all you want to. I do. But don’t do anything to him. Let’s just get out of here.” 

“It was him then.” 

“Yes!” 

He turned slowly and stared toward the main house. His face was lined and grim where it wasn’t hidden by the beard [...]

 “Kevin, please, let’s just go.” 

He turned that same hard stare on me. 

“Do anything to them and I’ll suffer for it,” I whispered urgently. “Let’s go! Now!” 

He stared at me a moment longer [...] 

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Dana uses both logos and simile in her argument with Sam Jones, who notes to Dana that many other enslaved people on the Weylin Plantation distrust her both because of her seemingly close relationship to Rufus and because they falsely perceive her to be his mistress: 

“Some folks say …” 

“Hold on.” I was suddenly angry. “I don’t want to hear what ‘some folks’ say. ‘Some folks’ let Fowler drive them into the fields every day and work them like mules.” 

“Let him …?” 

“Let him! They do it to keep the skin on their backs and breath in their bodies. Well, they’re not the only ones who have to do things they don’t like to stay alive and whole. Now you tell me why that should be so hard for ‘some folks’ to understand?” 

He sighed. “That’s what I told them.”

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