With everything in life, practice makes perfect. You learn to ride a bike without training wheels over time. You perfect algebra skills as you practice and accumulate knowledge on how to execute the problems. It takes years of culinary school to learn to be a master chef and then more time to perfect each recipe. Everything in life takes time to learn and do well including things frowned upon by the general population such as beatings and killings. In the book Kindred by Octavia Butler, Rufus and others who have violent personalities by the end of the novel were not naturally so. Violence is a learned behavior, first observed, then enforced by others, perfected by practice, and executed in an environment supportive of the actions. .
After two months of living in the harsh life of a slave, Dana was still unable to understand the violence of the plantation. She had witnessed and received whippings and beatings but even after experiencing them first hand she could not grasp the inhumanity of it and certainly could not picture herself performing these painful actions. "Stories of beatings, starvation, filth, disease, torture, every possible degradation The books depressed me, scared me ante bellum whites had known quite a bit about torture-quite a bit more than I ever wanted to know" (p. 117). Two months do not equal a lifetime. There is no way that a two month period can give anyone the observation, the practice, the experience to even understand such actions let alone execute them. At this point in the book, Dana had no reason to be violent. .
After Dana's next trip that lasted a few more months, violence began making its way into her life. She had more time to observe violence and more time to be a target of violence. "The knife was large and easily as deadly as the switchblade I had lost, but I wouldn't be able to use it as quickly, and would have a harder time surprising an opponent with it I dropped the knife into the bag" (p.
