A Harsh Critique on Hierarchy and Difference
Octavia Butler’s trilogy Lilith’s Brood contains a myriad of characters who would be marked as “different” in contemporary American society, whether it is because of their race, gender, sex, or species. Their differences are often the catalyst for conflict between others who see themselves as more normal and, therefore, better and higher ranked in the human hierarchy. Butler’s disdain for human hierarchical tendencies is clear in Lilith’s Brood as she often calls human intelligence and hierarchy “the human contradiction”. Using the protagonists Lilith, Akin, and Jodahs, Butler criticizes the misconceptions formulated about race, sex, and gender and, through their interactions with others, underlines the illogical harassment that often derives from the fear of what we do not yet understand.
Because of her sex and gender, resisters found it easy to thrust Lilith into the role of a scapegoat. Because the resistors essentially only “want someone to focus their frustration on”, they lash out on the one person who is most visibly different, from her physical characteristics to her enhanced abilities (147). They never really stop to try and understand why Lilith chooses to, in their eyes, betray humankind. Lilith learns that, in order to eventually return to Earth, she has no choice but to be the mediator between humans and the Oankali. Unfortunately, the humans abhor Lilith for choosing this position. They see her power and believe that “she was not human, or not human enough” (180). Their fear and uneasiness has them cast Lilith as an obvious “other”. Lilith’s physical differences, coupled with the humans’ resentment towards Lilith’s status as the “mother” of the group, fuel the growing...
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...erous to humans as a whole. Although João’s body accepts Jodahs, his mind stops him from total acceptance, resulting silent hatred during the day but acceptance at night. Jodahs is not male and yet becomes a victim to homophobia due to lack of understanding. Jodahs illustrates the struggles of an intersex and demonstrates the isolation one feels as a victim of difference.
Octavia Butler’s Lilith’s Brood has characters Lilith, Akin, and Jodahs who are all different in some way. The intolerance they face paints humans as beings who are incapable of appropriately handling difference. Their responses to these different people are a clear allusion to the injustices others have faced in the past. Through these characters, Butler criticizes the human predisposition to mark and oppress those who are different and implores humans to become more accepting and understanding
When studying patterns and trends in society, some sociologists refer to the unequal distribution of property, power, and prestige around the world as social stratification. This stratification forms the basis of the divisions of society and categorizations of people. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Eudora Welty’s “A Worn Path,” Gilman and Welty both explore the implications of a stratified society divided on gender and race, respectively, on their protagonist’s psyches.
In Gail Bederman’s, Manliness & Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States 1880-1917, Bederman asserts, manhood, race, and gender are three cultural issues that are inseparable and have shaped our American and human history (4-5). Bederman supports her theory using the journalistic works of those effected, political giants using these social constructions for personal gain, and through pop culture during the period being analyzed.
The human brain has great power and abilities, some of which we fail to realize it uses every day of our lives. This can be exemplified by our brain’s ability to create mental shortcuts by assigning labels to what is around us. Although this skill is typically good and helpful to us, “[it] can also be extremely damaging, especially when it comes to categorizing people” (Kaufman). This statement’s validity true enough that novelists have noticed and incorporated it into their work to raise awareness. Different authors have incorporated this into their work such as Barbara Kingsolver and John Irving. The novel that will be analyzed specifically is by Octavia Butler called Kindred. It is a 1979 novel of an independent, African-American woman who travels back through time to save her kin from death during the time of slavery. The analysis of this novel will present examples of labeling, the rejection of labeling, and real life commentary as it
This proposal will identify the social construction of gender roles for women as the “other” in the primary source writings of Simone De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex and Arrogant Beggar by Anzia Yezierska. Beauvoir’s Second Sex provides a primary source evaluation of the historical distortion of women’s role in society as the “other” through patriarchal traditions that have no basis in genetics or science. Yezierska’s experiences as a Jewish woman in New York “workhouses” define the subjective gender roles assigned to women as being submissive and “invisible” in patriarchal American culture. These two primary sources define the subjective and non-scientific distortion of women‘s roles as the “other” in patriarchal European culture as a historical
What defines an individual’s racial characteristics? Does an individual have the right to discriminate against those that are “different” in a specific way? In Octavia Butler’s works, which are mostly based on themes that correlate to one another, she influences the genre and fiction in ways that bring light to the problems of societies history. Through Kindred and the Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler examines themes of community, racial identification, and racial oppression through the perspective of a black feminist. In each novel, values and historical perspective show the hardships that individuals unique to an alien world have to face. Through the use of fictional works, Butler is able to delve into historical themes and human conditions, and with majority of works under the category of science fiction, Butler is able to explore these themes through a variety of settings. This essay will discuss two of Butler’s popular works, Kindred and the Parable of Sower, and will interpret the themes of women, race, independence, and power throughout the two novels.
Butler effectively places the Oankali biology, culture, and way of life as the norm, through Lilith 's need, as well as the other 's, to accept them in order to survive, in turn constructing the humans as the marginal demographic. Butler 's decision to make humans abnormal helps the reader call into question what we deem as human characteristics and human nature, because we begin to see how we both align and separate ourselves from each other based upon biology and
Throughout history, humans have gravitated towards hierarchies to avoid conflict. Many cultures have accepted factors that determine status, the most common being race, gender, birth status, wealth, language or education. Mrs. Turpin grapples daily with a similar hierarchy in “Revelation,” by Flannery O'Connor based on the postbellum American South. Her hierarchy consists of a confusing array of status indicators that she is unable to keep straight in her mind. Mrs.Turpin is frustrated by her world because it is not simply black and white, but instead a spectrum of colors and stereotypes indicating status. All her tools of judgement are seen shifting and changing which upsets the hierarchy and disturbs Mrs. Turpin. Flannery O'Connor wrote this
My first reaction to Egalia’s Daughters, by Gerd Brantenberg, was something like "WHAT is this". I was immediately very confused, and had no idea what this author was writing about. In fact, I felt as though I opened the book to the middle of a story, and became turned off by the whole experience. It took about three chapters, and someone’s help, until I started to read the book understandably, with ease, and began to enjoy the world I was entering. It became very apparent that I would have to detach myself from all that I thought I knew about gender, and simply allow myself to take in the message Brantenberg was trying to convey. As soon as I began to understand what I was reading, I found myself thoroughly engaged by both the story and the sociological aspects of both the Egalian, and my societies social constructions of gender. Although I was aware, to some degree of the socialization of gender in our society, having not taken any feminist or women’s studies courses, I was not familiar with how much gender is ingrained in our culture, language, government, identities, etc. This book truly brings forth those ideals by expressing the opposite of what we know in our society to be true concerning the socialization of gender.
The gender binary of Western culture dichotomizes disgendered females and males, categorizing women and men as opposing beings and excluding all other people. Former professor of Gender Studies Walter Lee Williams argues that gender binarism “ignores the great diversity of human existence,” (191) and is “an artifact of our society’s rigid sex-roles” (197). This social structure has proved detrimental to a plethora of people who fall outside the Western gender dichotomy. And while this gender-exclusive system is an unyielding element of present day North American culture, it only came to be upon European arrival to the Americas. As explained by Judith Lorber in her essay “Night to His Day: The Social Construction of Gender”, “gender is so pervasive in our society we assume it is bred into our genes” (356). Lorber goes on to explain that gender, like culture, is a human production that requires constant participation (358).
The purpose of this essay is to highlight the issues that Dana, a young African-American writer, witness as an observer through time. As a time traveler, she witnesses slavery and gender violation during 19th and 20th centuries and examines these problems in terms of how white supremacy disrupts black familial bonds. While approaching Octavia Butler’s novel Kindred, this essay analyses how gender and racial violation relates to familial bonds through Dana 's experience in Tom Weylin 's plantation. It is argued that Butler uses pathos, ethos, and in rare cases logos, to effectively convey her ideas of unfairness during the American slavery, such as examining the roots of Weylin’s cruel attitude towards black people, growing conflicts between
“What makes for a livable world?”, and what constitutes the human?”, are two questions Judith Butler inquires in her opening paragraph and throughout her writing that determine the mindsets of individuals throughout our society. Both of these arguments are answered differently, by different persons, within different cultures, yet play a dramatic role in Butler’s view of herself, the LGBT community, and most of all, every other human
In certain countries such as the U.S, people discriminate against others to a certain extent based off their gender, race, and sexuality. Butler states that “to be a body is to be given over to others even as a body is “one own,” which we must claim right of autonomy” (242). Gays and Lesbians have to be exposed to the world because some of them try to hide their identity of who they truly are because they are afraid of how others are going to look at them. There are some who just let their sexuality out in the open because they feel comfortable with whom they are as human beings and they don’t feel any different than the next person. The gender or sexuality of a human being doesn’t matter because our bodies’ will never be autonomous because it is affected by others around us. This is where humans are vulnerability to violence and aggression. In countries across the globe, violence and attack are drawn towards tran...
Bloodchild by Octavia Butler is seen as a story about the relationship between alien oppressors and a group oppressed humans. It has also been described as a love story between the human narrator and the chief alien. In her afterword, she describes “Bloodchild” as “a love story between two very different beings,” “a coming of age story” and a “pregnant man story.”(Hardy) However, when one comparing Butler’s “Bloodchild” to Simone De Beauvoir’s essay “The second sex”, similarities surrounding the social issues of gender inequality arise. The circumstances of the narrator mirror social issues affecting modern women. Bloodchild by Octavia Butler examines the dynamics of power between the sexes; by switching the gender roles in the story, she show how women are marginalized in society.
...present powerful characters, while females represent unimportant characters. Unaware of the influence of society’s perception of the importance of sexes, literature and culture go unchanged. Although fairytales such as Sleeping Beauty produce charming entertainment for children, their remains a didactic message that lays hidden beneath the surface; teaching future generations to be submissive to the inequalities of their gender. Feminist critic the works of former literature, highlighting sexual discriminations, and broadcasting their own versions of former works, that paints a composite image of women’s oppression (Feminist Theory and Criticism). Women of the twenty-first century serge forward investigating, and highlighting the inequalities of their race in effort to organize a better social life for women of the future (Feminist Theory and Criticism).
In our present era, there is no doubt that the evolution of women's rights has come a long way. It is in the Western Culture that these values for which women have fought for generations, are in conflict with Genesis 1-3. The events that occur in this "creation story" are crucial in that it begins when God creates man in his own likeness and man is given domination over all living things. The significance is the prominence given to men; God is male and his most important creation is male. The biblical account underlines the supremacy of man while making it clear that women play an inferior role. Furthermore, the biblical account also describes how woman are disobedient and yield to temptation, the result of which is the expulsion of both Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. In the poem "How Cruel is the Story of Eve", Stevie Smith's castigation towards the biblical story of Eve demonstrates how women have been victims of despair and suffering since the beginning of time. She holds it responsible for cruelty towards women in history, she implies that the values derived from the story of Eve were forced upon women without choice, and finally, she challenges the authenticity of the religious tale on a whole. Without a doubt, women have fallen victim to an untrue, religious tale from the beginning of time, and the poem is an outcry representing the suffering of women throughout history.