The Rise of Function over Form in “Bloodchild”
Olivia Butler writes in the afterword of “Bloodchild” that the story is not about slavery. Using evidence from close reading to support her statement, Butler uses human form as a vehicle to show the mechanical function we serve to ourselves and others. The process of defamiliarization is able to reveal our passive nature and ultimately highlight the human allowance for manipulation. These behaviors are reflected upon by showing a lack of respect for human life, an unbalanced relationship between the Tlic and the humans, and Gan’s stripped cognitive process. The humans are identified as not respecting the intrinsic value of actually being human. “And toward the end of his life, when he should have been slowing down, he had married my mother and fathered four children” (Butler 3). Gan observes his father’s lifespan, but is not phased that he does not adhere
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“For several seconds, I stood in front of the closed door wondering why I suddenly felt afraid” (Butler 13). Gan feels something T’Gatoi didn’t imbue, so he knows that must be wrong. Gan now has a feeling he knows what “afraid” is, but he’s still unsure of how to express that. As readers, we identify with the human form and the learn of the mechanical function we serve to ourselves and others. The characters in “Bloodchild” behave as part of a process and show a lack of respect for their human qualities. As they desensitize their bodies, they allow the Tlic to engage with them in an unbalanced power relationship. The Tlic then interact with humans in a sheltering way and inhibit their thought process. Butler effectively conveys a notion that the way we treat ourselves dictates how others treat us. As the afterword said, “Bloodchild” is not about slavery; it’s about the relationships we take on because we allow ourselves to be
Detrimental stereotypes of minorities affect everyone today as they did during the antebellum period. Walker’s subject matter reminds people of this, as does her symbolic use of stark black and white. Her work shocks. It disgusts. The important part is: her work elicits a reaction from the viewer; it reminds them of a dark time in history and represents that time in the most fantastically nightmarish way possible. In her own words, Walker has said, “I didn’t want a completely passive viewer, I wanted to make work where the viewer wouldn’t walk away; he would either giggle nervously, get pulled into history, into fiction, into something totally demeaning and possibly very beautiful”. Certainly, her usage of controversial cultural signifiers serve not only to remind the viewer of the way blacks were viewed, but that they were cast in that image by people like the viewer. Thus, the viewer is implicated in the injustices within her work. In a way, the scenes she creates are a subversive display of the slim power of slave over owner, of woman over man, of viewed over
Butler plays out a scenario where she pushes the limits of what a human can love if we will be willing to make sacrifices for it. In “Bloodchild”, the protagonist, Gan, is partially raised by T’Gatoi and expresses his love by allowing her to use him as a host for her young. Through Gan’s actions, we are able to explore the idea that love has no boundaries; humans posses the capability to love even a parasitic alien life form. He is able to love T’Gatoi deeply enough to put his life at risk to bear her offspring. Love is also explored as a driving factor for self-sacrifice. In “Bloodchild”, Gan is faced with the decision to choose whether he will be a host body or allow T’Gatoi to lay her eggs into Gan’s older sister. While Gan’s older sister has always wanted to be a host body and would gladly agree, Gan knows the burden of the responsibility and will not let her go through the suffering. Out of love, Gan is willing to sacrifice his own wellbeing to ensure the safety of his family. Although the story may be gruesome, Butler is able to express her ideas of what love could look like as well as allow the reader to question their definition of
... slave and the cruelty of it. It’s important to literature because if the reader didn’t have the perspective of an actual slave, nobody would no what slavery actually did.
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.
The killings made by the slaves are saddening, too. Mutilating the whites and leaving their bodies lying is inhumane. It is such a shocking story. This book was meant to teach the reader on the inhumanity of slavery. It also gives us the image of what happened during the past years when slavery was practised.
It leaves the readers in an awe of silence as they deliberate and take in the powerful message of Kindred. Octavia Butler extablishes the site of trauma as adaptation and the cause as the inhumane act of slavery. Butler led her audience to question the equality not only of the past, but also the present. Developing and critically thinking about the world around us is the message that Butler wanted to convey. Are black people really free? Have blacks gained all the right that are reserved to them by constitutional law? Those answers are to be decided by each individual, but in the words of Jesse Williams, “the burdened of the brutalized is not to comfort the bystander. If you have no interest in the equal rights for black people, then do not make suggestions for those who do. Sit down.”
“For several seconds, I stood in front of the closed door wondering why I suddenly felt afraid” (Butler 13). Gan feels something T’Gatoi didn’t imbue, so he knows it must be wrong. Gan now has a feeling he knows what “afraid” is, but he’s still unsure of how to express that.
Throughout American history there have been many horrific tragedies and events that have impacted the country and its citizens but none can be compared to the evils of slavery. This “peculiar institution” was the fate of millions of African Americans who were subject to cruelty and contempt by their owners and society. They were treated as if they were animals whose only purpose in life was to please their white owners. It is shameful to know that it was condoned as a “necessary evil” and lasted for over two hundred years in North America. In the beginning, the public did not know the truth behind a slave’s life and the obstacles they endured and overcome to survive it. However, the reality is revealed in slave narratives of who lived during that time and wrote of their experiences. They tell the unheard truths of their masters’ cruelty and the extent it was given to all victims of slavery. In the slave narrative, Incident in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs, she focuses on the torment of being a female in slavery and why it was a much worse fate than being a male slave.
...details the transformation of a slave to a man. The institution of slavery defined a slave as less than human, and in order to perpetuate that impression, slaveholders forbade slaves the luxury of self definition. Therefore, when Douglass finally rejects the notions about his identity forced on him by slavery, and embraces an identity of his own creation, he has completed his journey from slave to man. He no longer defines himself in terms of the institution of slavery, but by his own thoughts regarding what his identity is. Through the metamorphosis of his identity as “an animal” to an author who fights for the abolitionist movement, Douglass presents his narrative not simply as a search for freedom, but also a search for himself.
Octavia Butler depicts how trauma not only affects the slave 's, but the slaveholders. Butler also brings attention to adaptation in her work by using a key literary devices such as foreshadowing to expose the trauma and the cause of that trauma.
Butler alludes to the significance of the problem by choosing the adjective kindred as a title for her work. Throughout this novel, familial bonds are built up, and at the very end get a perverse form because of gender and racial mistreatments. Throughout time, Dana witnesses families clinging to each other while they are treated unjustly. The veracity of this assertion is confirmed by examining scenes where the heroes stick together with their family because they are put in circumstances where it is impossible to escape racial violation. An example of such a case is the incident between the slave called Tess and Dana. After Weilyn sells the man for attempting to flirt with Dana, other slaves try their best to not displease their masters because they do not want to be separated from their family. This scene suggests that racial violation was so horrifying that African Americans could not even choose to live with their family, and it made them even more dependent on each
The history of slavery in America is one that has reminders of the institution and its oppressive state of African Americans in modern times. The slaveholders and the slaves were intertwined in a cruel system of oppression that did not yield to either side. The white slaveholders along with their black slaves became codependent amongst each other due to societal pressures and the consequences that would follow if slaves were emancipated with race relations at a high level of danger. This codependency between the oppressed and the oppressor has survived throughout time and is prevalent in many racial relationships. The relationship between the oppressed and the oppressor can clearly be seen in Octavia Butler’s novel Kindred. In this novel, the protagonist Dana Franklin, a black woman, time travels between her present day 1977 and the antebellum era of 19th century Maryland. Throughout her journeys back to the past, Dana comes in contact with her white ancestor, Rufus Weylin, a white slave owner and Dana ultimately saves his life and intermingles with the people of the time. Butler’s story of Dana and her relationship with Rufus and other whites as she travels between the past and the present reveals how slaveholders and slaves depended on and influenced one other throughout the slaves bondage. Ultimately, the institution of slavery reveals how the oppressed and the oppressor are co-dependent; they need each other in order to survive.
The cycle began with the Sethe’s unnamed mother, who was the first generation of slave in the family. As a result of being a field slave, she was unable to breast feed her daughter, leaving the responsibility of to Nan who also “had to nurse white babies” who “got it first” leaving Sethe with “no nursing milk to call [her] own” (236). Her mother remains nameless because it was in the mother language which Sethe did not take part in as she was born, on a boat, into slavery. It was because Sethe knew “what it is to be without milk that belongs to you” and having to “fight and holler for it, and to have so little left” that she makes an extra effort to “get that milk to her baby girl.” (97) It was after Schoolteacher’s nephews milked her that there was not enough milk left from Nan’s sparse feedings for Sethe to accommodate her children.
By being called “slaves”, the twelve hanged, desperate and angered maids have their social rights, their political rights, and their economic rights stripped from them relieving them of their duties as human beings, leaving them to rot on Earth and in Hell. By using the words “cold blood”, the author illustrates the murderer as being emotionally detached and having the cruel intent to torture the maids and have them embarrassed and ridiculed. The fact that the attorney only has to mention that it was “within his rights” to kill women without a blink of an eye shows the reader the patriarchal world these desolate souls had to live on, get r...
Unlike in "Bloodchild" in "Amnesty" the violent collective power against the protagonists are humans. In the short story Noah is questioned and tortured to receive information about her experience with the communities. Obstruction of power is more painful when induced by those you trust as Noah reflects when she states, "The only difference between the way they treated me in the way the aliens treated me during the early use of my captivity was the so-called human beings knew they were hurting me questioned me day and night threatened me dragged me" (170). Butler uses Kinetic imagery when stating "dragged" to trigger a physical sensation. (QR/LD) Butler also suggests the reader to think about the people you believe you should trust the most should not be relied on. (CW) Similar to in "Bloodchild" Butler describes a multitude of emotions when she states, "Remembering humiliation fear hopelessness exhaustion bitterness sickness pain they had never beaten her badly[...] but it went on and on"(171). Butler's of grim Tone emphasizes the listed multitude of emotions similar to "Bloodchild" (QR/LD) Repetition of unjust actions causes powerless to completely lose hope and take extreme measures. (QR/CW) Noah provides a contrasting narrative of restraint of power, still pertaining to the common theme of multitude of emotions and self