“Bloodchild” by Octavia Butler

Octavia Butler

Octavia E. Butler studied at several universities and began her writing career in the 1970s. Her books blended elements of science fiction and African American spiritualism. For some writers, science fiction serves as means to delve into fantasy. But for Butler, it largely served as a vehicle to address issues facing humanity. It was this passionate interest in the human experience that imbued her work with a certain depth and complexity. 

" Bloodchild" (Link to the story):

https://onezero.medium.com/bloodchild-802bd34ce721

Comment

Bloodchild

               Bloodchild is one of the stories within a collection called Bloodchild and Other Stories by the Afro-American female writer Octavia Butler. It is a dystopian story set in an alien planet where the situation of humans has nothing to do with how things are on planet Earth.

              One of the things we realise from the very first moment in the text is the change of roles for humans in this other planet. While humans tend to be the ruling species, in Bloodchild, they lose this status, and what we see is them being something like pets for the aliens. They no longer are free, but subjected to the orders and wishes of the aliens. In fact, there is a sentence in the text which represents this idea of humans like pets/animals when T’Gatoi says to Gan “You know you aren’t animals to us.”, reinforcing a kind of owner/ slave role between humans and aliens. This is a reason why it has been said that is can be a way to approach this literary work through Post-humanism, because it shows humans being related and dependant on nature and the environment. Furthermore, due to the role they play, we can also argue they have attributes which are not uniquely human.

              However, were we to speak about roles we would have to mention the gender roles issue, which, in this particular story, is an extremely relevant topic. Not only does this happen between the humans in the story but also between aliens and humans. For instance, T’Gatoi, even though she is a female alien, represents features within the traditional role of men: she is not only physically dominant but she has also socio-political power. On the other hand, Gan, who is a male human being, is stuck in the traditional female’s role. He is in a position of inferiority compared to his partner (T’Gatoi) and, furthermore, he gets pregnant and carries T’Gatoi’s children, something which couldn’t be more characteristic of women, giving birth to children.

                 Besides, in Gan we see the particular circumstance of not being able to choose what to do or whom to be with. Together with this idea comes the issues of agency and oppression, which go together in Bloodchild, since the non-existence of the first one, automatically implies the second one. The fact that humans are not free to make choices in the most important aspects of their lives such as where to go, who to be involved with, and many others, means they lack agency to make decisions, thus leading them to not being free, that is, being oppressed.

             Given all the topics mentioned above, we can conclude that the dystopian world created by Octavia Butler is able to tackle issues and taboo subjects such as gender roles from a totally innovative perspective without losing an inch of effectiveness. The fact that there are aliens intermixed with humans does not make it difficult for the reader to see how Butler manages to subvert reality and roles in her peculiar alternative planet, placing the centre where we would normally find the margins, no matter if it is in terms of gender or power relationships.