This week we ready stories from the author Octavia Butler. She is a Science Fiction writer, but the way she uses Sci-fi is different. She treats it as a way to allow us to see something about society now that we otherwise would not. To start off we ready The Evening, The Morning, and The Night. For this story Butler created a disease where called Duryea-Gode Disease, which was caused by a drug people took to cure their cancer. The disease would be passed down to their children. DGD as most called it, made people "drift" when they reached a certain age. That meant they could no longer control themselves, and just wanted to escape from their bodies so they would tear away at their skin. It is a very disturbing disease, but there is a place called Dilg that found a way to treat it. They would take in patients and have them focus on artwork or clay and it would keep their minds off mutilating themselves.
The next story was called Speech Sounds. This story Butler wanted to show her vision of the world in the future. It was a very scary picture she gave us. Again people had acquired a disease where they no longer had the ability to read or write. Some people could not even talk, or hear. In the story it is hard for the characters to communicate since everyone has different capabilities. Also during this time noone knows who to trust, it is a violent world now. Luckily at the end it was found that young children were able to speak, so somehow children born after the horrible break out of the disease were not affected. There was hope for the world after all.
Butlers stories are great in a sense that it is interesting to see what others picture the world to be like in the future. There is no one who truly knows how it will be, so to read her thoughts on the issue was very intriguing and makes us think.
No comments:
Post a Comment