Essays on Octavia Butler

Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower (1995) is as creative just like it is ironical if the current contemporary efforts around the globe are put into context. The Dystopian perception that dominates the novel makes it attractive to present and future readers. Several themes emerge from the story through prominent characters such as Lauren and Mrs. Sims. This essay offers analysis of various topics in the novel while laying emphasis on how the lack of effective community guidance and poor leadership can break or make a state. The essay delves into how poor leadership can erode past gains in ...

Literature

Dana, a modern black woman, was celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with Kevin, her husband, when she was snatched abruptly from her home in Altadena, Los Angeles, California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, a young white boy, was drowning, and Dana jumped into the lake and rescued him. It was as though Dana had been summoned to rescue the boy. Dana was repeatedly drawn back to the early nineteenth century, to the slave quarters, where her stay grew longer and longer with each transit. Each visit grew longer, more arduous and equally dangerous for her. This continued, until, it became ...

OCTAVIA BUTLER’S KINDRED

Kindred is a 1976 novel by Octavia butler. The novel is a combination of African American literature and science fiction. This is because the book tells the story of slavery from the perspective of 1976 woman. The novel also entails elements of fantasy as it involves time travel and of course acts of heroism by the time traveler. Dana is a young African American woman who has just moved into her new apartment with her husband Kevin in California. On the ninth of June 1976 as Dana is busy unpacking in their new apartment she suddenly gets dizzy. Her vision gets ...

In Octavia Butler’s Kindred, one cannot fail to see the intense representation of the African-American lifestyle in the decade of 1970s. Perhaps one of the greatest illustrations is through the character Dana. In the novel, the key protagonist Dana carries a journey back and forth through time. One can argue that Dana’s journey through the past is a reminder that while slavery would be in the past, its effects are still as raw as it were yesterday. Just like many African Americans, Dana was sure that she had ancestors who were affected by slavery; however, in order to ...

Like smallpox, influenza, Black Plague, malaria, AIDS, and typhus, the disease that Octavia Butler writes about in her science fiction is one that affects the American people in pandemic proportion. Octavia uses her story to illustrate the difficulties of life without written or spoken language. "Speech Sounds" is a science fiction short story by Octavia Butler. Its most recent publication was 2008 in a collection of short stories titled Wastelands; first it was published in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine in 1983; and in 1994 it won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story. The story is about an illness ...

Everyone in society has a role to play. It might be assigned by gender, class, socio-economics or race. It is evident that America, this big melting pot, has many such roles that they delegate to people on a daily basis. There is the role of men, women, children, workers, rich, poor, middle class, upper class, blacks and minorities and whites. In most situations, a woman is placed on the lowest rung on the socio-economic ladder. Her role has been defined for her as a girl and follows her through womanhood. In the case of the black woman, the role has always been one ...