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"Octavia Butler's Aha Moment"

Summary on the article

The following essay explains what I believe Martha felt when she met God. In “Octavia Butler’s Aha! Moment” Octavia’s perspective changed at the age of three when she locked eyes with a cocker spaniel named “Baba”. She realized Baba was not just alive but aware, and it peaked her curiosity to learn about Baba. Afterward, Octavia became fascinated with the emotional stories everyone's eyes showed. "Eyes always mattered to me after that. Eyes scared me or drew my interest. Eyes reminded me that someone else was there." The character Martha is also fascinated with God and instead of being scared she felt comfort and warmth. Of course, it is God, after all, but I feel Octavia wrote a little about her personality into Martha. This is why I think this article helps with my research essay. 

"Theorizing fear: Octavia E. Butler and the realist Utopia"

Summary

This source is showing the pros and cons of a human having some of God's power. It goes into little detail describing Martha's life and what she had before she was chosen. It also mentions one of the human emotions. That emotion is love. At first, Martha doesn't want anything to do with God's mission. However, she changes her mind when she realizes what If someone with a terrible personality and ambitions had God's power. You can see the struggle between mind and heart and how it affect the choice she will make in the end. She also finds out what would become of her and her career as a writer. 

Quotes

• martha is not just given power but the power (potentially) to do good. 
• Martha does not want this power, and she does not want God intruding in her pocket of peace that she herself has worked hard to make. 
• She has been asked to change humanity

"Reflection on Octavia E Butler"

Summary

In the next source, it shows a tribute to Octavia and a connection is formed between Martha the character in the book and Butler. This is established when Martha has the same profession as Butler and lives in the same city as Butler. Also, Octavia's home is included in the story. The whole time Butler was imagining herself and wondering what she would do in a situation like this. I use this article because it proves that there's people like Octavia who can build a better world through their science-fiction novels.

Quotes

• wish to show that Butler, through Martha, indicates that the writer is given great responsibility: a bit of god-like power in the ability to create.
• Butler imagines empowering herself when she presents Martha as a science fiction writer granted the god-given ability to rewrite humanity as she sees fit. 
• Martha and god ultimately inhabit a dream vision of the mundane Seattle reality Martha and Butler share. Martha's small house, a mirror image of Butler's home, becomes a Borgesian juxtaposition of sameness and difference. 

"What is it Like to be a God"

Summary

In the first source, it shows how suffering is something a God doesn't have. To be more specific..emotions. A God cannot understand the problems of humans if they cannot comprehend the emotions that people face daily.  The ability to understand others is something only humans seem to have. This can be used for good or evil. However, It depends on the type of person the human is. This article gives reports on what made a God. There were assumptions that God suffered just like humans.  In the Book of Martha, God realized he needed help from his own creation and decides to choose a human to possibly make life better for humanity.

Quotes

• Many people would not intuitively associate the emotion of divine anger with divine suffering since it suggests the expression of power.
• A third manner in which a god like Yhwh was assumed to suffer was through the experience of pity or compassion. Pity originally meant feeling for others, particularly feelings of sadness
• Aristotle argued that, before an agent can feel pity for another, the agent must have an idea of what it is like to experience suffering of a similar type.  

"Crossover"

Summary

In Crossover, a story is told about a woman named Jane, who is currently living in one of the worst places to live in. Instead, of going to buy food she walks to the liquor store and just as she walks out. A man with a scar from her past resurfaces. Igniting old emotions and Ultimately, in the end, a choice is made.

Quotes

• She began to cry and she was not aware when the crying became screaming. "Get out of here! Leave me alone! Leave me alone!

"Amnesty"

Summary

For centuries, humans were the center of the universe. Living on a planet we called earth, which we soon called home. But that all changed, when the communities invaded earth and very quickly pushed the humans from their pedestal. The communities wanted to know more about the humans and started to abduct people, and the first wave was introduced to experiments and punishments. Then, in the second wave of abductees, a girl named Noah Cannon was experimented on and luckily, the communities knew enough by this point not to kill her by accident. Noah described the communities as a bush with branches and twigs sticking out. Also, their way of communication is an electrical wave through their bodies. Once, the communities had a blueprint on humans. They started to create a form of communication with each other. Sign language seemed to be the way to do it. After all, for some odd reason, the communities loved to see the humans move their bodies; They even took a liking to some of the human sports. Afterwards, jobs as translators were offered to the humans and this gave Noah a chance to work, and decide whether to help bring peace to the community and Humans or get revenge on the creatures that tortured her people.

Quotes

• "Do these... these things... actually understand that we're intelligent?" 
• "I want to vote for peace between your people and mine by telling the truth. I don't know whether my efforts will do any good, in the long run, but I have to try." 
• "And what? You forgive them for what they did do?" 

"The Book of Martha"

Summary

In The book of Martha, humankind is slowly killing themselves and everything around them. Their way of living is destructible. Now, God has to choose somebody to figure out a way to save or, at least, make life a little better. The woman whom God chose above everyone else is Martha. A forty-eight-year-old woman living in Seatle, Washington who makes a career out of writing novels, and is probably one of the many reasons why she is chosen for the mission. The story begins when Martha was finishing a story, and stopped because she was thirsty, hungry and it was Four in the morning. So, she walked into the kitchen and next thing she knows, she's in front of God. Of course, their first encounter is weird, confusing, terrifying and filled with a lot of questions. God explains to her why she is here and what she must now do. However, Martha is terrified of possibly damaging humankind rather than saving it. Eventually, she comes up with an Idea that could possibly work.

Quotes

• "I have a great deal of work for you" He said. 
• "Won't you fix it so I don't hurt or kill anyone? I mean, I'm new at this. I could do something stupid and wipe people out and not even know I'd done it until afterward." 

• "She looked at her hands, then at him. Something had occurred to her as he spoke, but it seemed both too simple and too fantastic, and to her personally, perhaps too painful." 

"Butlers Biography"

Octavia Butler was born on June 22, 1947, in Pasadena, California. She was the only child of Octavia Margaret Guy a housemaid. Octavia’s mother was exposed to humiliation such as, being disrespected for her Race-Black. Octavia was living in the present time of segregation, where people would be separated for the color of their skin, such as attending school, riding on the bus or drinking from a water fountain. Her father, Laurice James Butler died when she was only seven, which lead her to grow up alongside with her grandmother in a strict household. With Octavia being six feet, shy and dyslexic she put all her focus on reading books, identifying that science fiction was the right genre for her, creating her own stories, and at last publishing them. She wrote science fiction in order to portray the truth of the world and yet adding “what if this was really true” to a story. Hence the book Kindred, interprets the life of an African-American women who goes back in time to save a white slave owner, whom was her own ancestor. As she writes this book, she doesn’t alter Blacks life back then, she goes all the way to highlight how and what the Black community was associated with. She adds science fiction to it, to give it that special feel of living now-the present time and back then where it was a horrifying time for men and women. She writes science fiction novels to show the world that even though life situations may seem impossible, they can still be if you use your imaginative mind, what seems not to be normal to us can be normal for others. Aliens taking over, diseases, time traveling, and more could actually happen or just maybe has happened and we just don’t know about it. Science fiction can be as real as you want it to be.

Wikipedia contributors. "Octavia E. Butler." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 11 Mar. 2016. Web. 22 Mar. 2016.

"Bloodchild"

Summary

Octavia E. Butler is showing us a fictional world where humans and aliens co-exist; Both sides needing one another to live and prosper. The human males are impregnated and give birth to the Tlics babies. AKA worms. It is a surgical, gruesome and just weird procedure that involves a man getting his stomach cut open by their caretaker and starts to deliver the babies. Before, it starts to eat the man from the inside and soon eat the entire body. The story starts with a Tlic who's name is T'Gatoi, and she is part of a political faction that created the Preserve. The Preserve stops any Tlic from using the Terrans anytime they wanted to. Instead, Terran families are sold to the rich and powerful. With new titles, the Terrans were now considered necessities, status symbols, and independent people. Thanks to T'Gatoi and her political faction, it is the only thing standing in the way from letting her people take advantage of the Terrans. T'Gatoi is part of a family of four children and a mother. Gan and Qui are the males of the family and Xua and Hoi are their sisters and Lein is their mother. Lien promised T'Gatoi she would give her one of her children rather than to a stranger. Xua liked  T'Gatoi and wanted to give birth to the babies. But Lien and T'Gatoi agreed it would be better if Gan took her place. A diagram was shown to him at a young age by T'Gatoi to show him how it would happen. However, when a man comes to their doorstep asking for help because he couldn’t reach the call box. Gan, sees first hand how Horrifying and scary giving birth is. Soon, he must decide to either go with the plan or let the Tlic take Xua instead.

Quotes

• "Shall I go to Xuan Hoa?"  "Yes!"Hoa wanted it. Let her have it. She hadn't had to watch Lomas. She'd be proud... Not Terrified."
• "Gatoi, no Terran ever sees a birth that goes right. All we see is N'Tilic---pain and terror and maybe death."

• "It was a little frightening to know that only she stood between us and that desperation that could so easily swallow us."

"Speech Sounds."

Summary

In Speech Sounds, society is destroyed by an illness which impairs human language and speech. Allowing only gestures and silly movements as means of communication. Now, the remaining survivors are struggling to find any meaning to live. Just like the main character of the story. Valerie Rye. She was a teacher at UCLA teaching history and freelance writing. Losing her children, husband, and family relatives to the illness were too much for her. She soon felt alone and took a bus to Pasadena or, at least, tried too. A fight breaks out in the bus, then another and another. Forcing Rye to get off the bus at the next stop. A man with a beard and dressed in LAPD uniform comes to the rescue. He throws tear gas in the bus forcing everyone out. The cop sees rye and used silly gestures. Rye eventually goes with him and for a moment, she doesn't feel alone. His name is Obsidian. Moments later the couple bumped into a domestic violence dispute and Obsidian went into hero mode and tried to save the woman. Only this time, he is shot and dies. Now, Rye is all alone again, surrounded by three dead bodies. Until two kids approach the body of the woman and Rye realized she can't leave two children on their own. Especially when they can speak.   

Quotes

• “Don’t talk,” the little boy said to her. There was no blurring or confusing of sounds. Both children had spoken and Rye had understood. The boy looked at the dead murderer and moved further from him. He took the girl’s hand. “Be quiet,” he whispered
• Maybe he was all right. Maybe he was just alone. She had been alone herself for three years. The illness had stripped her, killing her children one by one, killing her husband, her sister, her parents. . . . .
• The illness was stroke-swift in the way it cut people down and strokelike in some of its effects. But it was highly specific. Language was always lost or severely impaired. It was never regained. Often there was also paralysis, intellectual impairment, death.

"The Evening and the Morning and the Night."

Summary

The next short story by Octavia E. Butler is about a Disease and how it can be a curse or a gift. Lynn Mortimer is a young girl with the Duryea-Gode Disease. Lynn's parents bring her to the Duryea-Gode ward where Doctors "help" patients with this disease and Lynn is in shock after her visit. So much in fact, that she tried to commit suicide. Three years later her parents fell victims to the DGD. As a result her father killed and skinned Lynn's mother, then he dug into his chest and reached his heart before dying. Once Lynn got herself together she went to college on a Dlig scholarship. There Lynn meets Alan Chi, who also has DGD. After hearing Alan's story about his past and how the disease affected his life. Lynn agrees to go with him to see his mother at the Duryea-Gode Disease ward. With scary thoughts running through her mind from her first visit she is taken by surprise to see how much has changed and how amazing the ward has actually become. Lynn also learns she has something special that can help the people who have the Disease.

Quotes

• "If you work hard enough at something that doesn't matter, you can forget for a while about the things that do."
• "My impulse was to get up and go away, leave him to wallow in his bitterness and depression alone. But I stayed. He seemed to want to live even less than I did. I wondered how he'd made it this far."

• "We probably wouldn't last very long, anyway. These days most DGDs make it to forty, at least."