User:Blazingm0on1111/sandbox

Essay on Racism

Summary

In this article Butler explains how humans have the power to be peaceful and kind to one another. Instead of being peaceful we instead react to violent behavior in two ways which are join them by creating more commotion or by doing nothing and just stand there in disgust.Butler compares all of this to when she was younger and talks about being in the schoolyard were kids were bullied by one another. She fell into the victim category even though she was taller than most kids in her grade. Butler also purposed a solution in this article to all of the racialism by say instead of people behaving in a hierarchical manner they should just act in a non hierarchical. As the article continued she says this would never happen because people like to have power over others that are far less superior.

Quotes

• "Simple peck-order bullying is only the beginning of the kind of hierarchical behavior that can lead to racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, classism, and all the other "isms" that cause so much suffering in the world.."
• "So much for fiction. But in real life, what would make us more tolerant, more peaceful, less likely to need a UN Conference on Racism? Nothing.."

Octavia Butler's Aha! Moment

Summary

This article talks about Butler when she was just a young child, she recalled this moment because it shaped her to the person we knew today. The article talks about Butler's mom being a maid and how she started out being a maid at the age of 10 to support herself and her sister as well as her brother. After Butlers dad died her mom had to start working again as a maid, her grandmother was the cook. Butler took interest in the family dog, the dog did not belong to them but belong to the family which her mom worked for. She never really noticed the dog before but one day they found each other staring at one another. Than she realized that Baba the dog was just a different person entirely because after gazing at its eyes she saw something about Baba and since than Butler was interested into looking at peoples eyes it either drew her closer or scared her away.

Quotes

• "My father had died, and my mother had to find work that would support the two of us. She became a maid"
• "Eyes always mattered to me after that. Eyes scared me or drew my interest. Eyes reminded me that someone else was there."
• "I was still too young to understand the concept of being ashamed of my species. I just felt horrible. I wanted the other kids to shut up. I wanted the chimp to be free."

A God-given right to be put to death

Summary

This article talks about a bombing that happened in 1995 by Alfred P Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, 168 innocent people were killed in that bombing. The article also talks about how the United States is the greatest country in the world because of the military power it has over the other country. The author indicates how great this country is, he also tells us hows the FBI one of the worlds largest force in the world is working on obtaining the person who has committed this crime. When they finally catch the person the author says that it is a god given right that he should be execute. If you look carefully this is the part where the article stuck out to me because they use the word “god” to justify that they are doing the right thing by exciting this person it bring good and one less psychopath person to worry about in this world. The point im trying to make is that no one really has the right to take away a life and good did not give us the permission to do so, he may have given us the permission to punish the person but not kill because giving life and taking away life is only in gods hands.

Quotes

• "Timothy McVeigh was willing to roll over and die what he sees as a martyr's death in the quaintly named "Federal Prison Camp".
• " The FBI is the world's biggest criminal investigation organisation, which spent $82m gathering together 36,000 witness statements and 100,000 photographs, and logging 136 million phone calls, to try to solve the single worst crime ever in the US - the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, which killed 168 innocent people- yet it still managed, one way or the other, to get things wrong."

What is it like to be a god?

Summary

This article talks about what it would be like to be a god. The first paragraph the artier introduces an article that talks about what it would be like being a bat because he says humans are closely related to bats as well. Than the author tells how how god’s are prefect they feel no pain no remorse of any physical and mental because it wouldn’t be godly like if they felt pain. The sense of pain is a human trait and only humans express their pain, fear and anger in a physical manner. He also brings up a point about god being he says humans aren't feared because we know how one person would react to another if there was a situation where god we know nothing about can destroy the world in a blink of an eye. So the point being is that god is immortal, perfect, omnipotent, and omniscien, we know so little about him or her and there for human possessing the power to create and destroy anything at their will is dangerous because humans are not perfect.

Quotes

• "These thinkers insinuated that a god cannot suffer as humans do since it is perfect, omnipotent, omniscient and immortal"
• "He sent forth upon them the fierceness of His anger wrath and indignation and need"

Amnesty

Summary

The short story, Amnesty by Octavia Butler talks about a girl named Noah who was abducted by aliens at the age of 11. She isn't the only person who had gotten abducted, the story stated that she was part of the second group to get abducted “…you were part of the second wave of abductions.” In this alien community it had become almost a regular thing to abduct humans, Noah for instance became a part of their experiments and would get tested here and there. The alien community not only tested things on her but were so interested in the human body that when she first started working they had her work naked and would get pleasure from touching her back.

As Noah explains, although she was experimented on as a child and growing up and since she's been released the government would keep questioning her and what she had known. Noah still believes the aliens are harmless and claims the issue between the human and the aliens as “sibling rivalry” as she stated, “Now we find ourselves in a kind of sibling rivalry with the Communities. There is other intelligent life. The universe has other children. We knew it, but until they arrived here, we could pretend otherwise.” She knows that although she was experimented on, they are harmless and wants others to know that they are harmless as well. She now works for the aliens in order to recruit other humans this time she knows that their wont be any harm done. Also the humans who do decide to take part in this are warned and Noah lets them know that once they sign the two year agreement they are no longer allowed to back out. “Keep in mind that once the contract is signed, the Communities wont let you go because you're angry with them or because you hate them or even because you try to kill them.”

Noah explains and what you understand while reading the short story is that there is almost a fear of the alien communities from the humans. They feel superior and feel as if aliens don't belong. Noah seems to know a lot more of the inside job and had explained she got tortured because of it. She trusts the aliens and is pretty much on their side. She explains that armed forces had to try to “knock them out the sky” so they wouldn't be able to settle on earth. The nuclear missiles that were fired at the aliens were returned to other countries which shows that the aliens had done no harm and it had actually come from the humans. Noah had recruited six people and at the end they seemed to have understood that the other community had not picked the war because the war was short and silent and had started from the humans. The aliens had lost and although the new recruitment had believed there might have been a way to fight, Noah had disagreed.

Quotes

• “…you were part of the second wave of abductions.”
• “Now we find ourselves in a kind of sibling rivalry with the Communities. There is other intelligent life. The universe has other children. We knew it, but until they arrived here, we could pretend otherwise.”
• “Keep in mind that once the contract is signed, the Communities wont let you go because you're angry with them or because you hate them or even because you try to kill them.”

The Book of Martha

Summary

This chapter of this book called Book of Martha talk about a direct conversation with God and Martha. The conversation takes place in a grey-ish setting where anything is possible by just imagining it. Martha has his conversation with God where she feels that the job that that God is offering her to do is a big decision because she's playing with human life. At first she thought she was dead but she was afraid to ask God because she was on sure and uncomfortable asking just because of the fear of being dead. The reason behind the fear is because she worked so hard and came from a family where they were lower class and she worked her way up and enjoyed doing what she did which was writing books and stories. God gave her the power to choose what to do for the human race because the human race was getting out of hand and instead of wiping them out he wanted a different approach where he can save them. And this chapter he asked her to remember the three biblical figures and in a sense he made her a biblical figure where she could save mankind. God gave her some time to think about her decision and what she wanted to do with mankind because there are a lot of wars and environmental pollution as well as over populating the world which led to hunger and homelessness. She came up with the idea of when people go to sleep they dream about what they want in life so they spend more time imagining what life could be like in their dreams. She finally stuck to her plan and asks God to put it into action but at the same time she doesn't want to be responsible for any action and so she asked God to erase all memories that she had this conversation. God warned her about this decision has consequences and he asked her how she thought about the consequences and she said yes I have because making the sacrificing would eventually lead up to Martha losing her job and that is why she loves doing. Towards the end of the chapter when she comes out of the trance but she was the last thing she remembered was her saying I don't want to remember all of this.

Quotes

• " If you dont help them, they will be destroyed."
• " i was born on the bottom level of society."
• " I thought you wanted me to put a stop to war and slavery and environmental destruction."

Butler's Biography

Octavia Estelle Butler was born on June, 1947, Pasadena, California she was an only child but at a young age she lost her father but grew up with her mother and grandmother. The community she grew up in was divert with different race and ethnicity and during that period of time segregation was going which meant white people were in power and thought of themselves as the higher race. You can connect Butler's stories directly to her life because in her because in her work she talks about segregation the short story called The Evening and the Morning and the Night where the people with DGD were placed in a different location from the "normal" people. Another connection I found was when Butler was growing up she kept to herself and this relates to the character she created Lynn, where in the book Lynn was socially awkward because she was different from others. When Butler was growing up she was one of the tallest kids around which got other kids attention and they started to bully her which lead to her stay in Pasadena Public Library reading books and magazine which has a direct connection to her writing because it was then when she got more interested into science fiction magazines and fairy tales which eventually lead her to be an amazing writer.

Speech Sounds

Summary

The story called Speech sound began on the idea of luck which got me thinking that everything happens for a reason. Rye got on to the bus which she got lucky with because it was hard to catch one at her location. Rye only had one family left a brother and two children in Pasadena it was a one day journey going there so she ended up taking the bus there. As she got on the bus she didn't notice that there was a on going dispute between two males. They were both using hand gestures and arguing with there words. Rye noticed that one will eventually give up and will run out of words to say and than they'll start to fight physically and things would get out of hand. The bus driver tired his best to keep them off balance by going through pot holes but needless to say that did not help at all. There were kids on the bus as well as adults that just gave each other look of "really? You guys couldn't wait till later?). Finally the bus driver hit a pothole and the tall man fell toward the shorter man and so the short man landed his first left fist into the tall man. The fight broke out people screaming and three other man got excited so excited that one of them accidentally hit the other man which lead to a second fight. So in the opening of the book they are already two fights and in the back round kids are crying and the bus driver doesn't want to get involved in this because he grunted at the women that told him about the fight but he ended up scaring her off. Eventually the bus driver stopped by slamming the breaks but Rye knew the bus drivers methods so she braced herself for the worst. Finally the bus stopped and Rye was up on her feet already pushing people to get to the back door to get out while she was doing that another fight started and people had enough of this some followed Rye some stayed because buses were rare to come by. Whenever they did people traveled on them no matter what. When Rye was out of the bus waiting in the side and car drove by and made a u turn and came out was a young bearded man with a over coat on. He gazed at the bus trying to figure out what was going on or a way to approach the situation finally he gestured Rye to get behind the bus. In this story language was deceased no longer spoken because the disease whipped out the language part in human. So finally everyone gets out of the bus and out on the street. The bearded man helped the bus driver to out of the bus but from the looks of it the driver didn't want any help because he thought of it in a way were the bearded man damaged his bus. So had the bus driver shouted the bearded man with the police uniform stood there and in clamminess but still alert if bus the driver tired to make any moves on him. So the beard man gestured Rye to get in the car but she barely had any faith in him after all he was a stranger to her but the people from the bus reinsured her but giving her bad guessers infecting that she had slept with the man and that is why he came. So she got into the car and she found the bearded man attractive and all but she didn't want him to find that out. Finally he gestured her as if asking her where she wants to go by pulling out a map. She felt outraged because he knew how to read a map and she was a teacher at UCLA she had a impulse to kill him just because of that reason alone but she claimed herself and tried her best to figure out where  Pasadena was. So she interacted it to him to her best ability by trying her best of reading the map. She slowly earned his trust and it ended up both of them having sex. She was finally comfortable and relaxed until she asked if he would go home with her and start a life with her, but he gestured her no but she asked him again after a few. He gestured saying he'll be okay with it if she's okay with him helping people as what she called it as paying cops and robbers and she was okay with it. In the last final pages she directed him back to her house when they came across a women screaming running away from a man with some kind of knife. The women ended up picking up a glass peace after trying to open doors that were locked. During Rye trip the bearded man tired his best to describe his name but Rye  named him Obsidian. When Obsidian got out the car to chase the man to stop him from hurting the women but it was to late the women already picked up a peace of glass and swung at him attempting to use the glass to cut him but he ends up grabbing her arm preventing her to inflict an danger on him. The man ended up stabbing the one twice while Obsidian screamed Da Da Da but it was to late so he ends up shooting the man. Rye runs out to check on the women but it was too late for her but it turned out the man was still alive and grabs the gun and shoots Obsidian in the head and he falls flare before the man could make a move on Rye she grabs her gun and shoots the man saving herself only to find out she's alone once again. She lost her husband and two children already and now to lose Obsidian was a Traumatic experience for her. She ends up find two children which looked around the ages of four and five she thought about leaving them and taking obsidian body back to her house and lay to rest because it was to risky to dig a grave and lay him to rest there where anyone can pop up. So she takes his body and the women's body but when she's about to grab the women's the girl speaks and Rye is shocked by this, these weren't sounds they were full words and from there she decides to keep these kids safe and protect them till they are able to teach other.

Quotes

• "Still, their gestures stopped just short of contact—mock punches, hand games of intimidation to replace lost curses."
• "The illness, if it was an illness, had cut even the living off from one another. As it swept over the country, people hardly had time to lay blame on the Soviets (though they were falling silent along with the rest of the world), on a new virus, a new pollutant, radiation, divine retribution. . . . The illness was stroke-swift in the way it cut people down and strokelike in some of its effects. "
• "I’m Valerie Rye,” she said, savoring the words. “It’s all right for you to talk to me.”

The Evening and the Morning and the Night

Summary

The story The Evening and the Morning and the Night by Octavia E. Butler , it's opening first few paragraphs just start off weird telling us a very descriptive imagine of Lynn trying to kill herself by cutting at her wrist. She described this as or better yet connected it to Ancient Rome when they would lay down in a bath filled of warm water and at the end cut the wrist letting the bath be filled with the books making the water turn all red. The second part which made me question was when her father mercilessly slaughtered her mother and kill themselves which brought up an idea of animalistic because he skinned his wife alive and ripped his heart out while still being alive. The book focuses on these people that have to disease called DCD when I look at you you can't snap anytime and turn into a cannibalistic or you end up harming everyone anything around you. The Book focuses on this idea throughout the story because Lynn had a hard time fitting in the even in college. Eventually she met a few other people that had the same disease and ended up buying a house together. They agreed on who would do what and at what time. Each and everyone of them was a college and for  once comfortable and at home because here no one can judge you. Lynn assign everyone a duty their chores and the way she was managing everyone but she didn't do anything besides manage them, she said that she didn't mind because they didn't mind which gave her power and no one questioned her. Than a new guy comes along named Alan Chi and Lynn finds him attractive physically. He nearest place to stay and found out that everyone here has the same situation as she has so he asked Lynn if you could move she did not have any objective to it. After he left she asked everyone if they had an issue with Alan no one objected decisio she asked everyone if they had an issue with Alan no one objected the decision. Later on the two characteristics get to know each other in a level where they barely spoke about their Trumatic experience.

Lynn told Alan about her experience when she was younger about killing herself and how her parents died. Alan then speaks about his mother and how she thought she died but he was not sure. He tells us that the sea institutions where they treat people with the same disease that they but The disease is on a different level where the host almost ends up hurting themselves to a point of no return. So he finds out where his mother is held and he makes an appointment. When he reach there on the day of the appointment there both greater by the guards and they guards escorts them to the parking lot where they see an old women and her name is Beatrice. Beatrice is the head of the institution she takes both of them on a short tour of the institution and shows them the artwork and other sculptures both of them on a short tour of the institution and shows them the artwork and other sculptures. She tells them that they have the wrong idea of DCD because all these people are looking for is someone to be patient and take their time to treat them. Once they have there disease control these people are intelligent and inventive. They walk through a workshop where they see a bounce of people working and they noticed they were DCD but they did not seem violent in anyway. Alan ends up seeing his mother and sad to say that in the past she did harm herself by ripping out here own eyes until Beatrice found her in a government institution where they only care about their own pocket. This institution that Alan's mother is in is a privately funded institution. Towards the end of the story Beatrice offers a job to Alan and Lynn but both deny it because they love each other and can't seem themselves working at a place like this even though Beatrice tells them that they both fit the description of this job.

In a way this story talks about we shouldn't hide from who we are inside we should embrace it because in the end it might benefit us in ways which we never thought of. Being different from everyone else is not a bad thing because that is what makes you who you are.

Quotes

• "The weird part was, I worked hard,got top grades.If you work hard enough at something that doesn’t matter, you can forget for a while about the things that do."
• "I won’t describe the ward. It’s enough to say that when they brought me home, I cut my wrists. I did a thorough job of it, old Roman style in a bathtub of warm water."
• “People like us don’t get along well together.You must realize that I don’t like you any more than you like me.”

Blood child

Summary

“Blood child” is a short story by Octavia Butler about a few different things that she explains in the end. She states that the short story is about a lot more then most people think, many people believe its about slavery. Reading this, I also had thought the story was about slavery due to the way it was written with a boy who was meant to basically sacrifice his life to birth a child for a woman because he had no other choice because of where he stayed. Butler claims that the story was written on some type of level of love, her interest in a male being pregnant and her fear of a botfly.

The story starts with a boy named Gan, who's mother is best friends with some type of alien creature. The alien creature is T’Gatoi and she is in more power politically as state in the novel a few times. She provides Gan and his family with eggs that are meant to keep you living longer and leave in an intoxicated state. His mother initially didn't want to drink the egg but T’Gatoi insisted that she did, his mother would also make it clear that everyone had to be obedient to her so she listened to her as well. While his mother was in an intoxicated state she had claimed that she did not want to give up her son and would look at her son sad which foreshadowed that he would be leaving his family or his childhood.

Gan is then put in a situation where he witnesses a man giving birth. T’Gatoi finds a man who is in a lot of pain because his in labor. The person who was originally supposed to be help him with his delivery is sick and is not available to do so. He is left in a type of danger due to the fact that he has to have someone else with his delivery. Gan is there to help and watch T’Gatoi with the delivery. After the situation he is left feeling very sick and goes outside to throw up. He starts to think of T’Gatoi as alien like and does not want to take part in birthing children. She gets upset when he speaks to her about it because he wants to kill himself. After, she tells him that she will just have his sister birth the children and he does not want his sister to go through that so he gives in and agrees. He is then taken to his room with her so he can be given the egg from her and thats when exits his childhood that was originally foreshadowed earlier.

Quotes

• "He's still mine, you know," my mother said suddenly. "Nothing can buy him from me." Sober she would not have permitted herself to refer such things.

• "The whole procedure was wrong, alien. I wouldn't have thought anything about her, could seem alien to me."

• "Why else had I been given a whole egg to eat while the rest of the family was left to share one? Why else had my mother kept looking at me as though I were going away from her, going where she could not follow?"