Option A

I only ever found something worthwhile in the forest once, by the large oak tree. I had dreamt of an oak tree in a thunderstorm filled forest, bright and dark, otherwise filled with pines. The fateful day I went chopping, a thundering downpour began. I was tired and it was late, but I needed a bit more wood to support myself, and forced myself to go. I stumbled upon a great oak tree, and took one chop before a voice, somehow a whisper louder than the storm, said "Stop."

Reflection:
This paragraph I wrote made me realize you can't really just put anything with this sort of style and expect for it to sound similar. I think it has to be something possibly that has more meaning in just the content, like if it is about birth or death. I did see though that the middle section that she did in the paragraph we read with the dreamy, magical substance can really vividly describe a moment even if it isn't actually what it is like.

White Tiger - Task 4

A white horse stepped into the courtyard where I was polishing my armor. Though the gates were locked tight, through the moon door it came-a kingly white horse. It wore a saddle and bridle with red, gold, and black tassels dancing. The saddle was just my size with tigers and dragons tooled in swirls. The white horse pawed the ground for me to go. On the hooves of its near forefoot and hindfoot was the ideograph "to fly."

Kingston, Maxine Hong. The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts. New York. 1976. Print.

This passage occurs after the girl came back to her family from her training with the old people, and her parents painfully carved "revenge" on her back in the form of their names and their oaths. After this paragraph, the girl accepts gifts from her village, as well as gets her first soldiers and goes out for war. This passage stood out to me because of the way the horse was described, and how it seemed slightly magically unreal.

Looking at the content of the passage, Kingston closely describes the horse that walks into a courtyard where the girl is polishing her armor. She says it came through "the moon door," which seems to be referring to the moon gate, which was a common architectural feature in the gardens of wealthy Chinese nobles.This seems a bit strange because they were supposed to be in a poor village. The horse had a saddle on as well as red, gold, and black tassels dancing around on it. It also has tigers and dragons on its saddle, that are swirls. The dancing tassels and the swirl dragons and tigers really give an impression of the horse and its gear moving and being alive.

The way it is written, repeating the fact that the horse came in, really emphasizes it. The first time it is said it just seems like another small meaningless event, but when it is repeated it seems important. There are a lot of colors involved, the white horse coming through the moon (which is usually represented as white as well) door, with red gold and black tassels, as well as a likely colorful dragon on its saddle. This makes it seem very vivid and gives a good mental image of the scene, unlike the Ballad of Mu-lan it was inspired by. However, she also writes in stuff that can throw off the mental image, like the fact that everything is so perfect, a saddle her size, the ideograph for "to fly" on the horse's hooves.

While the vivid, specific descriptions of the scene make it feel real, it goes a bit too far and makes it seem magical and not real. I think she would do this to remind us that it is just a story, a dream, the kind of dream that seems all to real and vivid, but the way things work out make it obvious it is not real. It reminds us that it is a story that her mother told her mixed with her dreams, and not something real. It could also say that being like the girl in the story is unrealistic and unattainable.

White Tiger Notes

Kinda Idea Web

Kind of an idea web, a bit late in the game but I needed a bit more exploratory to help me.

Bloodchild Skeleton Draft

A very rough skeleton draft:

Bloodchild is a science fiction short story by Octavia Butler. It features humans on a planet where they have developed a relationship with the aliens where some humans host alien eggs inside them until they hatch. The main character Gan, who is also the narrator, faces decisions about hosting an alien’s egg, and eventually has to face his fears and does it. It flows exactly how you would expect it to, and seems to be a about overcoming one’s fears.

But when read, the story gives out a disconcerting feeling, making the reader uncomfortable. It seems odd that such a story would give out an uncomfortable feeling instead of a happier feeling from coming over a fear. How is Butler making us nervous in a story that should be joyous, and more importantly, why does she do this?

One way to consider that question is to look at the language she uses in describing things and events in the story. Looking at the language it seems shows that it is not something inherent with aliens that gives an uncomfortable feeling, but that Butler is doing it on purpose. She is doing it on purpose with context changing, role-reversals, and de-familiarization, and they all point to her making us uncomfortable to show how weird what we think of as normal is.

First, Butler makes us feel weird by changing the context. [rest of paragraph]

This disconcerting feeling is increased by Butler making normal things seem strange. [rest of paragraph]

Butler also uses role reversal, specifically that of men and women, to make us feel uncomfortable with what is going on. [rest of paragraph]

No, these are not by accident, they are very specifically made to be almost exactly like normal, just with a slight twist to make the reader a bit nervous. [rest of paragraph]

It seems as if the story is just Octavia Butler making a point about how absurd our thoughts of what normal is are. Before reading this story, there was nothing I had read before that made me consider what I thought normal, but Butler pulls it off. She makes us feel uncomfortable with things that really shouldn’t because they are pretty normal things. In doing so, you are forced to realize nothing is as normal as it seems.

Bloodchild Tree Map

Bloodchild Fleshed Out Claim

One way to explore why Octavia Butler makes readers feel uncomfortable is to look at how she does it. It is weird that Butler would write something so unsettling about something so normal, it seems like she is doing it to prove a point, that our assumptions about what is normal and not are strange. The role-reversal of men and women, the description of pregnancy, and what happens during the childbirth all point to how Butler wants to make us feel uncomfortable to show how absurd what we think of as normal is.

Bloodchild Text Exploration

Text Exploration #1

In this passage (page 26) Gan is talking to T’Gatoi and says he changed his mind and he does not want her to put her children in Hoa instead of himself. Afterward, she goes ahead and does it, impregnating him with her eggs. It is interesting because it features Gan thinking about having T’Gatoi’s babies inside of him, and what the experience is like.

Human lives. Human young1 who should someday drink at her breasts, not at her veins.2           I shook my head. “Don’t do it to her, Gatoi.” I was not Qui. It seemed I could become him, though, with no effort at all. I could make Xuan Hoa my shield.3 Would it be easier to know that red worms were growing in her flesh4 instead of mine?

1) Wording: Here Butler is referring to the alien grubs that the Tlic implant into humans, and is calling them “human young”. However, they are certainly far from human, they are alien babies. This is a bit confusing when reading this, because they are very distinct in our mind. This might be done to associate the two very different things. Either to make the alien childbirth seem normal and like human childbirth, or to make human childbirth seem very strange and different.

2) Phrasing/Syntax: First of all, the grubs are referred to as “who” instead of “that” or something similar. This makes it seem like they are human and not just a thing or a creature. It also seems strange that drinking from Hoa’s breasts and her veins are contrasted so heavily. After all, human babies also get blood from their mother while in the womb. The way it is described just makes it sound strange and de-familiarizes it to us.

3) Word Choice: The Oxford English Dictionary defines “shield” as “Something serving as a defense against attack or injury.” If there needs to be something defending against an attack or injury then what she would be protecting against, which is T’Gatoi impregnating Gan, is an attack. This makes it seem like a violent, bad thing.

4) Wording: Red worms growing inside of human flesh is a thing that seems very unsettling and creepy, like a horror movie. Red specifically, is defined as “Designating blood” or “Designating rage or anger”, adding to that feeling. This makes pregnancy seem really strange, but in reality it is pretty much the same as what all pregnant women do, hold a pre-birth creature in themselves.

Text Exploration #2

This passage (page 27) occurs near the end of the story, after Gan decides to take T’Gatoi’s children instead of transferring off the responsibility to his older sister Hoa. It is worth investigating because it describes the actual process of a Tlic inserting her eggs into a human, and could give insight on how Octavia Butler describes and compares what is essentially alien sex with normal, human sex.

Yet I undressed and lay down beside her1. I knew what to do, what to expect. I had been told all my life. I felt the familiar2 sting, narcotic, mildly pleasant3. Then the blind probing of her ovipositor4. The puncture was painless, easy. So easy going in. She undulated slowly against me, her muscles forcing the egg from her body to mine.

1) Wording: Undressing and laying down suggests normal, consensual sex. That, as well as being undressed, makes it a very intimate thing, not with two animals, or a thinking being and a host animal, but two thinking lovers. This seems to show that they really do care about one another and it is not just one forcing it on to another as Gan’s brother Qui seems to think.

2) Word Choice/Connection: If the feeling is “familiar”, then Gan must have felt it before. However, the text doesn’t mention any previous times he was stung. They do however, show him drinking infertile eggs before, so maybe they have the same feeling. Either way it seems strange, why is he getting stung so many times that it is a familiar feeling?

3) Word Choice: According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a “narcotic” is “A drug which when swallowed, inhaled, or injected into the system induces drowsiness, stupor, or insensibility”. This makes it seem like T’Gatoi is drugging him and then putting her eggs in him. This could be easily be taken as rape, with the man and woman switched.

4) Phrasing/Wording: According to the OED an “ovipositor” is “A pointed tubular organ at the end of the abdomen of the female of some animals… by means of which eggs are deposited”. In this case it is essentially the same as a penis except for on the woman, adding to the role-reversal.

Bloodchild Formula + Leads

Leads are underlined

Claim: Octavia Butler is using tactics of de-familiarization and role-reversal to make readers feel uncomfortable and show how absurd our ideas of what normal is are.

Question: Why does the author of Bloodchild make us uncomfortable with normal things like childbirth?

Trouble: Bloodchild changes the context of things and makes normal things seem strange and crazy, which is weird and makes me feel a bit uncomfortable reading the story.

Status Quo: Stories normally don’t make the reader feel uncomfortable or nervous while reading it, they just have a nice story.

Reordered: Stories normally are just that, nice interesting stories that don’t make the reader feel nervous or uncomfortable. However, Octavia Butler changes the context of things and makes normal things seem strange, which makes the reader a bit uncomfortable. This makes me wonder how and why Butler does this with things like childbirth. It seems like Butler is using role-reversal and de-familiarizing to show how crazy what we think of as normal is.