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.