Octavia Butler Post

Octavia Butler's sci fi writing style is very unique. She challanges the readers to decipher her commentary of society in her works. The two stories we read were Speech Sounds and The Evening and The Morning and The Night. In Speech Sounds she poses the question of what is the more efficient form of communication; speaking or the ability to read and write. In the story The Evening and the Morning and The Night Octavia Butler creates a new disease that raises a big moral dilemma. The disease is called Duryea-Gode, its a side effect from a cancer cure all drug where the victim begins to "drift" and mutilates themselves and those around them.

In the case of Speech Sounds I feel that the ability to speak is a more valuable form of communcation in today's society. The writen word can have many interpertations and if one is unable to clarify the statement through speech than this skill becomes very frustating. In the second story the moral dilemma is: can peoples' rights to reproduce be taken away because they inherited a genetic and dangerous disease? I believe that while you can't take away a persons rights, the decision to reproduce needs to be taken seriously and if I had the disease I would chose not to have kids.