Current Events In Octavia Butler's Short Stories

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Throughout our standard daily living, many events occur over time that impact the way society looks upon our surroundings. Short stories like “Death between the Stars” by Marion Zimmer Bradley, “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., and “Bloodchild” by Octavia Butler, are great representations of showing this. Science Fiction is a piece of time in which the way it is written by these writers that are influenced by current events like racism, gender roles, feminism, and the overall equality of how people are being treated.
In Octavia Butler’s short story “Bloodchild” there are many cases in which the writer is showing us her reaction to current events within the story. “Bloodchild” portrays science fiction to arrange familiar topics unfamiliar …show more content…
Racism was a major issue in the past and still is till this date. Marion shows this in her story by exemplifying the non-human telepath as an outsider. Helen-Haalvordhen who is the human who has to share a cabin with the non-human telepath accepts them for who they are unlike the rest of the bigoted crew members. Racism plays a part in this story because of the way the alien is treated on the ship, it is a huge current event that is still happening today. In the past African-Americans were badly mistreated and segregated from the whites, they were also treated unequally and did not have the same rights as for someone who was white. In politics in the present, racism was also occurring during the election and was presented through media everywhere. For instance, in Marion’s story the crew member exemplifies this by saying “I don’t think of humans who fraternize with geeks.” (Bradley). Considering the crew member said the work “geek” you can disclose that the crew member did not care about the alien. In addition, you can also elaborate on how they treated the alien when it was being shared with Helen in their cabin. As an example, throughout one of the scenes the crew member forgot to strap the alien in the ship and when they took off the alien got badly injured. Marion is trying to prove her point of showing uniformity of races, sex, religion, and etc. By presenting in the …show more content…
who is also greatly influenced by the current events around him. In his short story “Harrison Bergeron” the author comes up with a world in which all people are equal. He focuses on creating this equality by adjusting people’s beauty, strength, and intelligence which disputes with race, religion, and sex, the equality in society. This is also a problem in today’s society of current events. An example in the story is when George is watching the ballerinas on TV and he says “They weren’t really very good-no better than anybody else would have been, anyways. They were burdened with sashweights and bags of birdshot, and their faces were masked” (Vonnegut ). From the ballerina’s faces being masked the author is showing how he is hiding their beauty by wearing those masks, since being beautiful is not equal to someone who is not. Not only that but Harrison represents the flare of rebellion and uniqueness that still exists in some people. This is also a current event that many pedestrians are going through. People who experienced the women’s march as an example is a great representation to show off that we all can be unified and prove a point when taking action. Harrison in the novel shows this beautifully by quoting “Even as I stand here crippled, hobbled, sickened – I am a greater ruler than any man who ever lived!” (Vonnegut). His arrogance is represented to enhance that some people still feel obligated to stick up for that
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