Hope asked:
>Has anyone read "The Evening and the Morning and the Night," a short
>story by Octavia Butler?
Oh my God, yes! I read it about three weeks ago -- had bronchitis, couldn't
sleep because I was coughing too much, and had a 102 temperature so I
probably wasn't thinking very clearly -- so I lay in bed half the night
reading that whole "Bloodchild" anthology. Then I had horrible nightmares
afterward!!
(Is this an illustration of reader-response theory? --that the immediate
circumstances you're in when you encounter a text shape the reading
experience? <grin>)
>I'd be interested to hear people's
>impressions/interpretations of gender roles as they relate to characters
>with the disease at the Institute, and the "other" as people with the
>disease. (Sorry I don't have the anthology in front of me, or I'd name the
>disease...
I think it was called Duryea-Gode Disease - DGD.
The business about women with highest levels of the pheronome (those who
had inherited the disease from both parents) being able to influence the
behavior of those with lower levels (women who inherited the disease from
only one parent, and all men, I think it was?) and yet not being able to
tolerate the presence of one of the other high-pheronome women -- by the
end of the story I was thinking of them as the Alpha Females. They seemed
to be heading in the direction of creating female-led communities, which
would eventually become economically self-sufficient because of the
enhanced mental abilities of the members. It was really a chilling
combination of utopia and dystopia, since the communities had to be created
to protect the people suffering from a horribly grim disease.
--Ruth Ann
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 25 2000 - 19:06:01 PDT