For this week, I read the short story “Bloodchild” by Octavia E. Butler for my Literature of Horror, Sci-Fi, and Fantasy class. This narrative in particular, explored themes of diversity taking place in literature. In my opinion this is an important topic to be discussed and it is very interesting to see it in stories. Even though “Bloodchild” does not necessarily talk about diversity within humans, it examines a general synopsis of our society today.
“Bloodchild” is about how a clan of humans having to live alongside a group of aliens called ‘Tlic’. Just by the concept of this shows there could be a distinct line between the two races. In their society, humans are offered protection by the Tlics if they agree to host their eggs. The main character, Gan, has a lot of tension against the Tlics because of the trauma he experienced recently. This is due to the fact that he would soon be implanted with T’Gatoi’s (a female Tlic) eggs, and had just witnessed T’Gatoi graphically saving another male. Gan would be scarred by this, but ultimately he gave in because he empathized T’Gatoi’s perspective.
In my opinion, the message behind this story is acceptance. Gan had neglected T’Gatoi’s way of life. Even though reading this short story was kind of graphic for me, I understood the way T’Gatoi felt. This was a thing Gan needed to do for his family, and T’Gatoi needed to do to reproduce. Overall, I thought this was a very interesting and yet different narrative than what I usually read. I believe reads like these can makes Sci-Fi more diversified.
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