September 9, 2016 - 17:24
As Octavia Butler concludes, “I won’t leave you as Lomas was left-alone, N’Tlic. I will take care of you.” (20)
The last time I saw him was thirteen years ago. This was after their separation with my mother. He was an alcoholic. He was supposed to be the bread winner of the family because he had a salaried job. However, he lavished all his income on alcohol. My mother provided us with whatever she could afford from her meagre wages which she earned from her irregular blue collar jobs. He did not contribute anything towards our welfare. He had subjected my very own mother to torture and domestic abuse. He battered her almost to the point of death the night before he left.
The above quotation was made by T’Gatoi to Gan who was going to bear her progeny. She did not want him to suffer like Lomas had. This statement provokes lots of thoughts within me. This was a relationship between humans and extra-terrestrial beings, yet they appreciated one another. T’Gatoi respects Gan and in my opinion she would fight tooth and nail for his wellbeing. Well, this was not the case in our family. My father did not have any respect for my mother. He mercilessly beat her up in our presence at his own volition. After leaving, he has never cared about our lives. Whether we lead good lives or not. Whether we had met the creepy hands of death. Whether we, his children, eat and go to school or not. Nonetheless, I am pretty certain that this did not only happen in our family alone but also to many families out there.
Butler says, “Because your people arrived, we are relearning what it means to be a healthy, thriving people. And your ancestors, fleeing from their home world, from their own kind who would have killed or enslaved them-they survived because of us.” (16). ThoughS there was power disparity between the two species they struggled with each other so as to thrive. Bizarre as it may appear, the symbiotic relationship radically questions the social codes in our society.
Lomas scene clearly depicts the kind of pain and labour that women go through during their gestation period. T’lic extend their gratitude to the Terrans for the role they perform. It poses a question rather than answers to the relationship between men and women in the society. Men barely appreciate women. They feel like their primary duty is to bear children; which is not the case. That was the sole reason for what happened when I had just joined first grade. The reason why my father and other men in the world have the audacity to beat up women. They more often than not consider themselves superior to women. They consider women to be dependent beings forgetting that we all need each other to survive; to make the world a better place to live in.
Octavia Butler’s story, ’Bloodchild’ revolves around the relationship between two dissimilar species, humans(Terrans) and insect-like creatures(T’lic). The kind of intimate and mutual relationship between humans and parasitic insects seems implausible. The link between them is too obscured to be differentiated. They mutually depended on each other for co-existence and continuation of their species. Albeit Butler says that some people view ’Bloodchild’ as a story of slavery, a closer and deep reading of her narrative makes me suggest that it is a story that extrapolates the issues of gender equality and interdependence between one another in the world today.