Exploratory Writing

Gabriel Hudson

3/6/15

Exploratory Draft

45 minutes

In Octavia E. Butler’s, Bloodchild, is the sci-fi short story of humans who live on a foreign planet with an alien race known as Tlics. Tlics breed humans to use as hosts to reproduce. Each Tlic is given to a family where a male is destined to become the host for the Tlic. Although it is fed to the whole family, the Tlics use eggs to impregnate the destined male (or rarely a female). These eggs are not only found delicious but have a drugging effect. The story is told from the perspective of a young boy named Gan. After seeing the horrible event that is the birth of T’lics he is given the choice of either accepting his position as the destined child or give his position to his older sister Han. Throughout the story are multiple instances of mature, gruesome, and disturbing scenes such as the where a host named Lomas is literally ripped open by T’ Gatoi, or when Qui describes the “worms” eating their way out of a man, or sipping the fluid out of alien eggs, or the blood that T ‘ Gatoi licks as she rips open Lomas and the possibility that she enjoys the taste, or the horrid thought of being cradled by a furry six long armed alien, and finally the graphic impregnation of Gan at the end of the story. The story is hands-down disturbing and is very obvious that it was the intentions of the author to make it so. But explaining these parts to someone who has never read it before, their first reactions are strangely confused. Why read such a story that has such a focus on blood and gore? Such a story has no benefit to you. It makes it much more difficult then to explain how in depth the plot is and the situations within it. With the mind already aware of the maturity of the story it becomes much harder to understand that such a story does have a deep meaning that can be found when looked for and instead of ignored due to the mature parts. Instances within the story where Gan changes his mind on whether having Han take his place as T’Gatoi’s host or the love hate relationship that is formed between T’Gatoi(TG) and Gan or even Gan’s consideration of commiting suicide creates moments of tension and feeling and the character of the charaters can be determined. These scenes have to have the blood and gore that they have to show what Gan is prepared to go through for his sister. This is why the author explains the tight relationship these two have in the beginning of the story. The story continues to have entire other dispute on whether TG is a hero or a villain, good or bad. Is she the villain of this story because of the heartlessness she has when extracting the worms from Lomas, or the licking of his blood to soak it up with the large possibility that she may enjoy the taste, or her commitment to impregnating one of the children not caring which one it is and possibly on the floor? Or is she simply a woman with the desire of becoming a mother, who understands the feelings of those who see the pregnancy, as well as takes responsibility for her new host, and still considers Gan’s family as her own family? It is these questions that can be asked after reading this story and can be debated upon. And so perhaps what may seem like the meaningless description of blood and gore is in fact very vital to the plot and it’s intricacy. And while it may not have the happy ending or the obvious moral at the end of it still is a short story with much depth within it as well as purpose.