1. What is the reaction to the text you've just read?
It's a pretty disturbing story, obviously an allegory for slavery and/or of women being forced historically to breed and suffer childbirth. Mainly though it seems to be about the complexity of consent, choice, and bodily autonomy.
It was pretty sad reading the main characters reactions to the centipede, because he was obviously groomed very strongly to believe she loves him and to be made to love her, and in the end his 'choice' to be bred or to kill himself or her was barely a choice at all. If he refuses to be bred or kills himself, then his sister will suffer. If he kills the centipede, then his family will be killed (or probably all of them will be bred). So in the end, he 'chose' to be bred, he really barely had a choice to begin with. The centipede groomed him literally from the moment he was born to be as close to unable to chose for himself as possible, and when he still started to doubt, she had set up stops that made to impossible for him to chose anything else without repercussions.
2. What connections were you able to make with the story? Discuss the elements of the story with which you were able to connect.
As I said, it has some obvious connections with women roles in society historically and also with American slavery. The main characters choices parallel the kinds of options available to women in patriarchal societies, and also of how enslaved women in American history were often forced to carry the children of their enslavers.
I've been doing some reading and the author apparently doesn't think her story has anything to do with American slavery, and I get that she wrote it, but I'm going to respectfully disagree. She may not have meant for those connections to be made, but the parallels are pretty obvious. Apparently Butler intended this to be a love story between the Gan and the centipede, which is disturbing on many levels. I'm assuming the fact that he's literally enslaved, isn't allowed to own weapons in case of an uprising, is forced to carry her young so that his sister won't, and that she groomed him from birth are all forgiving to Butler by the one scene were the centipede lets him keep the gun because he said "There is risk, Gatoi, in dealing with a partner." Because that forgives everything else, for sure.
Sorry Ms. Butler, but it's not love if there isn't a true choice. And Gan was a slave. Literally by definition.
3. What changes would you make to adapt this story into another medium? What medium would you use? What changes would you make?
Honestly, I wouldn't adapt this story because I'd want to change the core value that Butler didn't agree with (in that, I'd make it more obviously about the dangers of forced consent and I'd lean into the parallels with American slavery), and since that's not hat Butler would have wanted, I wouldn't actually adapt it. I disagree with her reading of her story, but she is the author so it wouldn't be right to change the whole point of his work, especially because she is dead and can't speak up for herself or her work anymore.
I don't know, if i was forced at gunpoint to adapt it with the changes I said, I'd probably make it a mini series, like 'Handmaid's Tale'.
'Bloodchild' response
