Skip to main content

Renaming "Speech Sounds" by Octavia Butler

If I were to rename one of our short stories, I would change “Speech Sounds” by Octavia Butler to “Silent Communication.” Throughout her story, Butler focuses on the non-verbal interactions between characters and their effects. In the opening scene two men are pretending to fight on the bus, but due to an accident, one man accidently strikes the other and they break out into a real fight. In this scene, if the two were able to talk, they could have immediately apologized to prevent the fight from escalating. However their inability to talk is what initiated action. In this scene, Speech Sounds does not seem relevant. The action between the two men is not about speech, but the lack of speech.

Later in the story, when Rye meets Obsidian, they are able to communicate to each other with the various items they are holding to express their names. They are able to go from being complete strangers to becoming familiar with each other without talking at all. This part of the story has an emphasis on the way they are able to get to know each other non verbally. “Speech Sounds” does not seem to fit as a title because the characters do not speak to each other at all. If Rye and Obsidian were able to talk, the entire plot of the story would be different. The setting of the story would no longer be an apocalyptic and silent world. Obsidian would no longer have the same, mysterious demeanor. There would no longer be the same confusion amongst characters about what each other’s intentions were.  Overall, the story and plot would be very different.

I think “Silent Communication” would be able to effectively captivate the idea that the characters need to navigate through the world without talking to each other. With the current title, there seems to be too much focus on the moments where the characters do talk and not enough on the rest of the story where they do interact with other people but silently.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What do science fiction writers believe about the power of technology?

In their works of writing, authors express their opinions about the subject they’re writing about, and science fiction is no exception. In science fiction texts, writers describe the future negatively. They explain in their narratives that technology will either be always inadequate and never be able to fully satisfy the needs of humans, or they explain that technology can perform certain tasks perfectly. They portray technology as always performing tasks mindlessly and not have any idea about what is actually going on in the real world. In either case, they believe that technology will never be able to perfect and never enough to satisfy humans’ needs. These attitudes towards technology can be seen in The Machine Stops and There Will Come Soft Rains. Throughout The Machine Stops, technology always seems to be adequate rather than ever being perfect. When Kuno is talking to his mother through the machine, he says “the Machine is much, but it is not everything. I see something like y...
7 comments
Read more
In The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, while the lottery is starting and tensions are escalating, the narrator says “There was the proper swearing-in of Mr. Summers by the postmaster, as the official of the lottery; at one time, some people remembered, there had been a recital of some sort, performed by the official of the lottery, a perfunctory, tuneless chant that had been rattled off duly each year; some people believed that the official of the lottery used to stand just so when he said or sang it, others believed that he was supposed to walk among the people, but years and years ago this part of the ritual had been allowed to lapse.” In this long sentence, the narrator, an anonymous member of the community, reflects on the role that Mrs. Summers plays in the lottery. In the opening of the lottery event, there are many different ideas of what the postmaster should do. They say that he might be supposed to chant monotonously or in a more vibrant manner. They also disagree with what he s...
Post a Comment
Read more

Comparing the Pandemic to The Machine Stops

The “Machine Stops” by E. M. Forester is similar to what is currently happening during the Covid-19 pandemic. In this story, the disease is replaced by toxic gases in the Earth’s atmosphere. Throughout the story, characters remain in their own machine isolated from each. This is similar to social distancing. Instead of staying in a machine, we just remain in our own houses and are not supposed to go to someone else’s house. In the story, people are able to contact each other, and they use a technology which seems like video chatting software. This closely resembles what we use to communicate: Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Facetime etc. Another parallel is the reason they remain in the machines and are not able to go to the surface of the Earth because there is supposedly toxic air. What reminded me even more about the difficulties of not going outside is how Kuno, a younger individual, wanted to go outside and had a harder time keeping himself inside, while an older person, Vashti, and is ...
2 comments
Read more