Prompt 1:
Home
Take one moment from the text where an Oankali offers
what you see as an interesting or credible critique/reversal/undermining of our
received wisdom, explain how that critique or alternative is presented, and
then evaluation from your own point of view (you might make use of Lewontin or
Darwin here, but that's strictly optional). You might argue, for
instance, that the imagined Oankali alternative is a kind of vision of the
future toward which we should aspire.
In
the novel Lilith’s Brood by Octavia
Butler the main character, a human Lilith, is confronted by many new and
strange ways of thinking while adapting to a new life on an alien spaceship.
These ideas often contradict wisdom/ advice we have received on earth. I
believe Octavia Butler uses this as a device to allow us to question our
fundamental ideals, and norms we’ve created to live our lives by. She believes
we need to question how we could reach our full potential as a species if we
got to start over. It allows us to view normally positively viewed social
constructs in a critical light.
After
Lilith has meet her first alien Jdahya she tries to get her many questions answered.
She realizes they are on a ship and asks questions about his home planet. She
starts, “‘Why can’t you go back to your homeworld?’ she asked. ‘It…still
exists, doesn’t it?’ He seemed to think for a moment. ‘We left it so long ago…I
doubt that it does still exist.’ ‘Why did you leave?’ ‘It was a womb. The time
had come for us to be born’” (Butler 37).
Here we are able to put in comparison Jdahya’s specie’s indifference to
their home planet, and Lilith’s extreme desire to return to earth. Lilith as can
be expected reminisces about her life on earth just like many people probably
would. There are a huge number of movies and books about humans resorting to
space after earth has become to populated or polluted. Many of these are
focused around Humans potentially one day returning to our home planet. We have
turned the idea of a permanent home into a sentimental anchor. The Oankali obviously
don’t suffer this affliction. Jadahya explains they grew their ship and that
the ship will soon be divided in three ways and the Oankali will be to. Lilith
seems surprised and asks if Jadahya will ever see the other ships and aliens
again. He says no. Jadahya seems less dedicated to a permanent idea of a
community and home.
People
have a tendency to settle down. There is no longer the need to migrate.
Technology has made it possible for us to have permanent homes. It is usually a
goal to find a home because apparently “there’s no place like home”. Why do we
feel the need to settle down? It is because of the images presented to us about
what a home represents: comfort, stability, and love. We’ve discussed in class
the burden agriculture and settlement has had. Agriculture is the origin of
disease and epidemics. So what would our planet, species, and lives be like
without settlement? It is an impossible question to answer. For the Oankali
home would offer none of the comfort it gives us. The Oankali don’t need homes
because of their need to pursue knowledge. Their travel is a necessity of life
because knowledge is a necessity of life. The idea of a home is a sentimental construction
that isn’t practical for the survival of their species. A home would tie the
Oankali back from progress of their knowledge and diversity in their genetics.
Octavia
Butler calls into question the value of our ideas of home. Do they hold us
back? Do they make us weaker then we would be if we had more diversity in our
lives? Would we as a species be better without them? All of these are
impossible to answer right now, but if we set out again as a species just as
Lilith and the other humans have to what would we do differently. To recolonize
the earth they would have to be focused completely on survival, so would homes
make the cut? I don’t think so. Homes are a completely sentimental construct
with no evolutionary value. They caused many health problems, and could be
holding us back from our true potential as the human race. The Oankali do
better without them, and I think we do to.
Your first paragraph is almost a restatement of the prompt (which you also pasted right above it). Why? We want your *specific* ideas at the beginning of your essay.
ReplyDeleteYour start seems messy and unfocused. Nonetheless, it has merit. “We have turned the idea of a permanent home into a sentimental anchor. The Oankali obviously don’t suffer this affliction.” - This idea is a great starting point, one which surely is close to a thesis. If you had a response to this sentimental anchoring, or even could simply say what Butler is doing with that sentimental anchoring (is she attacking it, for instance?) that would be a thesis.
You do eventually clarify that you intend to use Butler to question or even attack our sentimental ideas about home (whether individually or focused on the earth itself, I think). I think that’s a fine idea, and one I’d like to see a developed essay focus upon. But at this point you’re showing us brainstorming more than a polished essay. Where, for instance, is the fact that Oankali, at least in a sense, take their highly engineered and perfected homes with them wherever they go? Have they abandoned the concept of home or transformed it? Have they really escaped from all the dangers involved in agriculture and settlement (their only environment in space is one under their total control...)
Short version: good idea, but with very little development. You need to work with the details of the text, especially with the parts that pose a challenge to your admittedly interesting argument.