Wild Seed Master Slave - 915 Words

Shannon Mulstay Jeffrey Cahan Creative NonFiction December 5, 2015 Wild Seed: Master Slave – An Infinite Paradox As one reads Octavia Butler’s â€Å"Wild Seed,† often the reader will find themselves quickly getting wrapped up in the conflict and surface story between Doro and Anyanwu. It is apparent there was a struggle of power between these two immortal beings that went far beyond simple gender identity and equality, and delved deeply into the cultural schemata of the master-slave paradigm. This motif is what carries the story throughout the novel, over centuries and changing landscapes; and yet although the people’s names change within the context of Anyanwu and Doro’s world this paradigm stays consistent. Butler does not give us much detail or use of language of the African lifestyle; she uses westernized words to describe the Edo Nigerian tribal culture, mixing and blending the two schemas in order to create a speculative world within a relative space of historical-graphical time, in which the slave trade to the United States and Europe was beginning to be a profitable business throughout the known world. According to Thaler’s Black Atlantic Speculative Fiction â€Å"Anyanwu makes this truth claim through her historical knowledge of the slightly less than three hundred years she had been alive in Africa previous to meeting Doro. Thus, the novel presents the master-slave paradigm, the determining moment for black participation in the west, as an eternal truth claim, madeShow MoreRelatedThe Agricultural Revolution: Augmentation and Dissemination Essay examples1221 Words   |  5 Pagesbenefited humans by no longer having to move about in search of wild game and plants. 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