Vaster Than Empire And More Slow Summary

The usage of archetypal personalities often promotes certain themes within stories, but more abstract and perhaps less understood individuals, such as the Western God or those with autism, create a larger representational challenge. Many authors seek to create characters that readers can understand on both instinctual and analytical levels. Because autism presents differently from person to person, and because the idea of “God” involves many interpretations, both of these categories require powerful characterization techniques to create believable and meaningful characters. Ursula K. Le Guin’s “Vaster Than Empires and More Slow” and Octavia Butler’s “The Book of Martha” both involve lesser-understood individuals but characterize them through

Butler’s use of the third person perspective grants the reader greater insight into Martha’s thoughts, emotions, and experiences. With knowledge about when Martha “might have laughed” (Butler 2) or “felt nauseous with fear” (Butler 11), the reader can better empathize with and thus understand Martha’s role in the story. This narration technique also reveals Martha’s trajectory as a dynamic character through her changing perspective of God. Her initial view of him as “a twice-lived, bearded white man”. . . like Michelangelo’s Moses” (Butler 2, 16) reflects a Western influence on her life. Although Martha is a black woman, American society’s roots in the white patriarchy influence her intuitions on a more reactionary level than her personal identities. Later, she notices that God’s “halo” is gone. . and he’s smaller than that. More normal” (Butler 6) after he delegates a decision to her that will change the course of human history. The change in God’s appearance reflects Martha’s shift to seeing herself as near-equal to God as she accepts this responsibility and gains the ability to make change by “just saying it” (Butler

1.3). God’s final manifestations as a “stocky black man wearing ordinary, modern clothing” (Butler 18) and then a woman who elicits the observation that they “look like sisters” (Butler 19) represent Martha’s newfound understanding of God. Placed in a position that an eternal, omniscient, all-powerful being experiences every day, perhaps does not make Martha feel godlike but rather makes God seem more human. Although Martha ultimately decides to forget the experience, her character arc results in a profound change in perspective that, because of the narration style, the reader experiences alongside her. Le Guin’s “Vaster Than Empires and More Slow”, on the other hand, contains five times as many characters, many of whom exist as minor characters. Aside from Osden and Haito, the crew aboard Gum consists of flat, static characters who, despite their tri-planetary origins, share a dislike–a hatred, even–of “intolerable” (Le Guin 2) Osden. Despite these characters’ emphasis on Osden’s “non-compatibility” (Le Guin 1), the narrator explains that all crew members “were escapists, misfits. They were nuts” (Le Guin