What Is The Theme Of Speech Sounds By Octavia Butler

In the story “Speech Sounds” written by Octavia Butler an illness has taken over the world in which people are unable to speak. The main character Rye is a college English professor that is traveling to Pasanda to visit some of her relatives that have survived the terrible illness. After the bus gets stopped due to a fight, she meets another main character named Obsidian whom she becomes friends with and chooses to travel the rest of the way with instead of waiting on the train. The two characters have two major challenges, one being that Rye can speak and understand communication while Obsidian cannot understand verbal communication at all. Rye was challenged by not knowing how to communicate with Obsidian without using words. The main theme

During the story Rye choices to keep her ability to speak a secret from Obsidian due to the fear of being killed. Although at the end of the story she speaks to two little girls and regains some of her lost independence (Baker). Through “Speech Sounds” studies of feminism and racialism have been shown by using real world actions in different writing styles (Baker). At the end real world actions were shown when a woman showed her ability to verbally communicate to her husband which in return lead to rage and jealous shown in the male figure (9). The rage led to the male trying to kill the young woman because he wanted to have the ability to communicate (10). Dominance is shown threw males ability to control their significant other threw their voice, which makes them fill they have full control over the relationship

Rye is unsure of the use of her ability to verbally communicate in the dystopian society she is in. When she meets the two little girls that belonged to the woman who got killed at the end of the story, she wonders if teaching the use of her skill was important (Donawerth and Kolmerten). As a show of her feminist ways, she wonders how she could better educate the kids weather that was teaching them the old way of verbal commination or a new language without the use of communications (Donawerth and Kolmerten). Rye wanted the children's ability's that she taught be good enough to keep the kids and herself from being killed. Rye was an English teacher and a good one. She kept herself alive when there was no reason to live, and if the illness left the children alone, she could keep them alive (12). Butler used the children to show how Rye as a strong female character could play a motherly role to the children and raise them to stay alive in such a messed-up society. Rye made sure to keep the children comfortable with her as she told them it was okay for them to talk to her, that she would not hurt them