It is about a young boy being forced to undergo what sounds very much like a rape in order to assist in the facilitate the process of producing offspring from the eggs implanted by the alien beings. “Bloodchild” is essentially a genre-bending examination of the long history of forced miscegenation and childbirth upon black female slaves by white working on the plantation. And, besides, so many other stories in the collection also fit thematically into the idea of the collection being allegorical. The human mind is capable of finding love-or fooling itself into thinking so-in even the most extreme cases, so the suggestion that this is the reason to reject the story as allegorical seems thin. One is moved to suspect Butler is far too intelligent to actually believe this division between her fiction and slave reality existed in all cases. The idea here is an abject rejection that this could also possibly exist in the reality of slave conditions.
She forwards the fact that within her story there exists the definitely possibility for love to exist and grow between the alien creature representing the slaveowner and young boy representing the slave in allegorical interpretations. In a non-fiction addendum following “Bloodchild” Butler is moved to specifically reject the notion that the story is to be read-as it often is nevertheless-specifically as an allegory of American slavery. (With an exception or two.) At any rate, the stories are not recognizably at first glance about the history of America, yet that is exactly what the volume can be interpreted as to one degree or another: it is unwritten history of real time and place in America’s past. If not located in another place, they take place on an earth in another time. The story in Octavia Butler’s Bloodchild and Other Stories mostly take place in strange alien worlds populated by strange alien creatures interacting in strange alien ways with humans. We are thankful for their contributions and encourage you to make your own. These notes were contributed by members of the GradeSaver community.
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