“’Maybe uninfected people are sterilizing the city in the only way they can think of … In Louisiana there’s a group that has decided the disease was brought in by foreigners—so they’re shooting anyone who seems a little odd to them. Mostly Asians, blacks, and browns.’” (Butler 624).
-Stephen Kaneshiro relates the news reports to Keira
This passage wraps up Butler’s novel Clay’s Ark with a racial punch, leaving us with a final image of white people gunning down anyone non-white in a panic of apocalyptic proportions. How ironic for Butler to put this in her fiction because it actually happens in our non-fiction world. Look at our own communities and notice the ethnic enclaves that unite because people like to be with others who are like them. But, when times are tough, the ethnic enclaves blame each other and sometimes become violent. The L.A. race riots of the 90’s are one example in the United States of this racial tension.
I am seeing racial overtones throughout Clay’s Ark as I am reading the extraterrestrial/human mutation not as a literal problem but as a figural alienation. The Clay Arks become figurative aliens to the rest of the Earth. Most of the Clay Arks in the desert community are representatives of ethnic minorities in the outside communities. Eli, the astronaut who brings the alien virus to earth, is a black man. When Meda confesses her romantic intentions to him, her brother comments: “’If that guy were white, I’d tell you to marry him.’” (505). Eli is ostracized by the community he infects because of his race. Lupe is Hispanic and speaks to her child in Spanish. Butler even manages to represent mixed race individuals in the characters of Keira and Rane.
So what about the question of the humanity of the Clay Arks. Why would their humanity be in question? Eli even questions himself, as our narrator relates: “In his own mind, his humanity had been in question for some time” (457). Eli has perhaps internalized the racial alienation inflicted on him by his society.
This reminds me of Franz Kafka’s short story “The Metamorphoses” in which the protagonist Gregor Samsa wakes one day to find himself transformed into the body of a giant insect and totally alienated from his family. There is no explanation as to how this happens to Gregor, there is only the fact that he is literally alienated from his fellow humans and therefor utterly worthless to them. What gives Gregor his humanity—his ability to financially support his family—is destroyed, and he withers and dies. The same fate could threaten Eli in Clay’s Ark without his ability to form his own enclave of individuals who are similar to him. He infects others to create more figurative bugs in his desert community.
But the Clay Arks also have strange abilities, superhuman powers. If this racial reading stands plausible, then what is Butler suggesting with the special abilities that her alienated characters possess? Perhaps the powers are a kind of twisted manifestation of the racial threat that minorities pose to their white counterparts. The Clay Arks have enhanced capacities to procreate, to control, to dominate. As Rane says, “There’s going to be an epidemic” (575).
-Stephen Kaneshiro relates the news reports to Keira
This passage wraps up Butler’s novel Clay’s Ark with a racial punch, leaving us with a final image of white people gunning down anyone non-white in a panic of apocalyptic proportions. How ironic for Butler to put this in her fiction because it actually happens in our non-fiction world. Look at our own communities and notice the ethnic enclaves that unite because people like to be with others who are like them. But, when times are tough, the ethnic enclaves blame each other and sometimes become violent. The L.A. race riots of the 90’s are one example in the United States of this racial tension.
I am seeing racial overtones throughout Clay’s Ark as I am reading the extraterrestrial/human mutation not as a literal problem but as a figural alienation. The Clay Arks become figurative aliens to the rest of the Earth. Most of the Clay Arks in the desert community are representatives of ethnic minorities in the outside communities. Eli, the astronaut who brings the alien virus to earth, is a black man. When Meda confesses her romantic intentions to him, her brother comments: “’If that guy were white, I’d tell you to marry him.’” (505). Eli is ostracized by the community he infects because of his race. Lupe is Hispanic and speaks to her child in Spanish. Butler even manages to represent mixed race individuals in the characters of Keira and Rane.
So what about the question of the humanity of the Clay Arks. Why would their humanity be in question? Eli even questions himself, as our narrator relates: “In his own mind, his humanity had been in question for some time” (457). Eli has perhaps internalized the racial alienation inflicted on him by his society.
This reminds me of Franz Kafka’s short story “The Metamorphoses” in which the protagonist Gregor Samsa wakes one day to find himself transformed into the body of a giant insect and totally alienated from his family. There is no explanation as to how this happens to Gregor, there is only the fact that he is literally alienated from his fellow humans and therefor utterly worthless to them. What gives Gregor his humanity—his ability to financially support his family—is destroyed, and he withers and dies. The same fate could threaten Eli in Clay’s Ark without his ability to form his own enclave of individuals who are similar to him. He infects others to create more figurative bugs in his desert community.
But the Clay Arks also have strange abilities, superhuman powers. If this racial reading stands plausible, then what is Butler suggesting with the special abilities that her alienated characters possess? Perhaps the powers are a kind of twisted manifestation of the racial threat that minorities pose to their white counterparts. The Clay Arks have enhanced capacities to procreate, to control, to dominate. As Rane says, “There’s going to be an epidemic” (575).
Have the Clay Arks lost their humanity because of their powers? What does it mean to be human according to the novel: i.e. what is humanity anyway? Why does Butler want us to ask this question? Are you afraid of Aliens?
Another question:
What are some biblical references in the novel? How do you view Clay’s Ark in relation to Noah’s Ark given that the characters in the novel refer to the conscience as archaic and god as dead? refer to 473, 479, 491
What are some biblical references in the novel? How do you view Clay’s Ark in relation to Noah’s Ark given that the characters in the novel refer to the conscience as archaic and god as dead? refer to 473, 479, 491
No comments:
Post a Comment