Wikipedia talk:Education program archive/CUNY, LaGuardia Community College/The Research Paper: Octavia Butler's Fledgling (Spring 2015)/sandbox team 1 draft

Team 1 Sections

Characters

Quotes

Milo: "You're not Ina! You're not! And you have no more business at this council than would a clever dog." (page 238)

Hayden Gordon: " The adults would be killed, and their children dispersed among us to become members of others families... We would bring the adults to you. You are the person most wronged in all this and the only surviving daughter. I think you could manage it." (page 194)

Symbiont

Humans who were bitten and became addicted to the saliva of the Ina become symbiont. They live communally with other humans and Ina’s. They have an important role in an Ina’s life because Ina become co-dependent and need the blood and touch of their humans.

Ina

The species known as vampires who have been present since ancient times. They live in communities isolated from the human population. In order for them to survive, they must have a network of humans they can feed-off of for food supply by biting them, which in turn, makes the humans dependent on the venom (a sense of pleasure). They are naturally stronger and faster than humans but are weak to sunlight (except Shori, who’s resistant to sunlight).

• Shori Matthews: Main character, Shori is Half human and half vampire. She is the result of the genetic experiment made by her family. It consisted in making her able to be stronger and faster during daytime unlike the others of her race. As a result she became envied by the Silk family, was attacked by the henchmen sent by the Silks and taken to the Council.
• Wright Hamlin sym Shori: Shori’s first symbiont, and highly possessive of Shori.
• Theodora Harden sym Shori: Oldest symbiont of Shori. She was later killed by Jack Roan.
• Joel Harrison sym Shori: He is Martin’s son. He was suggested to be Shori’s symbiont because he recently graduated and received a degree in Business Administration. He could manage all Shori’s business and properties.
• Brooke sym Iosif (later sym Shori): She was one of Iosif’s symbionts. Since Iosif was murdered she was forced to become Shori’s symbiont; otherwise, she could die.
• Celia sym Stefan (later sym Shori): Same situation as Brooke, but she was one of Stephan’s symbionts.
• Martin Harrison sym William: He was Joel’s father. He provided and taught Shori to use a cellphone, so she could easily communicate with anybody in Punta Neblada (a small Ina community) in case of emergency.
• Iosif Petrescu: Shori’s father. Killed by the attackers sent by the Silk family.
• Stefan Petrescu: Shori’s younger brother. He was one of the most special people in Shori’s life since he spent 25 years living together and were both hybrid and black.
• Preston Gordon: He is the oldest of the Gordon family. He welcomed Shori to stay with them until they could find out the ones responsible for the killing of Shori’s family. The Gordons originated from Canada and immigrated to the United States.
• Hayden Gordon: Oldest brother of the Gordon family, identical to Preston.
• Daniel Gordon: Youngest brother of the Gordon family.
• Milo Silk: Main enemy of Shori. He is the oldest of the Silk family and one of the main responsibles of killing Shori’s family.
• Russell Silk: He also is one of the main responsible of killing Shori’s family.
• Katharine Dahlman: From the silk family, she sent someone to kill Theodora and she was sentenced to death penalty.
• Vladimir Leontyev: Shori’s other father. Lived in Alaska since this A considered Russian territory. Owned a fleet of fishing boats.
• Joan Brathwaite: Elder mother of the Brathwaite family, the daughter of Shori’s second Elderfathers.
• Jack Roan sym Katharine: Responsible for killing Theodora.
• Hugh Tang sym Stefan: The person who found Shori in the cave, and was unintentionally killed by her.
• Jessica Margaret Grant: Shori’s (non-biological) human mother, she is responsible for naming Shori after an African bird and gave her the gold bird pendent found on in the rubble.
• Victor Colon: Attacker of the Ina community. Severely ill but was healed by Shori, then later on interrogated by Shori Cecilia and Brooke.
• Raleigh Curtis: Shori’s Symbiont who at first, tried to kill her then later, became dependent on Shori’s bite.

Main themes

Hybridity

Fledgling’s protagonist is a genetically manipulated creature who combines Ina and human DNA. Her hybridity is perceived as a threat by Ina speciecists, who insist that the separation of Ina and human is essential to maintain the purity of the Ina species. As Ali Brox argues, Shori’s existence "opens up a space of cultural uncertainty and instability" that forces Ina families such as the Silks, who suffer the delusion that there is a “pure” and “superior” Ina race, to admit they were onces weak, oppressed, and killed by humans. These Ina are hostile towards Shori and interpret her hybridity as a sign of degeneracy. As Gates points out, because her body is a sign of Ina-human miscegenation "[s]he is called at various times a dog, a dirty little nigger bitch, a murdering black mongrel bitch, and more.”

Butler's narrative, however, shows that Shori’s hybridity is, in fact, an evolutionary advantage. First, it allows her to be awake during the day, which permits her to survive multiple attacks on herself and her symbionts. Second, it makes her venom very powerful, which makes her scent extremely attractive to male Ina and also allows her to collect symbionts easily, making her kind more adaptable than the average Ina. In addition, Shori's hybridity also symbolizes an enhanced or "correct" type of mutualistic symbiosis, as she literally embodies human and Ina DNA working together. Thus, Butler connects hybridity to the survival of not just the Ina, but also of humanity. As Pramrod Nayar contends, in Fledgling hybridity means to take on the qualities of the other race and thus becomes a "companionate species" of others in order to survive.

Agency

Fledgling explores the complexities of self-determination through its protagonist’s struggle to regain control of her life and through the dependence created by Ina-human symbiosis. Shori is a typical Bildungsroman protagonist who begins with little agency and ends in charge of her life. As Florian Bast argues, Butler's novel is a typical African American narrative where the victim of a racially-motivated crime is in a quest for the truth about her former self, about the agony that she has endured, and about her assailants’ identity. By the end of the story, Shori has conquered both her own ignorance and the speciesist discrimination that seeks to define her thanks to her personal strength and the help of her symbionts and Ina family and friends. She is ready to become a full-fledged member of Ina society. Shari Evans also notes that Shori’s amnesia allows her to decide for herself, with the aid of her symbionts, what type of Ina she will become.

In contrast, the symbiotic partnership between Ina and humans challenges traditional ways of thinking about agency, especially because the relationship is hierarchical, with the Ina as the masters of their symbionts. Wright, for example, begins the story as a free agent but his "happily ever after" ending with Shori requires that he give up some of his agency. In addition, the agency of both the Ina and the humans is restricted by biological realities, as the addictive relationship created by chemicals in the Ina saliva when they bite their symbionts cannot be undone. For the Ina, this chemical bond means they need to be in constant physical contact with their symbionts. For the symbionts, it means that they are physically dependent on their Ina, as they could die if their Ina dies, and that they are bound to follow their Ina’s commands.

These complications of agency, Bast argues, mean that Fledgling is “openly asking whether the highest degree of agency is automatically the most desirable state of being or whether there is a higher potential for happiness in choosing a specific kind of dependence.”