Speech Sounds Octavia Butler Summary

Language is a crucial component of human interaction. Due to our ability to articulate our thoughts and emotions with one another, we can exchange ideas, foster relationships, etc. Yet, verbal communication is often an aspect of our daily lives that people take for granted. Although people so heavily rely on spoken language, not often do many dwell on what it would be like if it were gone. Speech Sounds by Octavia Butler is a fictional short story written in 1983 that centers around the loss of verbal language, as an unspecified dystopian virus has wiped out the majority of humanity's ability to speak. Butler uses the story to explore several themes as the audience accompanies Valerie Rye, the main character, on a day in her life. The audience

However, an aspect that I wanted to keep true to the original work was the amount of dialogue. As a voiceless society, the entirety of the story is composed of descriptions of Rye’s emotional state and thoughts. While I felt that those were significant, I did want to minimize the amount of text present to create a similar impression to a lack of verbal communication. Through such a decision, the audience is to analyze the more important artistic choices laid in front of them that act as symbols, ultimately conveying much deeper

In my illustration, the woman sits propped up against infrastructure, eyes open and mouth agape to portray the fact that her death was so instantaneous, that she could not even choose to close her own eyes and mouth. In contrast to the man’s corpse, who lies on his stomach loosely covering the “slender boning knife” (Butler, 2020, pg.10) used to repeatedly stab the mother. He is faceless; we cannot see into his eyes, the windows of one’s soul, and thus we can never truly know why he decided to kill her, although Rye speculates his actions were out of envy, stating, “[a]nger, frustration, hopelessness, insane jealous” could have been “some of the passions that must have driven him” (Butler, 2020, pg. 12).

Furthermore, the most significant illustrative choice commanded attention to the color palette. I felt that a reddish hue overlaid atop the rest of the colors was appropriate. I was entranced and inspired by Damian Duffy’s rendition of Parable of the Sower, another dystopian and apocalyptic novel that served as political commentary on class inequality. In addition to his raw brush strokes, which added a layer of depth to the dire nature of his rendition, Duffy’s deliberate use of rustic reds created an atmosphere that looks difficult to breathe in, creating the sense that the world is abandoned and near its