Octavia Butler's The Resistance Is Dead And So Are Me
The Resistance is Dead and So Are You When the environment dramatically changes, humans are left with a false choice: accept or resist; only one of those options, acceptance, leads to survival. People often like to think that, in any given situation, there is a choice. However, when one of the options is suffering and death, no choice exists at all. Life is evolutionarily programed for survival. One of the primary tools of survival is adaptation. If the situation one finds oneself in is irreparably difficult, dangerous, or deadly, adapting to the situation is the only way one can hope to survive. In Octavia Butler’s short story, “Amnesty,” the world has been dramatically and irrevocably changed. Humanity has been invaded by an alien life
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The Blowup mutated a portion of the population. One of the mutations to arise from the Blowup was a group of hairless telepaths known as the Baldies. “So you’ll find that the Blowup caused a hell of a lot of insanity. Not only among the Baldies, but among the other mutations that developed then” (Padgett 134-135). Similarly to the background and environment in “Amnesty,” the environment in “The Piper’s Son” has been dramatically and irrevocably changed. Because of the Blowup, there now exists a new subset of people. Non-Baldies must reconcile with the permanent changes in the environment, and Baldies must determine how they will integrate with non-Baldy …show more content…
Any resistance leads to death. This is a basic evolutionary principle: natural selection. Charles Darwin’s theory of the peppered moth provides a real life example. The white moth was more prominent, but when pollution darkened the color of the tree bark on which the moth rested, the white moths became easy targets to predators. The white moth died off, and the type of moth that survived was the darker colored moth that blended into the tree. The same principle applies to humans. Adaptation is necessary to survival, and those who resist changes in the environments will die off like the white
The Blowup mutated a portion of the population. One of the mutations to arise from the Blowup was a group of hairless telepaths known as the Baldies. “So you’ll find that the Blowup caused a hell of a lot of insanity. Not only among the Baldies, but among the other mutations that developed then” (Padgett 134-135). Similarly to the background and environment in “Amnesty,” the environment in “The Piper’s Son” has been dramatically and irrevocably changed. Because of the Blowup, there now exists a new subset of people. Non-Baldies must reconcile with the permanent changes in the environment, and Baldies must determine how they will integrate with non-Baldy …show more content…
Any resistance leads to death. This is a basic evolutionary principle: natural selection. Charles Darwin’s theory of the peppered moth provides a real life example. The white moth was more prominent, but when pollution darkened the color of the tree bark on which the moth rested, the white moths became easy targets to predators. The white moth died off, and the type of moth that survived was the darker colored moth that blended into the tree. The same principle applies to humans. Adaptation is necessary to survival, and those who resist changes in the environments will die off like the white