Octavia Butler's Speech Sounds

Since we were toddlers, we have been told to “use our words.” Even at a young age we are taught that speech is highly valuable when attempting to achieve a positive reaction. Throughout history, this has appeared to be true in some way or another, but what happens when this system breaks down? In Octavia Butler’s “Speech Sounds,” she depicts a society suffering from the loss of ability to speak, write, or both which causes the people to revert to animalistic means of expression, thus breaking down the atmosphere of community. Although Rye and Obsidian are able to form a connection without verbal or written communication, their rare and brief relationship reveals the instability of their society at large. This instability further proves that
Before the pair leaves the scene of the fight, the narrator states that “if [Rye] had let herself think of the possible deadly consequences of getting into a stranger’s car, she would have changed her mind” (5). Rye did not allow herself to think logically in this scenario because she knew that the consequences that she was avoiding included murder or rape. This is the same rash decision making that is displayed in the bus fight scene which ties the relationship of Rye and Obsidian to the environment around them. With a relationship formed on rash decisions and uncertain identity, Rye and Obsidian are the society they live in on a smaller
Octavia Butler’s “Speech Sounds” call into question the manner in which humans interact with one another when communication is broken down to primal, nonverbal action. Though the relationship formed despite the uncertainty, it ended in Rye finding two children that she could relate to because they, too, could speak. Though what happened to the little family formed out of tragedy is left to the imagination, Butler ends the story with the idea that Rye had found her community in the few people that she could communicate with which shows that communication is the basis for community. If society does not learn to speak and listen, the idea of community as we know it today is headed down the path to