Often, in cooperation, language is a key to communicating correctly, and one must use language accordingly to express their ideas and thoughts to others. Octavia Butler’s “Speech Sounds write a short story” shows how the absence of speech in society can cause chaos among residents. The short story shows the importance of language in communication, which can be traced to incidents in the plot.
Communication is a massive part of our civilization. The short story theme of communication opened my eyes and many others. I never truly realized how effective communication is until understanding the story. Without communication, it becomes difficult to express our feelings correctly. In a society where individuals cannot connect, it results in chaos and misunderstanding, which in turn can cause violence. The story centers on its vital theme that can effortlessly serve as a starting point for the argument that lack of verbal communication can cause a social breakdown. Butler defines the pandemic as “A new virus, a new pollutant, radiation, divine retribution. The illness was stroke-swift in the way it cut people down and stroke line in some of its effects.” Just after the virus affected people’s ability to communicate through communication, a lot of crimes and violence emerged, causing the survivors to flee out of the city. This shows how language is vital in communication in a society (Butler).
From the story, in the second stanza, Butler inscribes, “two young men were involved in a disagreement of some kind, or more likely, a misunderstanding.”. The trouble on the bus is caused by disagreement and misunderstanding between the two men. It’s important to note these men have misunderstandings, not because they have a legitimate disagreement. Still, instead, they don’t have a common language that they can use to understand each other. Modest communication should be able to clear the disagreement, but they appear unable to speak instead of cooperating via crude gestures. This passage shows that language loss in communication can lead to breakdown and physical fights.
Without communication, there is no means of knowing each other names. This is shown in the story when protagonist Rye first meets Obsidian and Rye’s attempt to know the man’s name. Protagonist Rye and the man attempted to exchange names using symbols of small objects. Obsidian presented “smooth, glassy, black rock,” and Rye decided to name him Obsidian, but his real tag might be stone, black, or peter, but Rye unquestionable decides to think of his name as Obsidian. Rye presented “a pin in the shape of a large golden stalk of wheat,” which Rye saw closer to her name (Butler). It doesn’t matter what one can think of the name because they can’t correct it, as Obsidian thinks Rye meant her name is wheat. So, all through the exchange of the tag signs indicates a wish for communication and mutual interaction. The scene emphasized the limitation of this method compared to language in communication and Rye’s feeling of loss as she knows she won’t hear her name spoken again.
Rye rescues the two children and finds out later they can both speak without impairment. These children are born after the pandemic, and their existence symbolizes hopes in the future as the language will be part of communication. The children show how language is vital in communication (Butler).
Work Cited
Butler, Octavia. “Speech Sound.” 2022, Accessed 2 Mar 2022. (Butler)
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