Fledgling

written by Octavia e. Butler.

Quotation 1:

In Fledgling there are multiple attacks on Shori and people who surround her, but little did readers know, these attacks were foreshadowed earlier in the book, "He stared at me. 'Someone burned your mothers and your sisters as well as all of the human members of your family to death here. They shot the ones who tried to get out, shot them and threw most of them back into the fire. How you escaped, I have no idea, but we found the others, burned, broken. . . My people and In found them..." (Butler 65.) Here, Iosif describes the fate of the majority of her family, mentioning how they were set on fire and shot at in their own residence. Although the quotation may not seem that important, it foreshadows the later attacks done by fires and attacks by the same group of people being done to Iosif and the people around Shori. What is being told is significant considering how many attacks are done with fire in the future chapters, and how Shori must fight back and try to get an understanding of what she, or her family, has done wrong. The arsonists, with how often they are attacking Shori and those close to her, are similar to real life arsonists. Take for example, Paul Kenneth Keller, a man who admitted to setting 75 fires over the course of less than a year from August 1992 to February 1993 (Criminal Minds Wiki 1.) Unlike the arsonists from Fledgling, Keller did it for pure excitement, but the consistency of fires he set can be compared to how fast and quick the group attacks Shori.

Quotation 2:

After Shori loses her only remaining family, she takes responsibility of their symbionts even though she has many unanswered questions, barely knowing anything about herself or even the people around her, she shows this when she converses with Celia, "'I'm Iosif's daughter,' I said. 'I hope that my venom is strong and that you'll come to me. It won't be the same, I know, but you won't be alone. I want you with me.' 'Why should you?' Celia demanded. 'You don't know us.' 'With my amnesia, I don't know anyone,' I said. 'I'm getting to know Wright. And there's a woman named Theodora. I'm getting to know her. And Celia, I'm only beginning to know myself.'" (Butler 110.) After all Shori has been through, she displays sympathy and responsibility towards her familys symbionts, which is extremely brave of her. The subtext is important to Shori as a character, as readers see her be empathetic with others, meaning Ina, or at least, younger Ina may carry similar emotions as humans. It's interesting to see that vampires/Ina can share the same emotions as humans even though most humans may perceive vampires/Inas as violent. The way Shori is taking in Celia and Brook is like real life adoptions, though they are not all that similar, both are in the process of taking other people under their wings for protection.

Quotation 3:

In Fledgling, Butler has many examples of interesting wording when it comes to the human characters within the book, one of these examples is in page 180, where she writes, "Preston said, 'What else are we, Victor? What else do you know about us?' 'That you're sick. That you're doing medical experiments on people like the Nazis did. That you are prostituting women and kids, I believed it. Now, I don't know if its true.'" (Butler 180.) Here, readers get to understand the lies that the attackers were told, or at least, what Victor Colon was told. It's important for readers to understand that Victor was manipulated and lied to, as he was unaware of what was truly going on. What's interesting about this specific quotation is the use of words, specifically how Butler uses the word "Nazi" to describe how "Inas were doing experiments on people like the Nazis did" (Butler 180.) This would be a simile. Butler uses the word "Nazi" to emphasize the experiments that Inas were conducting. Though in reality, both groups are not similar whatsoever, as Inas were doing it for a good cause, which was for longer life, as they would not burn under the sun with the affects of the experiments, but Nazis conducted experiments on unwilling people to "cleanse" them. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum 1.)

Quotation 4:

In Fledgling at page 186, it's discovered that Inas have their own language, and in fact, Shori can read and speak it despite her amnesia, this is shown when Butler writes, "To my surprise, I did read and speak Ina. Hayden brought me three books and sat with me while I read aloud in a language I could not recall having heard or seen. Abd yet as soon as I opened the book, the language seemed to click into place with an oddly comfortable shifting of mental gears. I supposed I had spoken English from the time I met Wright because he and everyone else had spoken English to me. If I had heard only Ina since leaving the cave, I might not know yet that I spoken English. I shook my head and switched back to English. 'I wonder what else I'll remember if someone prods me'" (Butler 186.) This quotation is extremely significant to both Shori's past and the entire story, as readers and Shori herself, figure out that there's an Ina language. Written Ina language is described as, "...symbols- clusters of straight lines of different lengths, inclined in every possible direction, and often crossed at some points by one or more S-shaped lines." (Butler 186.) Figurative language is used when Shori describes "...the language seemed to click into place with an oddly comfortable shifting of mental gears" (Butler 186.) The figurative language helps convey the idea that Shori is slowly getting back the knowledge of the Ina language from her past knowledge in it.

“Paul Kenneth Keller.” Criminal Minds Wiki, 24 June 2021, https://criminalminds.fandom.com/wiki/PaulKennethKeller.
Holocaust Encyclopedia. “Nazi Medical Experiments.” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-medical-experiments.