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The man was half a foot taller than she was and perhaps ten years younger. She did not imagine she could outrun him. Nor did she expect anyone to help her if she needed help. The people around her were all strangers.
She gestured once—a clear indication to the man to stop. She did not intend to repeat the gesture. Fortunately, the man obeyed. He gestured obscenely and several other men laughed. Loss of verbal language had spawned a whole new set of obscene gestures. The man, with stark simplicity, had accused her of sex with the bearded man and had suggested she accommodate the other men present—beginning with him.
Rye watched him wearily. People might very well stand by and watch if he tried to rape her. They would also stand and watch her shoot him.
These lines occur after the passengers have been forced off the bus. The men who had been fighting are angry with Obsidian, and because they think that Rye is with Obsidian, they are angry with her as well. One of these men approaches Rye, gesturing his intent clearly enough. Rye’s response is a feeling of tired alarm to this daily worry for women. What is especially significant about these lines is that she knows that she can’t rely on the people around her to come to her aid. With the loss of language and the connection it creates among people has come a loss in sympathy and concern for others, at least for most impaired people. They may watch with curiosity to see who will dominate the interaction, but they will not risk their own safety by becoming involved. The isolation Rye feels while among people is exhausting for her and is part of the loneliness that she, and likely others, suffers.
The illness, if it was an illness, had cut even the living off from one another. As it swept over the country, people hardly had time to lay blame on the Soviets (though they were falling silent along with the rest of the world), on a new virus, a new pollutant, radiation, divine retribution. . . . The illness was stroke-swift in the way it cut people down and stroke-like in some of its effects. But it was highly specific. Language was always lost or severely impaired. It was never regained. Often there was also paralysis, intellectual impairment, death.
These lines occur as Obsidian, having quelled the fight on the bus, gestures to Rye to invite her to join him in his car. They are the clearest explanation of what has happened to humanity, so suddenly that people had no time even to understand what was occurring. Now that language and, to some extent, reasoning are impaired, there can be no task force or groups of scientists studying the illness to suggest responses. The extreme physical effects of the illness are so dire that some people imagine they are a “divine” punishment. But the social effects for survivors are as dire. Butler’s diction is evocative: the illness “cut even the living off from one another.” Because people can’t communicate well, they become isolated from each other, existing perhaps in small family units and, occasionally, as opportunistic packs of violent young men. But the ties that bind communities, local and global, are cut, with terrifying consequences. “Speech Sounds” suggests that human language in all its forms is necessary for people to live in even a partial or temporarily collaborative way. When language is stripped away, community becomes fragile and interactions can be fraught with threat.
