payment page
Perspective as an Interpretive Lens
Dystopian stories like “Speech Sounds” often feature a main character who is, for some reason, outside society and who is able, from that perspective, to observe and comment on society and human behavior. “Speech Sounds” is told from Rye’s third-person perspective. This is a practical choice, since characters can’t speak, but it is also an artistic choice that causes readers to view post-pandemic Los Angeles through Rye’s eyes only. Rye is not an unbiased observer. Her mood as the story begins is desperate as she seeks a reason to keep living. Her opinion of most survivors is so bleak that she tells herself that it is better for her children to have died than to have lived on as “hairless chimps.” She has become someone willing to kill “the animal across the street.”
Yet despite moving through the same world and sharing other characters’ fears and jealousies, Rye provides an outsider’s perspective because she has learned to hide her essential self from others. She must hide, in fact, and has already had “close calls” with more impaired people ready to injure or kill those they perceive as more able. This perspective also opens the story to allegorical interpretations. For example, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation are not mentioned in “Speech Sounds,” but the idea of having to move through the world hiding one’s true self and pretending to be like the dominant demographic may resonate with readers who have experienced this outside perspective. Conversely, by replacing the usual reasons people discriminate against others with different degrees of linguistic impairment, the story allows readers who have never needed to hide who they are to imagine living as Rye must, aware of their outsider status and prepared to defend themselves against threats to their identity, comfort, and even safety.
Hierarchy and Dominance
In an essay first published during a 2001 United Nations World Conference on racism, Butler writes about the challenge of creating and sustaining a truly tolerant and equal human civilization. Having explored the question in fiction, Butler concludes that no such civilization is possible. She explains that humans gravitate again and again to “peck-order bullying.” People seem to crave a hierarchy, an order of dominance, and they invent orders of sorting based on class, sex, race, gradations of skin color, height, or other sets of traits. The human tendency to rank people is difficult to resist, but for Butler, attempting to resist it is imperative and should be the goal of all societies.
“Speech Sounds” provides a scenario in which this sorting into dominant and submissive groups happens based not on appearance or wealth but on levels of linguistic and intellectual impairment. The illness itself begins the sorting. Men are more vulnerable to death or impairment than women; right-handed men have worse outcomes than left-handed men. Readers might guess that people who are less impaired, and especially those who can still read and write, or speak and understand speech, would quickly come to dominate other people. But in fact, though this sorting does occur, less impaired people learn to hide their abilities because they evoke murderous jealousy in more impaired people, a testament to the deep pain of the loss of language. These abilities clearly help less impaired people survive. Rye has kept her house and her liberty; Obsidian has maintained his car and his job. But the trait that creates hierarchy most easily in “Speech Sounds” is the willingness to engage in violent acts that subdue others, forcing them to meet the needs of the violent or killing them. The new hierarchy is why Rye is always armed.
Communication and Connection
Despite the dystopian setting and violent action of “Speech Sounds,” Butler’s story has at its core a subtly optimistic idea. The pre-pandemic world of the story was surely imperfect, but now linguistic and intellectual impairment have ravaged Rye’s society. Unable to communicate clearly, and driven by emotions of fear and need, characters in the story turn desperate and violent. Failed attempts at communication cause the “misunderstanding” that leads to the fight on the bus. And when a frightened passenger tries to communicate with the driver, he bares his teeth like a dog to drive her back. The loss of communication systems, such as phone and mail, force Rye to make the perilous journey to Pasadena to find out about her brother and his sons, who are more likely dead than alive. Connections that were the norm in the pre-pandemic world have been obliterated.
But when successful communication occurs, connection happens. This hopeful idea is developed in the brief but tender relationship of Rye and Obsidian. Despite their impairments, they manage to communicate nuanced ideas through gestures and actions. Each must let go of the anger they feel because one has abilities that the other lacks. After Rye lets the “deep, bitter hatred” flood over her and ebb away, she sees Obsidian’s “milder envy” pass across his face. Now they can communicate safely, and they experience joy and contentment in each other’s presence. So rare is this connection that both want to continue it, and they would have done so had Obsidian not been killed by a man who may have been driven to murder by jealousy of the connection the woman and children share. Rye’s dashed hopes are renewed when the girl gives her the unexpected “gift” of intelligible speech, ending the story with a promising, if fragile, connection.
