Wild Seed

As one reads Octavia Butler’s “Wild Seed,” often the reader will find themselves quickly getting wrapped up in the conflict and surface story between Doro and Anyanwu.  It is apparent there was a struggle of power between these two immortal beings that went far beyond simple gender identity and equality, and delved deeply into the cultural schemata of the master-slave paradigm.  This motif is what carries the story throughout the novel, over centuries and changing landscapes; and yet although the people’s names change within the context of Anyanwu and Doro’s world this paradigm stays consistent.

Butler does not give us much detail or use of language of the African lifestyle; she uses westernized words to describe the Edo Nigerian tribal culture, mixing and blending the two schemas in order to create a speculative world within a relative space of historical-graphical time, in which the slave trade to the United States and Europe was beginning to be a profitable business throughout the known world.  According to Thaler’s Black Atlantic Speculative Fiction “Anyanwu makes this truth claim through her historical knowledge of the slightly less than three hundred years she had been alive in Africa previous to meeting Doro.  Thus, the novel presents the master-slave paradigm, the determining moment for black participation in the west, as an eternal truth claim, made not in the location of Western modernity but on its fringes, in Africa. The novel thereby establishes the master-slave paradigm within the history of slavery that dates back to antiquity and is also part of African patriarchal structures.  Wild Seed appropriates the master-slave dialectic in Western modernity for its concept of time in which Western modernity is only one example of a history of mankind.  The master-slave dialectic is therefore established not as a culturally specific paradigm, but universalized in the novel’s allegorical truth claim voiced by the novel’s paradigmatic slave.” (Black Atlantic, pg. 55)

Anyanwu, through her own history of being a slave, adapts and learns where power is strongest in many forms of different relationships, both personal and non-personal.  She comes to understand that the role of slave is unavoidable and she would rather hold the power of master than be submissive to another, and allow herself to be dominated physically or mentally.  Interestingly enough, she has no issue with emotional control as she views this as love and companionship.  A prime example of this is the conversation in chapter one between Doro and Anyanwu concerning slavery. Anyanwu and Doro speak of kinsmen as Doro recalls the people who once populated the Niger River area Anyanwu now resides within:

“What happened to the Oze people who were here before you?”

“Some ran away.  Others became our slaves.”

“So you were driven from Benin, then you drove others from here—or enslaved them.”

Anyanwu looked away, spoke woodenly.  “It is better to be a master than to be a slave.” Her husband at the time of the migration had said that.  He had seen himself becoming a great man—master of a large household with many wives, children and slaves.  Anyanwu, on the other hand, had been a slave twice in her life and had escaped only by changing her identity completely and finding a husband in a different town.  She knew some people were masters and some were slaves.  That was the way it had always been.  But her own experience had taught her to hate slavery.” (Wild Seed, pg. 9) This early conversation between Anyanwu and Doro sets the tone of the relationship throughout novel, and prepares the reader for what would become the basis of the conflict and disquiet that forms Doro’s and Anyanwu’s relationship over centuries.

Though she is immortal, Anyanwu does not differentiate herself from the human race, rather views herself as the voice of “Obo,” her god, where-as Doro, immortal like herself, but does not worship nor believe in any religion.  It is early on in the novel, in Chapter 2, after the two have set upon the path towards America that the challenge for power begins to show as conflict between Doro and Anyanwu.  Doro has convinced Anyanwu to come with him, neither through fear nor intimidation as he would other potentially gifted people, but by enticing her with the potential of children that would one day “NOT” die.  This concept fascinates Anyanwu, though she is quite proud of the fact that she has birthed forty-seven perfect children who have all survived, none were immortal as she and Doro are.  When Doro realizes this he vocalizes a wish that perhaps some of these “perfect” children should accompany them, only to face Anyanwu’s inner power, making him realize he needs to tame her or kill her, bringing about the master-slave mindset between the two protagonists.  “That stopped him.  There was no challenge in her voice but he realized at once she was not telling him she was all his—his property.  She was saying only that he had whatever small part of herself she reserved for her men.  She was not used to men who could demand more.  Though she came from a culture in which wives literally belonged to their husbands, she had power and her power had made her independent, accustomed to being her own person.  She did not yet realize that she had walked away from that independence when she walked away from her people with him.” (Wild Seed, pg. 29)

What are fascinating throughout all this is both, Doro and Anyanwu, antagonize and circle one each other, always looking for a weakness in the other.  Though Doro is technically the master and Anyanwu the slave, both fear and are intimidated by the other.  Doro consistently wonders when he the time will come for him to kill Anyanwu, and yet he is fascinated by her.  She is the only female who truly angers him and makes him feel human emotions.  Anyanwu, on the other hand, feels hatred for Doro for her slave status, but it is a status she willingly accepted of her own free will.  She also hates Doro for choosing to marry her to someone else, even though she has come to love Isaac, she cannot accept her lowered status.  It was Isaac who believes in both Anyanwu and Doro, who can see into both these immortals and understand that one day they will need one another.  Isaac understands both Doro and Anyanwu in such a way, as it could be interpreted as empathy.  He promises Anyanwu Freedom one day in the future, but he also begs her to not give up on Doro.  For all that he wishes her for himself, Isaac prophecies that only Anyanwu will be able to reach Doro’s humanity.  Anyanwu acknowledges she is too much of a coward to die, and as such agrees to marry Isaac, binding herself further to Doro, and enslaving herself to his will.    

At the beginning of Book 2, Lot’s Children, with the death of Isaac and her daughter Nweke, Anyanwu sees her own death shining in Doro’s eyes.  She knows the endless struggle between them has come to an end, only she is not ready to die, and so she does as she spoke of in the beginning of the novel, when others sought her death, she escaped taking on the form of an eagle, flying towards the ocean, before finally shedding all humanity and her binds of slavery to take the form of a dolphin.  “When Anyanwu becomes a dolphin or a bird, readers are transported out of this discursive universe into the nonhuman world of actual animals.  At this level “a true animal” is defined as “a creature beyond his [Doro’s] reach”.  Significantly, it is only when Anyanwu makes herself over into an animal that she is able to escape Doro’s mental tracking of her.” (Becoming Animal, pg. 13)  Anyanwu was finally free of her chains, not only put there by Doro, though he was the most stringent, but by humanity itself.  The pain of humanity was gone.  She no longer was going to be asked to sacrifice or be enslaved to others wants and needs.  She could simply be.  “Doro had reshaped her.  She had submitted and submitted and submitted to keep him from killing her even though she had long ago ceased to believe what Isaac had told her—that her longevity made her the right mate for Doro.  That she could somehow prevent him from becoming an animal.  He was already an animal.  But she had formed the habit of submission.  In her love for Isaac and for her children, and in her fear of death—especially of the kind of death Doro would inflict—she had given in to him again and again.  Habits were difficult to break.  The habits of living, the habit of fear… even the habit of love.” (Wild Seed, pg. 211)

Anyanwu admits she is a slave to her habits, not just to Doro, whom she loves and hates, with love and hate being two sides of the same coin.  Thaler explores the emotional side of the master-slave relationship further.   She states “the dependence of master and slave on each other is psychologically founded.  In contrast to the “people” Doro gathers, who willing submit to his orders, Anyanwu refuses to show the emotional dependence expected of her by Doro.  In Book II, Doro is annoyed by Anyanwu because despite the fact that she submits to his “breeding program” she makes it clear that she despises Doro and does not show the respect Doro wants from his people.” (Black Atlantic, pg. 55) This idea of dependence between master and slave continues even further along into Book III when Doro finally catches up with Anyanwu, with the intent of finally killing her. 

Book III, Canaan develops and brings with it a conclusion that does not necessarily leave the reader satisfied.  It leaves a lot of opened questions, but then again this novel is only the prequel to an entire series of books involving Doro and Anyanwu.  This idea of dependence between master and slave Thaler speaks of continues even further along into Book III when Doro finally catches up with Anyanwu, with the intent of finally killing her.  Anyanwu has had her own experiences, living amongst both the dolphins and as a white man, Edward Warwick, the slave master and owner of the plantation.  Doro, himself has experienced not had an easy time of it since Anyanwu has been gone, with Wheatley Village no longer a prosperous seed village.  The novel reaches an emotional epiphany along with Doro as our two characters reach a climatic point with Doro claiming Susan’s body for his newest kill.  Up till this point Anyanwu and Doro had been living together with Anyanwu pregnant with his child. 

A new form of a relationship seemed to be building between the two of them, after a hundred years of silence and separation.  One would not think that knowing Doro has killed another human would be the catalyst to push Anyanwu over the edge, and yet it does.  It does seem that Anyanwu’s attempted “suicide,” after the birth of her son, almost seems to manipulative upon her part.  She gives a prolong speech to Doro about how Isaac was wrong.  He has no humanity left within him.  Doro pleads with her not to leave him, that, in truth, she is wrong.  She is his humanity. 

In this part, you see the master-slave paradigm switch.  What the reader thought or experienced throughout the novel within their own interpretation, where Doro was the master and Anyanwu was the slave, revealed a new truth.  Doro was as much a slave to Anyanwu and his need for companionship, trust, and human emotion /approval blatantly emoted through the language expressed his submissive nature.  Anyanwu manipulates these needs within Doro to get him to reveal this, in order to acquire what she desires most from him, her independence, “NOT” her freedom.  She also demands that he will not sacrifice any of her children or those she calls hers.  What is interesting about this demand is she is completely ok with his breeding program, in fact, she tells him before she “suicides” she was always a supporter of his breeding program, she just did not support his need to kill.  Truthfully, as long as Doro kills others who are not one of hers, she is even ok with this.  Their relationship is no longer one in which it is based upon master-slave but rather it is now an immortal paradox.  “He laughed.  He did not care what she called herself as long as she went on living.  And she would do that.  No matter where she went, she would live.  She would not leave him.” (Wild Seed, pg. 297)

Cite:

Butler, Octavia. Wild Seed. New York: Warner, 1988. Print.

Thaler, Ingrid. "Chapter 1, Introduction." Black Atlantic Speculative Fictions. New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2010. 28. Print.

Dubey, Madhu. "Becoming Animal in Black Women's Science Fiction." Selected Readings - Mythology and Modern Life. Albany: SUNY-ESC, 2011. 270. Print.