Bloodchild - Close Reading

"Lomas began to groan and make choked sounds" to "I wouldn't have thought anything about her could seem alien to me"(Butler 126-7). 

"Lomas began to groan and make choked sounds. I had hoped he would stay unconscious. T'Gatoi put her face near his so that he focused on her."

Though Gan has seen and prepared himself for the pain that he knows he will eventually feel when his time to engage in this procedure comes, this is the first time we as the audience are seeing it directly. We feel pain for the man in question, as Gan wishes the man would stay unconscious, and so feel nothing throughout the entire experience.

"'I've stung you as much as I dare for now,' she told him. 'When this is over, I'll sting you to sleep and you won't hurt anymore.'

'Please,' the man begged. 'Wait...'

'There's no more time, Bram. I'll sting you as soon as it's over. When T'Khotgif arrives she'll give you eggs to help you heal. It will all be over soon.'"

Here we see the extreme gruesomeness of what is actually going on here.  These creatures have turned into parasites, essentially breeding humans for the sole purpose of incubating their young. The man is begging for his own Tlic, so that some of his pain may be alleviated as his body is ripped open and the larvae are removed. Despite the torture that this man is going through, the "birthing" process continues, without the help of his Tlic's stings.

"'T'Khotgif!' the man shouted, straining against my hands.

'Soon, Bram.' T'Gatoi glanced at me, then placed a claw against his abdomen slightly to the right of the middle, just below the left rib. There was movement on the right side - tiny, seemingly random pulsations moving his brown flesh, creating a concavity here, a convexity there, over and over until I could see the rhythm of it and knew where the next pulse would be."

Suspense is building here, more and more we see what the whole awful experience is like, and more and more we see Gan coming one step closer to having to go through it himself as well.

Stylistically, we see a pattern start to build in the way in which Butler describes much of the story's action. So far, every movement of these creatures is a flowing, undulating one, described as "not only boneless, but aquatic - something swimming through the air as though it were water." I think it is through this smooth movement that the audience, and even the characters, are supposed to relate to the creature as being natural. If the creature is viewed as natural, it is easier to see the process to which they subject their families as being natural as well.

"Lomas's entire body stiffened under T'Gatoi's claw, though she merely rested it against him as she wound the rear section of her body around his legs. He might break my grip, but he would not break hers. He wept helplessly as she used his pants to tie his hands, then pushed his hands above his head so that I could kneel on the cloth between them and pin them in place. She rolled up his shirt and gave it to him to bite down on."

Though T'Gatoi and the other Tlics do their best and sometimes succeed in appearing as though they actually care for their families, when it comes down to it they are incredibly strong, and will use that force against their "hosts" in order to survive (which in cases such as this one include ensuring the survival of even another Tlic's young). The Tlics now how to ease the agony of their Terran, but at such a small interval that it most likely isn't even noticed.

"And she opened him.

His body convulsed with the first cut. He almost tore himself away from me. The should he made...I had never heard such sounds come from anything human. T'Gatoi seemed to pay no attention as she lengthened and deepened the cut, now and then pausing to lick away blood. His vessels contracted, reacting to the chemistry of her saliva, and the bleeding slowed.

I felt as though I were helping her torture him, helping her consume him. I knew I would vomit soon, didn't know why I hadn't already. I couldn't possibly last until she was finished."

These descriptions further intensify the pain that we as the audience feel for the Terran, and ultimately for Gan. As he stands there watching, he is ambushed with two very real fears: one coming from witnessing the horrific scene in front of him, wishing to ease the man's pain, and the other coming from the knowledge that one day he will be the man in front of him, experiencing the very suffering that he is almost to sick to continue watching.

"She found the first grub. It was fat and deep red with his blood - both inside and out. It had already eaten its own egg case but apparently had not yet begun to eat its host. At this stage, it would eat any flesh except its mother's. Let alone, it would have gone on excreting the poisons that had both sickened and alerted Lomas. Eventually it would have begun to eat. By the time it ate its way out of Lomas's flesh, Lomas would be dead or dying - and unable to take revenge on the thing that was killing him. There was always a grace period between the time the host sickened and the time the grubs began to eat him."

Not only is the gestation and birthing of these creatures excruciatingly painful to the Terran, but it is also potentially lethal to them. The fact that death is a possible outcome of this process yet the Tlic continue to engage the Terran in it just confirms the fact that the Tlic are only using them, and that is it. The 'bond' between Tlic and Terran is a superficial one. The Tlic allow the Terran to believe that to carry their children is a huge honor, and so the Terran are manipulated into somewhat being okay with their Tlics using their bodies for their own purposes. The Terran suffer the beginning stages of death ONLY because of the creature that is PUT inside them, yet the creatures have developed in such a way that the host is rendered incapable of defending itself or inflicting harm on the parasite once the process has begun.

"T'Gatoi picked up the writhing grub carefully and looked at it, somehow ignoring the terrible groans of the man."

Further reminding the reader, and also Gan, that the Tlics feel no remorse for what they do; they have become immune to the anguish they inflict upon their Terran. Their sole concern is with the furthering of their species.

"'Good,' T'Gatoi looked down at him. 'I wish you Terrans could do that at will.' She felt nothing. And the thing she held..."
I think this is Butler's way of saying that not only do the Tlics not care very much, they actually find the screaming and pain the Terrans feel to be annoying, bothersome, a nuisance that comes along with the territory.

"It was limbless and boneless at this stage, perhaps fifteen centimeters long and two thick, blind and slimy with blood. It was like a large worm. T'Gatoi put it into the belly of the achti, and it began at once to borrow. It would stay there and eat as long as there was anything to eat."
This description of the newly born creature shows the reader how blood hungry this species actually is. Their first instinct is to devour whatever there is in front of them, and no matter how savagely, it is encouraged.

"Probing through Lomas's flesh, she found two more, one of them smaller and more vigorous. 'A male!' she said happily. He would be dead before I would. He would be through his metamorphosis and screwing everything that would hold still before his sisters even had limbs. He was the only one to make a serious effort to bite T'Gatoi as she placed him in the achti."
Continuing the graphic description. Even a word like "probing" gives so much description the situation at hand.

"Paler worms oozed to visibility in Lomas's flesh. I closed my eyes. It was worse than finding something dead, rotting and filled with tiny animal grubs. And it was far worse than any drawing or diagram."
Gan is again seeing what it is that is going to happen to him in the future. He probably had been shown on paper what it would be like, but seeing it in person is putting it into perspective for him. He seems to be in shock that this is happening to an actual live being, not something that is already dead and numb.

"'Ah, there are more,' T'Gatoi said, plucking out two long, thick grubs. You may have to kill another animal, Gan. Everything lives inside you Terrans.'
I had been told all my life that this was a good and necessary thing Tlic and Terran did together - a kind of birth. I had believed it until now. I knew birth was painful and bloody, no matter what. But this was something else, something worse. And I wasn't ready to see it. Maybe I never would be. Yet I couldn't see it. Closing my eyes didn't help."
The Tlic depend on the Terran to survive. Up until this time Gan had been preparing for becoming a part of this procedure which ensures their survival. It almost seemed like it was an honor for him to be a part of this, something that would be shameful for him to deny. Now for the first time he is seeing it for what it really is and beginning to question the humanity of it.

"T'Gatoi found a grub still eating its egg case. The remains of the case were still wired into a blood vessel by their own little tube or hook or whatever. That was the way the grubs were anchored and the way they fed. They took only blood until they were ready to emerge. Then they ate their stretched elastic egg cases. Then they ate their hosts.
T'Gatoi bit away the egg case, licked away the blood. Did she like the taste? Did childhood habits die hard - or not die at all?"
Everything about these creatures is barbaric. The way they plant their eggs into their Terran appears to be extremely painful, and the fact that, left in there too long, they could possibly begin to eat the very thing giving them life is altogether chilling. Gan even begins to look at T'Gatoi in a new light, trying to figure out if she is just as savage as these little beings, having only learned to hide it well.

The whole procedure was wrong, alien. I wouldn't have thought anything about her could seem alien to me."
This line wraps up the turning point in the story where Gan goes from loving and feeling safe with his Tlic, to discovering her true nature. He no longer looks forward to the bond they have and will continue to share in the future, and is instead frightened by her. This event has completely changed him forever.