32 pages • 1 hour read
Octavia E. ButlerThe Evening and the Morning and the Night
Fiction | Short Story | YA | Published in 1987A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Authorial Context: Octavia E. Butler
Octavia Estelle Butler was born in Pasadena, California, in 1947. Her father died unexpectedly when she was seven, and she was raised by her mother and grandmother. Perhaps because she was painfully shy as a child, she turned to writing and fostered a love of science fiction at an early age. In an interview, she noted, “I made up my own stories to put myself in them” while simultaneously enjoying writing because it “allow[s] you to be other people without being locked up for it” (Gross, Terry, and John Powers. “Pioneering Writer Octavia Butler on Writing Black People and Women Into Sci-Fi.” NPR, 14 Dec. 2022).
Eventually, Butler became widely recognized for her work, becoming the first science fiction writer to receive a MacArthur “Genius” Award. During her life, she also received several Hugo and Nebula Awards, which are prestigious science fiction writing awards. However, for a few decades, Butler struggled to find an audience for her work, possibly because of the themes she wrote about and the dystopian settings she created but also potentially because of her identity as a Black woman writing in a genre typically associated with white men. Despite this, she worked hard, waking up each morning at 2 am while also earning a living through various demanding menial jobs. Butler died in 2006 from a stroke. Since her death, interest in her writing has only grown. Several adaptations for television and movies based on her writing are currently in the works. In 2022, Kindred was adapted as a TV series, though it was canceled after one season. Other works have also been adapted as graphic novels, and Parable of the Sower was made into an opera in 2015.
At times, Butler’s work has been associated with Afrofuturism, which is, broadly speaking, science fiction that features Black history and culture. In interviews, Butler complained that because she and many of her characters are Black, critics saw her work as only exploring Black themes, particularly slavery. While such themes are indeed present in her writing, most notably in the novel Kindred, reductive labels can be harmful and limit the reach of an author’s work. Other critics argue that many of the worlds and societies she imagines are multiethnic and feature aliens and humans in coexistence. Given that narrative framework, diversity in human characters is hardly reflective of the intended readers or the reach of Butler’s writing.
Socio-Historical Context: Genetics and the Legacy of Eugenics
Humans have long understood that living things inherit traits from their parents and have used this knowledge to advance agriculture and cultivate desirable traits in plant and animal life. Because genes also play a large role in determining human traits, the manipulation of genetics has been at the center of various ethical debates since its inception. Based on late-19th- and early-20th-century discoveries about how genes determine traits, some people embraced the concept of eugenics, or the belief that people should manipulate the human population by allowing only people with certain genes to have children. The most often stated intention is to reduce or eliminate the occurrence of certain genetically determined traits and increase the occurrence of others considered to be desirable. Eugenics is an inherently biased philosophy that is often associated with racism, ableism, and other forms of bigotry because it places human characteristics in a hierarchy of value. Eugenics was infamously cited by Nazis as the basis for their actions against Jewish people, people with disabilities, and other minority groups during the Holocaust, and eugenics also influenced anti-miscegenation laws in the United States that prohibited marriages between people of different races. Though eugenics declined in popularity after it became associated with the Holocaust, forced sterilization and reproductive legislation continue to be controversial topics of ethical debate.
At the time in which Butler wrote “The Evening and the Morning and the Night,” two such overlapping ethical debates were ongoing. First, while therapeutic uses of genetics were far from possible then, it was recently possible to identify common genetically determined conditions in utero, which created the option to end a pregnancy if indicative genes were present in the fetus. Such genetic testing was and continues to be related to ongoing debates about eugenics because it concerns the desire to allow or prohibit genetically determined traits and the values that motivate such choices.
In this story, Butler grapples with assumptions about how human traits that can be genetically inherited—such as some abilities and disabilities—determine a person’s presumed quality of life and participation in society. All major characters who have DGD seem to view it as unethical for parents with the condition to have children of their own. On the other hand, Beatrice, the DGDs in her care, and others under the care of double DGD women like her evidence that people with DGD can still make important contributions to science and art. Some critics have argued that Butler also uses DGD as a metaphor for race and the racist assumptions made by white communities about Black people. It is important to note that race is a social construct, not a genetic fact, and that using disability metaphorically perpetuates ableist ideas. Butler’s intention is rather to challenge the notion that any inherited trait could determine a person’s worth and to advocate for recognizing humanity across differences. Individuals with DGD are discriminated against and frequently institutionalized in the world of Butler’s story, and Butler strives to reveal how it is a lack of wider understanding and accommodation, not any inherent trait, that creates obstacles in the lives of characters with DGD.
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