Octavia Butler Quiz Post

The use of time travel as a narrative device in a piece of literature adds an aspect of mystery and excitement to the piece.  It forces the reader to be engaged in the present and the different times that are visited in the piece, and to discover how the different times interact with each other.  As the story unravels, the time traveling aspect becomes easier to understand, although in the beginning, the reader is downright confused as to how and why the time traveling is taking place.  In Butler’s novel, I was extremely confused during the first chapter, but as I continued to read, I became more aware of what was actually happening and what the point of the time traveling was.  One may use tie travel in his or her piece in order to show the relationship between the different times, and how the time(s) in the past affects the time(s) in the present or future.

For her novel, Butler had to research the plantation in which Rufus and his family lived, in order to correctly write about it in her story.  She also had to research the civilians in the area around the plantation in order to show how the people behaved and what they did correctly.  Historical fact is seamlessly put into the fictional story by allowing all the non-important events be how they were in the past.  She researched what life was like when Rufus was a little boy, and thus incorporated it into the story in order to make it seem more realistic.