Bloodchild

As many people reading Bloodchild, I was fairly disturbed. It wasn't the depiction of violence, oppression, or gore that bothered me, but the Alien like creatures and their relationships with the Terrans that I found unsettling. The picture that my mind painted of T'Gatoi is a completely horrific image. I envisioned something spider like; a hybrid of a tarantula or centipede and a skeletal decaying human. This made it even further disturbing when we realize that these creatures are living amongst the Terrans, and the Terrans, or humans, carry on as though this were no big deal. I personally am made rather uneasy by the aspect of these monstrosities living amongst the humans, leaching off of them for what can only be seen as a sinister goal. We are told that the relationship between the humans and the Tlic is a symbiotic one; both organisms are benefited by the exchange. The mood of the piece though, suggests a darker reality. Perhaps it was just the way I read and therefor interpreted the story, but I felt as though the presence of the Tlic was sinister in ways that only the mother could imagine. I sensed that the mother knew to a greater extent the reality of T'Gatoi's presence in her son's life; her son on the other hand, represented the embodiment of ignorance and blind faith. This blind faith serves to heighten the grotesqueness of the story. It would already be frightening to consider a person being implanted with an alien organisms egg against their will; for this alien to impregnate a trusting, loving person is just that much more disturbing. The visceral nature of the implantation and birth of the alien's eggs also contributes to the disturbing nature of this story. The closest correlation we have on earth of to this altercation, is of course the botfly, who plants his eggs in the flesh of animals or humans only to hatch out after a period of time.
I managed to pick out some interesting themes in this story. The first, I noticed, was the similarities between the alien implantation and pregnancy/childbirth. I was very surprised to find out that Butler is not a feminist; it would make prefect sense to me that the author of this short story would hold feminist outlooks, particularly toward the act of childbirth. I personally concur with the association that may be derived between the Tlic implantation and childbirth. To me the aspect of childbirth is an alien action; some people may find it a beautiful event, I find it somewhat disturbing, and see the birth of a child as the gestation of a parasitic organism.
The other major theme I discovered in Bloodchild arose from the relationship between the Tlic and humans. To me, this relationship bared a striking resemblance between the relation of the native Americans and colonists. It appeared to me that Butler may have intended to communicate the idea that The Tlic supplied the Terrans with drugs and disease (the implantation), and exchange garnered valuable resources from the humans. In the beginning there was harsh resistance on both side, but we found in both cases that the oppressed parties eventually began to accept the fate dealt to them by the more powerful invaders.