Speech Sounds

Rye has a poor memory, which is as much a consequence of the illness as it is of the many things that have disappeared, making them harder to remember. Still, she retains some things: “Her sometimes useless memory would retain a name like Obsidian” (Paragraph 41). Both the forgetting and the remembering cause Rye to re-experience her painful loss. For instance, not only does she lose her ability to read with the illness, but she also cannot remember much of what she read in the past. Likewise, when Rye can conjure up memories, they bring back the pain of losing her three children.

The story’s environment is also only a remnant of the past world, as though the characters inhabit a distant, nearly forgotten memory. Buses and cars are rare in this world, and Obsidian’s police officer uniform is a last scrap of government. Butler writes that the children growing up in that moment “would run through the downtown canyons with no real memory of what the buildings had been or even how they had come to be” (Paragraph 63). Butler’s metaphorical language, transforming the buildings into “downtown canyons,” powerfully demonstrates the way fixtures in society cease to be what they are once they lose their purpose. In many ways, with no memory of its purpose, humanity also is only a fragment of what it once was. 

Butler distinguishes between the effect of illness on men and women: “The illness had been harder on men than on women—had killed more men, had left male survivors more severely impaired” (Paragraph 67). The logic of the world of “Speech Sounds” therefore relies heavily on the traditional gender binary. The absence of gender-queer characters, which might appear troubling to contemporary readers, nevertheless offers different interpretations of Butler’s text and her purpose for adhering to a gender binary in the first place.

For some, the absence of characters who don’t align with a traditional gender binary might read as an attempt to present information in a way that imitates conventional statistical and biomedical reports. In other words, Butler is a product of her time, and her writing, at least when it comes to gender, reflects the prevailing gender norms of her day.

For others, however, the story’s commitment to the gender binary is paired with an unquestioned heteronormativity, a heteronormativity that either intentionally or unintentionally misses an opportunity to further enrich the world of “Speech Sounds.” After Butler explains that men have suffered the worst of the illness, for instance, she writes that women “either settled for less or stayed alone” (Paragraph 67). Between the man from the bus fight demanding sex from Rye, the intimate act that Obsidian and Rye share, and the predatory next-door neighbor with his two women, “Speech Sounds” appears to offer an unquestioned heteronormativity based on a “normal” world without queer characters and/or characters who push back against gender norms.

Some scholars also argue that the heterosexual pairings and descriptions in the text could be a narrative strategy to emphasize society’s increasing animalistic nature. As society devolves, sex and partnership occur only as superficial or pragmatic choices, but never romantic and rarely intimate. Tied to the devolution of society is the argument that Butler, by focusing on gender binary, underscores how a society governed by a gender binary will ultimately fail. In this interpretation, Butler intentionally uses the gender binary to deconstruct it. Scholars address how Rye easily assumes the heteronormative role associated with men in the text, thus turning the concept of gender on its head. It is Rye who operates with agency throughout the text—both in her physical journey and the actions she takes while on the journey—suggesting that a person whose actions don’t correlate with a set expectation of gender holds more authority and agency than the many examples of gendered non-agency in the text.

Butler creates a world where everyone lives with some form of disability. This imagined society could disrupt the prevailing idea that some people are “normal” while others are “abnormal” (or “disabled” while others are “able”). However, the illness affects some people differently—men more than women, right-handed more than left-handed. Rather than propose an equal society, it establishes a hierarchy of people based on how “impaired” they are.

“Speech Sounds” places disability on a spectrum where more “impairment” correlates to overall bad character. The main characters—Rye, Obsidian, and the children—are all “less impaired” by the illness. The narrative is also written in the third-person limited perspective, so the reader only sees the world through Rye’s eyes. Thus, the reader is encouraged to sympathize and identify with characters whose disability is less of a challenge. On the other hand, the more “impaired” characters are characterized as violent, lacking self-control, and villainous. In the story, these are the furious bus driver, the lewd men fighting on the bus, and the angry man who murders Obsidian.

Butler uses disability more as a feature of the world’s landscape than as a central element (focusing specifically on language and communication instead). The story does not critically explore the nuances of a world of people with disabilities. The narrative does not consider how people who had various disabilities before the illness might have responded differently to the new conditions. It also omits how the already existent communities of hearing impaired or speech impaired people would have fared in society after the illness.