Sir, Those are Human Beings, not Sims: A Nuanced Review of Wild Seed by Octavia Butler

Title: Wild Seed

Author: Octavia E. Butler

Genre/Type of Book: Novel, fiction, science fiction, fantasy

Trigger warnings: Murder, slavery, racism, sexism, eugenics, body horror (shape shifting), suicide, cannibalism, rape, incest

Main Characters’ Descriptions

The way I described Wild Seed to my younger brother was like this: Imagine you are a nearly 4000 year old immortal being who lives forever by stealing other people’s bodies and possessing them, and to combat the overwhelming, unfathomable loneliness you face as you outlive every person, society, and culture you’ve ever known, you decide to play the Sims with real-life people. Oh, and if those people refuse to obey your every order, no matter how evil or vile, or if they go insane because you insist on inbreeding them in the hopes of someday obtaining a child who lives forever and has the most special powers you’ve ever seen, you kill them. It’s a crude oversimplification of Octavia Butler’s masterpiece and opening book to her Patternist series, and yet, it also isn’t that far off from what one of the main characters, Doro, is doing.

Wild Seed tells the story of two African immortal beings with very different personalities and moral views, Doro and Anyanwu. Doro claims he is around 3700 years old and his original body was born to the Kush people in Nubia, now modern—day Egypt and Sudan. He tells Anyanwu that his original body died when he was thirteen years old, and that he must kill others and possess their bodies in order to continue to live. Anyanwu is around 300 years old and was born to the Ado and Idu tribes sometime in the late 1300s in present—day Nigeria. Unlike Doro, Anyanwu maintains her original body which stopped aging at the age of twenty after a bout with a mysterious illness during which her first husband sought treatment for her from an oracle. 

Both Doro and Anyanwu have supernatural abilities. Doro is able to possess the bodies of other humans after killing them, which essentially renders him immortal. Anyanwu is able to shapeshift into any human or animal she wants and can make herself indistinguishable from the original being she copied after consuming a bit of their flesh. She also has the ability to see inside of her own body down to the tiniest details and manipulate it in order to heal illnesses, pains, and injuries, as well as enhance her senses. She is able to heal other people by biting them and using her ability to see into her body at the microscopic level to diagnose their ailments, and then manufacture a cure within her own body which she delivers via her saliva. Anyanwu also has superhuman strength which allows her to perform physical tasks beyond the capabilities of other humans, including Doro. Doro is drawn to Anyanwu by a “feeling,” which causes him to initially find her at the opening of the novel and allows him to track her movements. However, when Anyanwu transforms into a non—human animal, Doro realizes he can no longer sense her, which causes him to fear her power. 

Doro and Anyanwu have very different personalities, although both have engaged in morally repugnant behaviors. Doro is unbothered by killing people if they disobey him or get in his way, and he doesn’t mind killing frequently to gain access to another body. He is effectively the head of a eugenics program of his own design with his “seed villages,” places where he keeps humans he has specially bred to cultivate supernatural abilities. He rules over these seed villages through fear and coercion, and will kill anyone who doesn’t obey him, though he states he dislikes wasting valuable potential seed. Doro is essentially a slave master, though his methods and purposes are different from the non—immortal slave masters of the late 1600s when the novel opens. It is worth mentioning that Doro himself was once enslaved by an unknown group of people whose culture and language have long since died out, leaving him the only person alive who knows their language and customs. 

Anyanwu is horrified by Doro’s casual killing, as well as frightened by his powers. She has cultivated the image of herself as a powerful oracle in her own village, and uses this image to heal her people and bring them wealth and prosperity. She has been married nine times, and both sired and birthed many children (she and Doro are both capable of changing their sex). She doesn’t kill unless she is threatened and loses control of herself, preferring to frighten people into leaving her be. 

Despite Anyanwu’s convictions and actions of healing and helping her people, she has also engaged in murder and slavery. She tells Doro of fighting the Benin and crossing the Orumili (also known as the Niger River) to Onitsha (a city in Nigeria) to become free, and how afterwards, she and her fellow Ado and Idu people killed the native Oze people there and enslaved others. Her husband of the time told her that it was better to be a master than a slave, and he desired to be a “great man—master of a large household with many wives, children, and slaves.” Interestingly, Anyanwu was enslaved twice herself, and loathes the practice, but finds herself replicating it in her efforts to survive: “She knew some people were masters and some were slaves. That was the way it had always been. But her own experience had taught her to hate slavery. She had even found it difficult to be a good wife in her more recent years because of the way a woman must bow her head and be subject to her husband. It was better to be as she was—a priestess who spoke with the voice of a god and was feared and obeyed. But what was that? She had become a kind of master herself. ‘Sometimes, one must become a master to avoid becoming a slave,’ she said softly.” (pg 9-10)

Anyanwu has also killed people, though she feels great guilt and shame in doing so. She tells Doro she used her superhuman strength to crush seven men who attacked her, crushing them as if they were rocks in her fist. Even though she did this out of self defense, Anyanwu feels guilty for not sparing the lives of the seven men, and has resolved to do everything in her power to prevent it from happening again. She heightened her hearing and eyesight so that people could no longer come upon her unnoticed and frighten her for this reason. 

Doro initially wants to keep Anyanwu for the purpose of breeding. He has a long history of breeding humans with supernatural abilities and controlling their actions, reproduction, and movements through fear and coercion. He keeps these people in “seed villages,” and his goal is to use Anyanwu to produce his most gifted offspring yet by having children with her, and pairing her with his most gifted son, Isaac. 

Alongside his many evils and flaws, Doro also suffers from a profound loneliness due to his power and immortality. Later in the novel, he even expresses shame in taking certain people’s lives and bodies. He and Anyanwu struggle with a toxic and abusive relationship wherein Doro wields his power over her by threatening her and her children’s lives if she does not obey him. Even with his most vile acts, however, Anyanwu loves Doro, and he loves her, though it takes him the entire novel to realize how much he loves her and how afraid he is of losing her. Eventually, Anyanwu is the one who gets Doro to compromise some of his evil policies.

Summary

The novel takes place in several different time periods and locations. The first part of the novel is set in Africa in 1690, which is when Doro first encounters Anyanwu and convinces her to cross the Atlantic with him to go to his seed village in Wheatly, New York. The second part is set in the 1700s in Wheatly, and focuses on Anyanwu, her husband Isaac, her daughter Nweke’s transition into her powers, and Doro returning to watch Nweke’s progress.The final section of the novel takes place in the 1800s in Louisiana, where Anyanwu has bought a plantation (while she is in the form of a white man) and uses it to start her own family of humans with special abilities who have trouble fitting in anywhere else. As the novel progresses, Anyanwu realizes more and more the lengths to which Doro will go to control his specially—bred humans in his seed villages, including herself and her children. 

Book I: Covenant 1690

The first part of the novel opens from Doro’s point of view. Doro is angry after going to check on one of his seed villages and finding that its inhabitants are either dead or vanished, presumably having been captured and sold into slavery. While he is wandering and pondering the loss of his special humans, Doro feels a presence calling to him. He knows it must be someone who possesses special abilities, and he follows it to its source: an apparently elderly woman. He questions the woman about her identity and abilities. The woman eventually reveals her name is Anyanwu, and Doro tells her his name and some of his abilities, which frightens Anyanwu. They both reveal that they are immortal to each other, which excites Doro, since he has never found anyone as old as Anyanwu before. Anyanwu takes Doro back to her hut to show him her powers at his insistence. Once there, she changes from an old woman into a young man, and then into her original body, that of a young African woman. Doro is enchanted with her powers, and sets about convincing Anyanwu to come with him to America to one of his seed villages in Wheatley, New York. These seed villages consist of humans with special powers and abilities found by Doro. In these villages, Doro forces people to have sexual relations, often people who are related to each other, in the hopes that their children will have the most concentrated mix of special abilities. 

Doro tells Anyanwu he believes he can give her what she has always wanted: children who do not die. Anyanwu had told him she had been married nine times and had many children and grandchildren, but all of them eventually died mortal deaths. Despite her fear and trepidation, Anyanwu agrees to go with Doro, partly because she wants to see if they can indeed produce immortal children together, and partly to protect her living descendents in Africa from Doro. Anyanwu realizes Doro will search for her descendents and try to use them for breeding purposes and hopes that by going with Doro, she might be protecting them from such a fate. Also notably, despite Anyanwu’s fear of Doro, she does find herself inexplicably attracted to him, both physically and emotionally. She has never met another person who has lived as long as she has, and understands all of the ills that come with living forever and watching the world around you constantly change, decay, and rise again. 

Anyanwu takes the form of a young man and travels with Doro to his slave ship that will take him and some of the “special humans” he has found to Wheatley. During this time, Anyanwu reveals her healing abilities, and she heals Doro’s hand with her saliva after he injures it and it gets infected. She also witnesses Doro use his ability for the first time, after he kills a child and takes over his body. It is also revealed that Doro has recruited a white slaver to make sure no slavers take people from his seed villages. Witnessing these things deeply disturbs Anyanwu, and aboard the ship, in the midst of loneliness and homesickness, she contemplates jumping overboard, but Doro stops her. On board the ship, Anyanwu meets Isaac, Doro’s favorite and most powerful son. 

Doro forces Anyanwu to marry his powerful son Isaac, which Anyanwu objects to because she sees herself as Doro’s partner and having a relationship with his son amounts to incest. Isaac is sympathetic to Anyanwu and Doro at the same time. Anyanwu was initially going to refuse to marry Isaac, which would have led to Doro killing her, but Isaac persuaded his father to let him talk to her. Isaac tells Anyanwu that she is the only one who has a chance at getting through to Doro and getting him to change his ways. He acknowledges Doro’s evil acts of murdering to get new bodies (even when he doesn’t always need to), and says he tries to delay him and save people when he can. He says Doro does listen to certain people, and he does have feelings, but Isaac fears Doro is slowly losing them along with what is left of his humanity as he lives on and everyone around him dies. He tells Anyanwu “Everything dies but him. And maybe you, Sun Woman, maybe you. Make him know you’re not like everyone else—make him feel it. Prove it to him, even if for awhile, you have to do some things you don’t like. Reach out to him; keep reaching. Make him know he’s not alone anymore!” (Pg 137-138) 

Anyanwu rightfully calls Isaac out for heaping more burdens on her than she already has (her current husband is a murderer, slave master, eugenicist, abuser, and has just told her to marry his son or else he will kill her), but eventually, she agrees to marry Isaac. 

Book II: Lot’s Children 1741

The second part of the book takes place in Wheatley, where Isaac and Anyanwu are now married and have a family together. Anyanwu and Isaac actually end up having a beautiful, loving relationship, and they have several children together. One of my favorite things Anyanwu and Isaac do together is fly. Anyanwu turns into a beautiful multicolored bird and flies slightly below Isaac to draw attention away from her husband in case any people look up. Isaac felt threatened at first by his wife protecting him in this way, but gradually realized Anyanwu was not going to stop protecting him, and they both loved flying with each other too much to give it up. Isaac says Anyanwu has even been shot by hunters in her multicolored bird form to protect Isaac, which was terrifying for me to think about but also deeply poignant and reflective of Anyanwu’s strength and love for Isaac.

As Isaac and Anyanwu grow closer together, Doro and Anyanwu’s relationship rapidly deteriorates. Doro, incensed at Anyanwu’s coldness towards him and feeling as though she “has no idea how good she has it,” forces her to have sex with a telepath named Thomas, whose abilities have caused him to isolate from people and descend into alcoholism, starvation, and squalid living conditions. Anyanwu tries to help Thomas, despite his outward appearance and his shouting racist slurs at her. He actually begins opening up to Anyanwu once she turns herself into a leopard and brings him food to eat and allows him to pet her. The two have sex, during which Anyanwu conceives Thomas’s child, destined to become Nweke. Anyanwu is just beginning to heal Thomas’s various sores and injuries when Doro returns and is humiliated, because he expected Anyanwu to be devastated by Thomas and not wanting to be anywhere near him, and instead he finds her helping him and even willingly having sex with him. Doro kills Thomas and wears his body to punish Anyanwu the only way he can, and claims Nweke as his child, despite not having possessed Thomas’s body at the time of her conception. 

A few years later, Doro senses Nweke is to become a very powerful telepath and possibly have new abilities, similar to her mother’s. He comes back to the American seed village he placed Isaac and Anyanwu in to meet with Nweke before her transition, the incredibly tumultuous and painful period of time where people with powers like Doro’s, Anyanwu’s, and Isaac’s come into their full range of abilities. It’s like puberty on steroids. Doro wants to make sure Nweke will be ok, and he tends to spend more time with people who he thinks are going to become very powerful and unique when they reach their transition. Meanwhile, Anyanwu and Doro’s relationship has deteriorated seemingly to the point of no return: Anyanwu hates Doro for his numerous crimes and abuses, and Doro hates that he can’t control Anyanwu. Doro plans to make Nweke his “new Anyanwu” and kill her once Isaac passes away, because he doesn’t want to upset his favorite son by murdering his wife who also used to be HIS wife. Isaac and Doro maintain their close relationship, though Isaac sadly notes that Doro seems even less human than before, and Doro notes Isaac’s aging and thinks to himself “Isaac was an old man, soon to die. They all die so quickly…” (Pg 144) 

Doro meets with Nweke, who is in acute distress at her growing telepathic abilities. She tells Doro she has seen her neighbors, David and Melanie, who are brother and sister, having sex because of her telepathy. Doro realizes Nweke enjoyed seeing her neighbors’ incestuous affair, and they talk about it. This exchange was uncomfortable on so many levels, and I was foolish to believe it wouldn’t get worse. Doro ends up manipulating and having sex with Nweke, his eighteen year old adopted granddaughter who is in acute emotional turmoil due to her transition. It is horrifying, and crosses a line he promised Anyanwu he wouldn’t cross: he promised to leave her children alone. Nweke quickly goes into he full transition soon after, when Anyanwu and Isaac return home and Anyanwu realizes what Doro has done. Anyanwu stays with her daughter as her body goes through the agony, physical and mental, of coming into its full powers. Doro leaves and goes to another room with Isaac, where he casually eats fruit cakes as his adopted granddaughter screams in agony in the next room. Nweke ends up coming into her powers, and she is indeed as powerful as Doro hoped. But her mind is no longer present by the end of her transition, which is something Doro has described happening in a few other cases of transition. Nweke, completely insane and unaware of her surroundings, nearly kills her mother by ripping her insides apart. Isaac realizes the screams next door are now coming from his wife, not his daughter, and he rushes in to help, with Doro close behind him. Isaac slaps Nweke, desperately trying to get her to come back and release Anyanwu, but she seizes control of Isaac’s heart and makes him suffer some kind of heart attack (Isaac already has heart problems due to his age and diet, and Anyanwu has been helping him the best she can with her healing abilities). Doro manages to get Nweke to release Anyanwu by slapping her, but she falls on Isaac. Isaac launches her into the ceiling and kills her by accident. 

Doro manages to awaken Anyanwu, who heals herself just enough to try and save Isaac, but it’s too late: her beloved husband dies in her arms, while her deceased daughter lies on the bed in the same room. The loss of her husband and her daughter due to Doro’s actions, and her realization that Doro intends to kill her, lead Anyanwu to flee from Wheatly in animal form. 

Book III: Canaan 1840

This leads into the third section of the novel, where Anyanwu lives as a bird and sometimes as a dolphin for many years before changing into a white man named Edward Warrick and buying a plantation in Louisiana where she can raise her own family. In her animal forms, Doro cannot sense Anyanwu telepathically, which offers her some form of protection. One thing that stood out to me as particularly creative was that Anyanwu dove and scavenged for treasure from old shipwrecks in her dolphin form in order to finance her and her family’s needs on land. 

Doro eventually tracks Anyanwu down while she is in human form. On the plantation, Doro discovers Anyanwu has started her own family, which is a mix of gifted humans she has taken in and children she has given birth to with various partners. Doro is particularly impressed by Anyanwu’s son, Stephen, who is a healer like Anyanwu and is currently growing himself a new set of arms because he lost his original arms in a fire. Anyanwu knows Doro will seek to control her and her family in some way, if he doesn’t kill her outright, and she tries to find a way to defy him and preserve her and her family’s freedom. Doro eventually says he wants to bring Stephen a woman from one of his own seed villages to be his wife and bear his children. He and Anyanwu discuss this, and Anyanwu tells Doro about her wife named Denice, a white teenager who struggled with her supernatural ability that allowed her to see the histories and memories of objects and people when she touched them. I do want to mention that it bothered me that Denice was only seventeen when she and Anyanwu got together, but as I have previously mentioned, both Doro and Anyanwu engage in behaviors that are morally repugnant, which adds to the complexity of their characters. Denice and Anyanwu had several girl children together, and Anyanwu talks about how Denice was worried about her children being dark skinned because of how people treated them and their white mothers (“White women must be protected,” Doro says in one notable line, to which Anyanwu replies “As property is protected…preserved for the use of owners alone.” pg 233). Anyanwu is able to genetically modify their children to have white skin, and does so for the reasons above. This type of eugenics and genetic engineering was painful to read and think about, but it fit with the setting of the story and was realistic in its portrayal of the attitudes that valued whiteness and dehumanized blackness and brownness. After they finish talking, Anywanwu reluctantly agrees to let Doro bring people from his own seed villages to pair with Anyanwu’s gifted family members, realizing it’s her only way to escape Doro murdering her and destroying the people she cares about most.

Disaster soon occurs: Doro brings one of his people, Joseph Toler, who had not gone through transition and was believed to be a latent, someone with supernatural powers that never fully develop but can pass on to their children, to marry Anyanwu’s daughter Margeret Nneka. Joseph tries to rape Anyanwu’s youngest daughter Helen, who is eleven years old. Stephen finds Joseph and beats him before he can rape Helen, and Anyanwu takes Joseph upstairs into her house before talking to Helen, who says that she was going to fetch water for Rita (one of Anyanwu’s friends who has come to live on the plantation) when she found herself unable to control her body. She found herself walking towards a cabin, where Joseph was waiting for her, and then Joseph attacked her. Helen managed to get outside the cabin and Stephen saw her and Joseph struggling, which was when he beat Joseph up. Anyanwu says she will tell Doro to take Joseph away when he comes back to the plantation, but by morning it is too late: Joseph has undergone a late transition, and from his bed upstairs, he mind controls Anyanwu’s son Stephen to kill himself by walking off of the roof. Another of Anyanwu’s friends who lives on her plantation, an old woman named Luisa who has empathic abilities, tells Anyanwu of Stephen’s death. Devastated, Anyanwu kills Joseph in her leopard form. 

Doro returns to the plantation a month after Stephen and Joseph’s deaths, though he senses they are gone through his supernatural abilities. He brings two young boys from one of his colonies of gifted humans to live on the plantation. Anyanwu agrees to let the boys stay, but makes Doro promise to take them away if they don’t fit (if they begin to harm others as Joseph did). Luisa convinces Anyanwu to take some time away from her home in one of her animal forms, and Anyanwu agrees after sending for one of her white daughters and her husband, Leah and Kane, to look after the plantation in her stead. Sadly, when Anyanwu returns from her trip as a bird at sea, Luisa has died from old age. 

Surprisingly, Doro comes to Anyanwu and expresses empathy in his own way. He says to her “It goes on, you know. The dying,” to which Anyanwu replies “It doesn’t hurt you.” But Doro admits finally “It does. When my children die—the best of my children.” (pg 270) At first, Anyanwu wants Doro to leave, but he takes her to the couch in her library and initiates sex with her, and she finds that she doesn’t mind. She enjoys the body he is wearing and he tells her he picked it because he knew she would admire it. Then, Doro tells Anyanwu he wants to try something with her that he can’t explain in words. He says she will only be in danger if she disobeys him, and Anyanwu, who is beginning to again feel like nothing more than a breeding animal to him, agrees. Anyanwu finds herself plunged into a mental void, and then jerks back to reality to find she has scratched Doro. Realizing she is afraid, Doro assures Anyanwu that she is safe and that he won’t hurt her, and then, he tries again. Anyanwu at first sees and feels only darkness, and then she sees a blazing sun, and feels warmth and pleasure from it. She also feels a hunger and loneliness in it, and empathizes with it. At this point, Anyanwu realizes Doro is showing his true self to her, the self that is beyond a physical form and exists only as the ball of light and the feelings surrounding it before her. She reaches out to touch the ball of light that is Doro and they start to “blend” together, and Anyanwu fears he is killing her. But then, Doro pulls back and they return to their physical bodies. 

On the couch, Doro tells Anyanwu “I had to know you that way at least once. I had to touch you that way…it’s the closest I’ll ever come to you.” (pg 277) Anyanwu expresses wonder, and tells Doro that she enjoyed being that close to him, which surprises Doro. After this experience, there is a new understanding and sympathy from Anyanwu towards Doro, and they grow closer together again. Doro comes to her plantation more and more often, but finds himself confused at the change in his feelings towards her—or more aptly, the fact that she has awakened human feelings in him that he hasn’t felt in many years. Their relationship seems to be going better, but Doro still kills people left and right and continues his “breeding experiments,” which continues to upset Anyanwu. Finally, their relationship reaches a breaking point when Doro kills an innocent woman, Susan, on Anyanwu’s plantation for her body and Anyanwu sees him wearing it. 

Anyanwu realizes Doro will never change, and she has simply seen and experienced too much loss, and she prepares to end her life. She is pregnant, and will see the child born, but she plans to kill herself afterwards. Doro is horrified, but feels helpless and overwhelmed with his feelings for Anyanwu. He realizes he loves her and cannot bear to lose her, and on the night Anyanwu is to kill herself, he pleads for her not to. She gets into her bed and lies down, and when Doro realizes she plans to simply “turn off her body,” he comes over to her and begs her not to take her life, and says he would give anything to lie down next to her and die at her side. In tears for the first time in the novel, Doro says to Anyanwu says: “Sun Woman please don’t leave me.” (pg 296) 

Anyanwu decides not to take her life after seeing Doro does still have human feelings left and hasn’t degraded to the point of no return that she and Isaac both feared so long ago. She no longer allows Doro to control her, and he agrees to leave her and her children alone. He also agrees not to kill the people he is done breeding in his seed villages for their bodies. The novel ends with Anyanwu moving to California with her new family and taking an English name for herself: Emma, meaning grandmother or ancestress. 

Things That Blew My Mind (In A Good Way)

I picked up Wild Seed and was nearly incapable of putting it down once I started reading it. I finished it in probably three days: it was that engaging of a novel. What did I like about it? I loved the moral complexity of Doro and Anyanwu, particularly Doro’s simultaneous monstrousness and all—too—humaness. I also admired Butler’s portrayal and commentary on slavery and eugenics, not only within the historical settings Doro and Anyanwu live in, but within Doro’s control of his special humans in his seed villages. I admired how she didn’t flatten slavery into a practice where inconceivably evil, inhuman monsters owned and abused people for their own gain, which is a dangerous way to portray the darkest parts of history. She created people like Doro, and also Anyanwu, who had both been slave masters and enslaved themselves, and gave them human voices, motives, and emotions. Though both characters are fictional, along with their powers, this portrayal to me is more honest and therefore all the brutal in its commentary on slavery in real life: it was people that did this to other people, at the end of the day. 

Of course, I really enjoyed all of the characters’ different supernatural abilities, whether it was healing, shapeshifting, telepathy, flying, telekinesis, or changing bodies. In particular, I loved Anyanwu’s shapeshifting power (more on that below) and how she used it to either blend in or gain power in her community, which to me reflected on power dynamics present in our real world. I also liked how when she turned into animals, particularly when she turned into a dolphin, she began to see animals as non—human people with their own cultures, relationships, and languages. 

Finally, I loved Butler’s characterization. The characters in Wild Seed are vivid, engaging, emotional, and unique. Alongside the two main characters, Doro and Anyanwu,  I really liked Isaac and Luisa, particularly for their loyalty, empathy, and leadership abilities. 

Things that Blew My Mind (In A Not—So—Good Way)

There were very few things I actually disliked in this book. There were many things that made me uncomfortable, such as Doro’s controlled breeding of living, breathing human beings and his exertion of control over every aspect of their lives. Of course, the whole book is about that though, and it’s meant to be messed up, so I don’t dislike it, I just wish a certain 4000-year-old someone would have made better life choices. The incest between the people in Doro’s villages also made me uncomfortable and I actually feel like Doro’s logic in this makes no sense. He thinks that he’ll eventually get people with more powerful abilities and better control of these abilities by breeding people who are related to each other together…and yet a bunch of these people’s descendents have horrible issues with mental anguish and illnesses of varying degrees, from complete insanity to not being able to be around other people at all. Sometimes they even choose to end their own lives. I think just maybe these things could be related to the fact that there’s not enough genetic diversity in the gene pool? But hey, maybe after another 50 generations things will work out for the best and there will be a bunch of lovely, mentally balanced, benevolent people with superpowers beyond Doro’s wildest dreams…or NOT (see book two, Mind of My Mind, which I also read right after Wild Seed…all I have to say is big woops on Doro’s part). 

One thing I do dislike is how quickly Anyanwu agrees to go with Doro to the United States. I understand that she’s intrigued by him and that they are attracted to each other. I also understand that Anyanwu is worried for her family’s safety as well as her own if she refuses him. I even understand her desire to be with someone else who will live as long as she does and maybe even be able to conceive children with her that live similarly long lives. However, she literally agrees to go with Doro in the span of one night. That to me felt rushed, and I think it might have been more believable if Anyanwu agreed to go after a longer period of time.

One more thing I did have trouble believing and therefore disliked was the fact that Doro didn’t sense his son Joseph undergoing a powerful transition, even though he is capable of feeling certain people’s transitions many miles away if they are powerful enough. He sensed Nweke was about to enter her transition, and was able to do so for other people, so I don’t know why he didn’t sense Joseph coming into his powers. Joseph’s powers were incredibly strong, so much so that even in her leopard form, Anyanwu had to fight against them to kill him. I stand by the fact Doro should have Joseph’s transition and that if he had, he could have intervened before Joseph attempted to rape Helen and later killed Stephen. This felt like a big plot hole for me, but it was the only major one I noticed in Wild Seed and it didn’t compromise all of the story. 

The Craft!

Symbolic names

Anyanwu and Doro’s names are established as significant and symbolic from the beginning of the novel. Anyanwu’s name means “the sun,” and Doro’s name means “East, the direction from which the sun comes.” This foreshadows Anyanwu and Doro’s relationship throughout the next few centuries to come, and implies that Anyanwu’s power over Doro is greater than either of them realize. Doro also comes up with an oddly endearing nickname for Anyanwu in English: “Sun woman.”

Octavia Butler is known to use biblical names in her other books, such as her Xenogenesis series, where the main character’s name is Lilith, and her initial human love interest is named Joseph. There is also a Joseph in Wild Seed, but there isn’t any apparent symbolic connection between his character and the biblical figure of the same name. The example of a biblical name that stood out to me the most with its symbolism in Wild Seed was Doro’s favorite and most gifted son is named Isaac. His name had me going “oh boy” long before his role in the story became more significant. Isaac has several powers, including enhanced strength, the ability to fly, and the ability to control storms, which is what Doro mainly uses him for when they are on ships getting more slaves to bring to Doro’s seed villages. 

Despite their surprisingly lovely marriage, I knew Isaac and Anyanwu would not last, and I felt it would have something to do with Isaac’s father, Doro, due to Isaac’s name and knowing Octavia Butler’s application of symbolism. I wasn’t expecting Doro to put his son up on a rock and sacrifice him directly, but I felt that Doro would expose him to some danger that would result in his son’s death. And in a way, I was right. Isaac’s death was due to his father’s cruelty and inhumanity. In his lust for a more powerful child and potential “replacement Anyanwu,” Doro ends up not only sacrificing Nweke, but his favorite son, Isaac. 

At the end of the novel, Anyanwu takes on an English name for the first time: Emma, meaning grandmother or ancestress. This is another example of Octavia Butler’s use of symbolic names, and it is significant in the context of the story since it is one of her characters that chooses the name for herself because of its symbolism. 

Another interesting use of biblical names occurs within the titles of the three parts of Wild Seed. The first part of the book is titled Covenant, which is implied to be a biblical reference. In the bible, God makes numerous covenants, or contracts, between himself and his people. According to Dictionary.com, the biblical meaning behind covenant can be a reference to “any of the promises made by God at different times, such as those made to Noah, Abraham, or David and their descendants, or the new covenant inaugurated by Christ,” or “the agreement between God and the ancient Israelites, in which God promised to bless and protect them if they faithfully kept the law God gave them.” (Source) I think Butler’s reference is closer to the third example, since she seems to be comparing the agreement Doro and Anyanwu made, as well as the agreements Doro made to the people he keeps in his seed villages, to the promise God made in the bible to the ancient Israelites. Doro says he will protect “his people” as long as they obey him, which mirrors the promise described above. 

The second part of the novel is titled Lot’s Children, which is an obvious reference to the biblical character Lot and his daughters, whom he initially offers up to a mob in Sodom to try and appease them as they want the angels who have visited Lot and his family (I feel like this makes Lot as wicked as his neighbors to be perfectly honest, but that is how the story goes). When the mob refuses Lot’s daughters, the angels blind them, and soon after they destroy Sodom, along with Lot’s wife, who gets turned into a pillar of salt. Afterwards, Lot’s daughters escape with their father to a cave, where they get him drunk and then have sex with him, in order to ensure their family will have descendants—since their mom is now a bunch of salt (Source ). Butler seems to be comparing the incestrous relationships between Doro, his descendents, and amongst the people in his seed villages to this biblical story. The atrocious scene where Doro rapes Nweke also occurs in the part of the book, and it ends in both Nweke’s and her adoptive father Isaac’s destruction. 

The final part of the book is titled Canaan, which could be both a reference to what is also called the “promised land” in the bible, or the figure Canaan, Noah’s grandson. In the bible, Noah’s son Ham, the father of Canaan, sees his father naked and doesn’t attempt to cover him up. When Noah wakes up, he curses Ham’s son Canaan to be “the lowest of slaves to his brothers” as punishment for Ham witnessing him in a humiliating situation (Source ). Butler’s titling of the third part of the story Canaan could be a reference to this biblical curse, since Anyanwu, her descendants, and all of the people Doro has taken to be part of his seed villages face a lifetime of subjugation under Doro’s control. Anyanwu in particular grapples with the fact that there is no escape for her or her children from Doro once he has found them again. Obviously, there is the question of what parallel, if any, there is in Wild Seed to the act of Ham witnessing his father passed out naked and drunk which leads to the curse upon his son and his descendents. I think there may not be a direct parallel in this part of the metaphor, and think the reference to Canaan is more directly related to the enslavement of Anyanwu, her descendants, and the people in the seed villages under Doro. However, there is also another connotation to Canaan, where it is seen as the “promised land” that God promises to Abraham and his descendents in the bible (Source). At the end of the book, Doro agrees to change some of his evil behaviors at Anyanwu’s demand, so as not to lose her, and Anyanwu and her descendents eventually move to California. It could be that Butler is comparing the concessions Doro makes to Anyanwu to God’s promise to Abraham and his descendants in the bible. In this interpretation, Anyanwu and her journey, and the change of heart in Doro,are compared to going to the biblical “promised land.” 

Shapeshifting, the body, and power dynamics

One of the devices I particularly enjoyed in Wild Seed was the use of shapeshifting to explore the nature of the self and its relationship to the body, how different cultures and societies treat bodies that differ from what is considered valuable and acceptable, and how one’s circumstances change drastically if they possess a body with characteristics deemed superior to others. Both Anyanwu and Doro have the power to change their bodies, though Anyanwu’s shapeshifting abilities are much broader in scope than Doro’s. She can transform individual parts of her body while keeping others the same, change into non-human animals, and change into an exact copy of a person down to her DNA without killing another human being, all of which separate her powers from Doro’s. Anyanwu does mention she must consume the meat of the animal she is transforming into in order to render herself an exact copy, rather than merely imitating the appearance of the animal. 

From the beginning of the novel, Anyanwu has used her shapeshifting ability to conceal herself and protect herself. When Doro first meets her, Anyanwu is in the form of a small, elderly African woman, a form which allows her to craft a personage for herself in her village of a wise healer woman “through which a God speaks.” (pg 5) In this form, it is rare for people to challenge her, and people believe in her healing abilities and spread it to neighboring villages which brings wealth to Anyanwu’s own village. Occasionally, Anyanwu has needed to defend herself from people who are frightened of her abilities or people who attack her. She mentions turning into a leopard and spitting at a group of men who sought to attack her, and turning into a python so no one would attack her. When she turned into a python, Anyanwu’s village had been suffering from a drought, but then the rains came, and people believed her python form had brought the rain, and so her python body became sacred in their stories which they passed down. This story supported Anyanwu’s crafted personage of the elderly medicine woman who communes with local gods in order to heal people. I found it interesting that Anyanwu took a physical body often considered vulnerable or “less valuable” for its age, gender, and size in certain societies, but capitalized on her village’s reactions to this body in order to protect herself. The villagers viewed her as wise and powerful, while at the same time non-threatening in most cases. If she had taken the form of a younger woman, or a man, I think her village would have treated her very differently, and perhaps been more afraid of her which would lead them to attack her or drive her away.

Also early in the story, Anyanwu transforms into a young man while she travels with Doro to his ship, since people would be less likely to attack two men than a man and a woman traveling together. She keeps her male form even as she gets on the ship. In addition to being a way to protect herself, Anyanwu also changes her sex just to live as a man and she has fathered several children this way. Similarly, Doro has occasionally chosen to be a woman and has mothered children as one. To me, I thoroughly enjoyed that both main characters in Wild Seed engaged in sexual and gender fluidity, and I thought it was interesting that Octavia Butler kept both Anyanwu’s and Doro’s pronouns the same, no matter what body they wore. Anyanwu was always referred to as a “she,” and Doro was always referred to as a “he.” This choice to me reflects the soul of each character. Regardless of what form Anyanwu and Doro took for themselves, both referred to themselves with the same names and pronouns, and I thought this was a really bold statement for Octavia Butler to make, particularly in 1980, the year she published Wild Seed. The idea that Anyanwu was still a she even when she wore a male form, and Doro was still a he even when he wore a female form, serves as a commentary on the relationship between gender identity and sex, and asserts these two things are not always the same. Moreover, it suggests that the idea of a sexual and gender binary is not fixed, since Anyanwu is capable of being a woman and a mother as well as changing to become a man and a father, all whilst being a “she,” and Doro is capable of being a man and a father as well as changing to become a woman and a mother, all whilst also being a “he.” 

Anyanwu’s shapeshifting later comes to involve race when she comes to America with Doro. Before she gets off of the ship, she and Doro discuss slavery and how black people are treated in America, and she fearfully questions Doro whether she will need to become white. He asks her in turn if she wants to, and she says no, and that she thought that she could be herself with him. Doro agrees with Anyanwu in this, and tells her people do not enslave each other in Wheatley (even though he is arguably a slave master and the people in his seed villages are the ones he has enslaved). This moment also shows that regardless of her form, Anyanwu is black, which I thought was another interesting commentary by Octavia Butler about race and personal identity. Race goes beyond the color of a person’s skin and their physical characteristics, and just like we cannot always know someone’s gender or sex by merely looking at them, we cannot always know someone’s racial identity just by looking at them. Anyanwu does later change into a white man, Edward Warrick, so that she can buy a plantation to house her growing family which is composed of people from a variety of ethnic and racial backgrounds. She passes as a white plantation owner who owns slaves, who are in actuality her family and friends who live with her on her property. This is an example of Anyanwu again using her shapeshifting abilities to protect both herself and her family, but it is also an example of her using her ability to gain power and privilege based on power dynamics within United States social and cultural norms. White, cisgender men hold privilege and power in the United States, and anyone outside of these groups faces prejudice, discrimination, and less freedom. The early 1800s in the United States, which is when the last part of Wild Seed is set, was an especially dangerous and brutal time for black and brown people, both due to the ongoing practice of slavery, and the discrimination they faced in other vital areas (property ownership, freedom of movement, employment, healthcare, etc) even if they were not enslaved. It would have been next to impossible for Anyanwu to own a large property and have her and her family members and friends be left in peace if she maintained her body’s original form of a young African woman. For this reason, Anyanwu made the choice to change into a white man so that she would avoid scrutiny over property ownership and her family members’ and friends’ racial identities. Her white, cisgender male body also allows her greater freedom of movement, such as when she needs to go into town for supplies or meet with white people. 

Anyanwu also alters her race and sex when she marries her wife, Denice. As I previously discussed, Denice was worried about how people would perceive her if she gave birth to black children, and Anyanwu made the decision to tell Denice that she could give her white children. In fact, Anyanwu said she could give Denice white children that would share none of her own, original body’s DNA. It outraged Anyanwu, but she still said that she understood Denice’s point of view (which was painful and repellent for me to read, but historically accurate). This choice on Anyanwu’s part was hard for me to fathom. She didn’t have to use her shapeshifting or abilities to manipulate the DNA of her sperm this way, but she offered to do it for her wife anyway. Was it because she loved Denice so much that she indulged her racist fears and offered a “solution” that catered to these prejudices, even though it meant fathering a child that shared none of her own body’s genetic material? I do not know the answer to this question, but thought it notable that Anyanwu also chose to use her abilities to create white children, which to me seemed to serve no purpose other than to assuage Denice’s fears. 

One of the things I particularly enjoyed in Anyanwu’s shapeshifting was her choosing to turn into animals. I loved the part of the book where Anyanwu turns into a female dolphin for the first time and swims with the dolphins next to the ship that’s taking her, Isaac, Doro, and the other gifted humans to Wheatley. Anyanwu was able to turn into an exact copy of a female dolphin because the previous night, Isaac had caught a dolphin and shared it amongst the ship’s passengers to eat, which included Anyanwu. Anyanwu is approached quickly by a male dolphin, and they start swimming together, and Anyanwu begins to feel a closeness and kinship to him and the rest of the pod. The male dolphin even starts rubbing against her dolphin body, indicating he is interested in more than just dolphin friendship between him and her. When Anyanwu is called back to the ship by Isaac and Doro, she says they cannot eat dolphins anymore, and grows distraught at the very idea of it. She says “They are like people.” I thought that was a beautiful thing to include, and I think the idea of seeing other non-human animals as people is maybe not as radical today as it was back then, but still something we all could benefit from. 

Moving around in time

The setting of Wild Seed is interesting because Octavia Butler jumps about both in physical locations and in time periods. She starts the novel in Africa in 1690, then jumps to the northeastern United States in the 1700s, and finally ends up in the southern United States in the 1800s. She did a brilliant job of conveying the variations in culture and societal norms across time and geography, which comes through based upon her characters’ first person narrations. 

In addition to the story itself, there are also references to older time periods and cultures in the form of Doro’s and Anyanwu’s recollections. I found myself Googling Nubia, the Ado and Idu tribes, and many more references Butler weaves into Doro and Anyanwu’s pasts. I confess that I’d never heard of some of the places, cultures, and people she talked about in Wild Seed, but I was inspired to do so because of her book. That was another thing I enjoyed about Wild Seed: even though it’s a fictional story, it does take place in nonfiction places and reference real-life cultures, societies, and groups of people, which engages the reader by making them ask questions and do some research on their own.

Morally complex characters

One of the best things in Wild Seed is how engaging Doro and Anyanwu are as characters. A big reason I found them both such engaging narrators is because of their moral complexity. Both Doro and Anyanwu have done questionable things and engaged in some truly horrifying things, such as slavery and eugenics, although Doro definitely does so on a more regular basis and sees it as his right, whereas Anyanwu does it out moreso based on external pressures (the slavery in her tribe was normalized, and when she created white children it was because of Denice’s concerns about how she would be treated as a white mother to black children). Butler doesn’t make any excuses or justifications for the evil actions of Doro or Anyanwu, or try to make their relationship into the irritating and overused redemption arc where a woman must fix, save, or teach a male villain or antihero the error of his abhorrent ways. The story of each character is told honestly and in completion, and by switching narrators between Doro and Anyanwu, readers get glimpses into their mindsets and perceptions of themselves, each other, and the world they live in. While it is ultimately the fear of losing Anyanwu that causes Doro to change some of his murderous ways, he has to come to that realization on his own. Anyanwu, Isaac, and others tried many times to talk to Doro, but in his eyes, his power gave him the right to control other people, and his decisions were always what was best. 

I really liked how the book ended with Doro begging Anyanwu to stay and not end her life. The scene is exquisite in its portrayal of Doro’s desperation and vulnerability, two things which he has seemingly lacked throughout the course of the novel, with one notable exception: when he recounts the story of his own transition and accidentally killing his mother and father, and later his entire village and countless others in his panic. Alongside Doro’s numerous unforgivable faults, he is also vulnerable and completely alone, until he meets Anyanwu. I applaud Butler’s characterization of a truly enjoyable villain, one who commits a multitude of crimes against humanity out of his loneliness and desire to be part of a collective, as he once was before coming into his powers.

Concluding thoughts

I haven’t enjoyed a book the way I have Wild Seed in quite awhile. Once you pick it up, you’re sucked into the world Octavia Butler has intricately woven together, which is the case in many of her novels. The book does center around topics that may be unsettling or painful for some people to read, such as slavery, eugenics, uncomfortable power dynamics and questionable consent with regards to sex, and abuse. Parts of this book did make me uncomfortable and even downright disgusted at times, but each of the times I felt that way, I knew that’s exactly how I was meant to feel. Butler’s book, though fictional, deals with real—life evil, grief, and trauma. I HIGHLY recommend it, though I advise each potential reader to use their best judgement when it comes to what their limits are.

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