How we cite our quotes: The main text of the story is cited (Chapter.Paragraph). The date headers are not counted as paragraphs. The verses in the chapters with a single passage from the narrator's religious texts are cited (Chapter.Verse.Line#). In chapters with multiple passages, the verses are cited (Chapter.Verse#.Line#). The four section pages with the years and passages are cited (Year.Verse).
Quote #4
"Richard let his older kids go out, but he wouldn't let me. Before he bought me, though, I was a good shot."
Her alien past again. It distracted me for a moment. I had been waiting to ask her how much a person costs these days. And she had been sold by her mother to a man who couldn't have been much more than a stranger. He could have been a maniac, a monster. And my father used to worry about future slavery or debt slavery. Had he known? He couldn't have. (16.53-54)
Lauren thinks over how her father worried about debt slavery or slavery in the future while not recognizing the plight of women such as Zahra, whose marriages are effectively slavery situations. Today's feminists might describe this as a problem of patriarchy, or rule by men. That's not any newfangled theory; it goes back to the 17th century and earlier.
Quote #5
"She taught me to read and write," Travis said. "Then she taught me to teach myself. The man she worked for had a library—a whole big room full of books."
"He let you read them?" I asked.
"He didn't let me near them." Travis gave me a humorless smile. "I read them anyway. My mother would sneak them to me."
Of course. Slaves did that two hundred years ago. They sneaked around and educated themselves as best they could, sometimes suffering whipping, sale, or mutilation for their efforts. (18.37-40)
This exchange between Travis and Lauren is based not just on the history of slaves educating themselves in the pre-Civil War United States, but also on Octavia Butler herself reading books her mother snuck her, as Butler described in an autobiographical essay titled Positive Obsession. Pretty inspiring, huh?
Quote #6
I looked at Natividad who sat a short distance away, on spread out sleepsacks, playing with her baby and talking to Zahra. She had been lucky. Did she know? How many other people were less lucky—unable to escape the master's attentions or gain the mistress's sympathies. How far did masters and mistresses go these days toward putting less than submissive servants in their places? (18.46)
Here Lauren reflects on Natividad's past life. Natividad was a servant, but it was a lot more like slavery given how the master was eyeing her for sex. Luckily, Natividad escaped, along with Travis. Consider how working conditions can be so bad that a place of employment effectively turns into a slavery situation. Does Lauren's migrating Earthseed group do away with those problems altogether, or does they replicate those problems to some extent? For instance, does Lauren boss everyone else around too much, or do the members of her group have fair say into what decisions are made?