So many layers, where to begin? Wild Seed piles on complex themes; power, identity,the ethics of eugenics. There’s an exploration of slavery, exploitation, and the manipulation of individuals by their rulers. It also explores the nature of family, belonging, and the search for cultural identity.
Octavia E. Butler published Wild Seed as the fourth of her Patternist series in 1980. A blend of literary and speculative fiction, it brings depth and weight to a time-spanning, dual-perspective story.
Before ‘Interview with the Vampire’
Two immortals, Doro, a body-possessor, and Anyanwu, a powerful shape-shifter and healer, present contrasting characters joined only by their immortality.
Doro fills his time capturing humans with super-powers for his eugenics program. A remorseless tyrant, Doro kills any who become too powerful or too rebellious. One of his ‘seed villages’ is taken by slavers, but Doro is distracted from his pursuit when he encounters Anyanwu, ‘a wild seed.’ By threat and coercion, he takes Anyanwu with him, excited by the powerful children she might produce.
From their meeting in 1690 in the villages of Nigeria to pre-Civil War United States, their twisted ‘courtship’ is a power struggle that lasts for generations.
Defined by opposition
Anyanwu soon discovers the monster behind Doro’s mask. Doro is a compulsive drifter, Anyanwu longs for a settled life. Doro is selfish and without empathy; Anyanwu is selfless and compassionate. The ‘master’ kills without hesitation; Anyanwu the slave only kills to protect herself or others. Doro lives untroubled by human morality, or beliefs such as free will, with a casual disregard of incest and murder. Anyanwu’s children grow old and die, Doro kills his when they are no longer useful.
Doro is a repellent but compelling antagonist, his immortality relieving him of morality. Anyanwu is the beating heart of the story, a survivor, a fierce protector. A benevolent steward of her communities, she feels their loss deeply.
Their love-hate relationship finally turns sour in New York when Doro reveals his plan to marry her off to favoured son Isaac as part of the breeding programme. Anyanwu seeks her freedom from Doro, though he is both her master, husband and her only true companion.
Gender and Identity
Doro eagerly takes any body to ensure his his survival, and resorts to white male bodies as the dominant shell. Anyanwu deals with the pain of loss, of slavery, of racism in the new world as a woman of color. Both characters are gender-fluid. Anyanwu shape shifts to a man and marries a woman. The two immortals become intimate in gender-swapped bodies. Through all this, Anyanwu always identifies with her origin as a black woman in a time of slavery.
A legacy
One of the greats of African-American fiction across several genres, Butler write with authority and artistry.
Wild Seed is rich, dense and deeply unsettling. Butler muses on immortality, on morality, on shared loneliness that keeps two characters together despite their opposing views.