So unnaturalising the “natural”. We touched on this in class for probably more than half an hour if any of you remember. And also hyperempathy. I don’t see it necessarily as a “delusion” although it’s been described as one by Butler, herself. I see it as part of Lauren’s strength. I don’t see it as a weakness. She makes sure that she differentiates it as an empathy for the living and not for the dead. This is why she can walk by the dead and not actually be dead. But because it’s been described as a personal weakness, I think that she could actually imagine being decapitated as we see in that one scene. I believe it stems from that very real impulse we all feel toward death. I think that she feels this natural impulse towards hurt and death, that at least I can envision, but seems to overtake us all times maybe a lot (if that makes any sense). To me, bleeding when her brother’s used to bleed sounds akin to stigmata which I don’t believe to be a real physical phenomenon. I do believe in her hyperempathy. Some of us are just way more sensitive than others when it comes to certain things. It can deal with things in our past, or even things we imagine. “Delusion” doesn’t really do it for me, even though the author has admitted it. Being through any traumatic experience seems to make you prone to understanding many others even if you haven’t personally experienced them. At least from my personal experience. Not that Lauren has been through many besides what we have read about her from my understanding. And like always, I don’t know exactly where I am going with this blog post, but I don’t see her hyperempathy as a weakness, necessarily. It may play out to be one later in the novel, but I think that feeling things deeply and seriously, even about sociopaths, is more commonplace than one would think.
This may be a mark of serious codependency (as is recognized by AA and NA). It may be saying that Lauren is not able to function as her own entity (at least as far as the first part of the novel goes). I think that this is not necessarily a weakness in Lauren. I don’t think that this is her Achilles heel, but is something that she has to learn to live with as a lot of people do (or, I feel it wouldn’t be recognized as a real thing). Taking up causes for people you love and care about as well as people you have no idea about is not a made up condition. It may happen more often than you think and it would not be brought to the surface if Octavia Butler did not bring it to the table in her novel. She is simply providing another state of thinking, as well as being, through Lauren that not a lot of people experience themselves because they are so focused on their own lives. I think this is the point that Butler is trying to make through Lauren’s hyperempathy. Through it, she is concentrating on others and not herself.