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Summary
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Speech Sounds, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Miscommunication and Violence
Language, Communication, and Peace
Self-Preservation, Protection, and Partnership
Summary
Analysis
Rye senses trouble brewing on board the bus to Pasadena. She’d expected this, which is why she waited to travel until she was too lonely and desperate to stay at home. In order to find her relatives who might still be alive, Rye has to travel twenty miles, which will likely take a full day.
From the reference to Pasadena, readers can intuit that the story takes place in the Los Angeles region. However, it’s immediately clear that something is amiss, since traveling twenty miles—which should take under an hour on a bus—will likely take Rye a full day. Between that and the reference to finding relatives who might be alive, readers can sense that something is seriously wrong.
Themes
The trouble on the bus stems from a “disagreement […] or, more likely, a misunderstanding” between two men. As the bus careens over rough road, the men stand in the aisle gesturing aggressively to each other without making physical contact. Warily, Rye watches them, knowing that a fight will begin as soon as one of them slips or comes “to the end of his limited ability to communicate.” The bus lurches and one man falls into the other, which provokes the fight. As passengers move out of the way, another fight starts, likely because someone “inadvertently touched” someone else.
It's noteworthy that these men are fighting not because they have a legitimate disagreement, but rather because they misunderstand each other. Simple communication should be able to clear this up, but they seem unable to speak, communicating via crude gestures instead. This passage makes clear that there has been a widespread loss of language and communication ability, and that—without language—simple misunderstandings frequently break down into physical fights.
Themes
Rye braces for the bus driver to hit the brakes, which he does, throwing the fighting men to the ground. As soon as the bus stops, Rye exits through the back door alongside a few other passengers. Buses have become “rare and irregular,” so when they come, people will often ride them regardless of what happens during the trip. Planning to get back on the bus when the fight dies down, Rye moves to shelter behind a tree trunk in case there’s shooting.
That Rye knows exactly what will happen in this scenario (the driver will hit the brakes and shooting might begin) shows that fights on the bus are commonplace. This reality is so dystopian that the simple act of taking the bus twenty miles has become a dangerous and volatile situation. Furthermore, busses themselves aren’t running regularly, which shows that there has been a significant breakdown in public order and services.
Themes
A beat-up car pulls up to the bus, which is unusual. Cars are rare now, due to a shortage of both fuel and “relatively unimpaired mechanics,” and cars are also dangerous, since drivers sometimes use them as weapons. For this reason, Rye is wary when the man driving gestures for her to come over to him. She watches this big, bearded young man to see how he behaves, remaining aware of the gun inside her jacket.
Rye has learned to distrust everyone, since even the most banal things—bus rides, cars, other people—can be sources of danger. The notion that unimpaired mechanics are scarce adds to the sense that something has affected people’s ability to speak and think with disastrous consequences for society. This is the first mention of Rye’s gun, and simply knowing that it is there seems to make her feel safe.
Themes
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When the man points towards the bus, Rye notices that he is left-handed, which is more interesting to her than the question he seems to be asking. Left-handed people are generally “less impaired”—rational and calm, rather than angry and violent. Gesturing with her left hand, Rye indicates that there’s fighting on the bus. The man takes off his coat, revealing a Los Angeles police uniform, and Rye recoils; the LAPD doesn’t exist anymore. There is no more government or large institutions, just “neighborhood patrols and armed individuals.”
Rye becomes curious about this man only when she realizes that he might be less impaired than others. This isn’t simple bigotry against those who are more impaired; as this passage reveals, people who have been less affected by the illness are actually safer because they are calmer and more rational. This immediately links having language ability (which is typically what Butler means when she says “less impaired”) with being peaceful and safe. However, Rye loses her trust a little bit when she sees that he’s a cop. It’s not that she’s categorically afraid of police—it’s that police don’t exist anymore, so his choice to wear a uniform is inexplicable to her. In this dangerous society, anything inexplicable can be threatening.
Themes
With something in his hand, the man walks to the bus and gestures for Rye to follow. Curious if he can stop the fighting, she obeys. He throws the object in his hand onto the bus, and people start fumbling out the door, fleeing what was apparently a gas bomb. Rye helps the passengers out the back door, while the man helps others out the front.
While throwing a gas bomb into a bus full of people is a somewhat violent thing to do, the man is actually trying to keep the peace. A fight is happening on the bus and Rye previously expressed her fear that it would turn into shooting, so by temporarily impairing all the passengers with gas, this man has stopped the violence from escalating. It’s even clearer that throwing the bomb was meant to be kind when the man starts helping struggling passengers get off the bus.
Themes
When the man helps the bus driver out, the driver appears ready to fight, but the man won’t engage. While the driver yells incomprehensibly and makes aggressive gestures, the man simply steps back and stays silent. This behavior is typical of the “least impaired people,” Rye reflects. It’s almost like it’s “beneath them” to be as quick to anger as the “less comprehending.” Of course, more impaired people often interpret this as a sense of “superiority,” which often leads to violence—even death. Rye has experienced this herself, which is why she carries a gun. Now, the “only likely common language [is] body language,” so merely being armed can prevent violence, even without drawing the weapon.
In the man’s peaceful refusal to engage the bus driver’s threats, Rye sees more evidence that he isn’t very impaired. Impaired people tend to turn quickly to violence and to escalate tensions, whereas people who are more “comprehending” tend not to engage. In this way, Butler strengthens the tie between language ability and peace—just as the inability to communicate leads people to resort to violence, the ability to communicate makes people likelier to choose peace. By referencing the threat that Rye faces from people more impaired than herself, Rye suggests two things. First, that she isn’t as impaired as others (meaning that she has better language abilities) and second that she is under constant threat. It’s noteworthy that she sees her gun not necessarily as a firearm, but rather as a way to send a message; if others know that she’s armed, they’re unlikely to mess with her, which ironically spares her from having to be violent.
Themes
Seeing the man’s gun, the bus driver returns to his bus. It’s filled with gas, and he cannot continue driving until it clears. The bus belongs to the driver, and he has pasted to its walls magazine pictures of things riders can give him as fares—this is how he makes a living for his family. The driver seems angry about the gas in his bus, and he shouts without forming words. Rye isn’t totally sure, though, if the bus driver is failing to speak or if she simply cannot recognize speech anymore.
Just as Rye previously suggested, the mere presence of the man’s gun leads the bus driver to walk away instead of escalating his threats. The gun sent a message—being armed is a form of communication in a world where language has been lost. Rye shows some sympathy for the bus driver here, as he is driving—at some peril to himself—in order to support his family, and the gas disrupts his livelihood. Rye’s confusion over whether the bus driver is failing to speak or Rye is failing to understand shows how rare spoken language is in this world. While Rye believes that she has retained her ability to speak and comprehend language, she hasn’t heard anyone speak in so long that she’s not totally sure.
Themes
The man gestures to Rye to get in his car, which she doesn’t want to risk. Even though she shakes her head no, the man continues to beckon, which draws the attention of the other passengers on the street. One of these other passengers walks towards her, and Rye doesn’t believe that she can outrun him, nor does she think anyone would help if she needed it. But when she gestures for him to stop, he does. He makes an obscene gesture, and Rye believes that everyone else would stand by if he tried to rape her or if she shot him.
This moment in the story clarifies the social reality in which Rye lives; without police, government, or interpersonal communication, it’s every person for themselves. As a woman, Rye is particularly vulnerable to predatory men who are bigger and faster than she is, and in this moment, she understands that she might face a choice between being raped and killing someone. Horrifically, she doesn’t think anyone else would bother to intervene either way.
Themes
The man in the LAPD uniform is still by his car, but he has put away his gun, now gesturing with empty hands. Rye thinks that this might mean he is safe; maybe he is simply lonely, as she has been for the past three years, since the virus killed her children, husband, and extended family. In addition to killing people, the illness caused a widespread loss of language—most people lost language altogether, while some were partially impaired.
While the story has already shown how unwise it is to trust strangers, Rye intuitively feels that she can trust this man. In part, it’s because he seems peaceful and kind, but in part it seems like it’s because she wants to trust someone. An illness killed everyone she loved, and she has been alone—fending for herself amidst terrible violence—for three years. Her desire to trust this man, then, might not simply be because he has given her signs that he is peaceful; she might just be desperate to connect with anyone, despite the inevitable risk.
Themes
Despite the “possibly deadly consequences” of getting into a car with a stranger, Rye decides to go with the man. As she walks to his car, she thinks of her neighbor, an unwashed man who pees in public and keeps two women, one to tend each of his gardens, who “put up with him” because he protects them. Rye understands that he wants her to be one of his women, too.
The neighbor who wants to keep Rye as a concubine shows how Rye, as a woman alone, is under constant threat. This is not just from strangers who might rape or kill her, but also from men she knows who take advantage of their physical power by offering protection in exchange for labor and sex. This is obviously a horrible and abusive situation that Rye wants to avoid at all costs, but it’s also understandable why a woman might—in this violent and dangerous society—take a man up on this offer.
Themes
As the man drives, Rye wants to relax, but she doesn’t stop worrying about being in a stranger’s car until they reach an intersection and he gestures for her to tell him which way to go. When he follows her cue to go left, she begins to believe that he might be safe. Passing abandoned buildings and wrecked cars, he hands her a pendant from around his neck: it’s a piece of obsidian. Rye isn’t sure if his name is actually Obsidian, or whether it might be “Rock or Peter or Black,” but she decides to think of him as Obsidian. She hands him the pin she wears of a stalk of wheat, which is the closest symbol to “Rye” that she could find. She knows that people likely think of her as Wheat, but it doesn’t matter, since she won’t ever hear her name spoken again.
It's noteworthy that Rye doesn’t really begin to trust this man until their first successful communication: she tells him to turn left and he understands and obeys. Here, their communication is a sign of safety and peace that puts her at ease. It’s also worth noting that it’s a left turn in question—when Rye noticed that the man was left handed, she revealed that left handed people are often less impaired. Therefore, the car turning left is a sign that they’re headed into a more peaceful and communicative situation than the one they just fled. When they exchange names, they communicate the best they can, but there’s no certainty that either has intuited the right name. This is tragic; this is about as much communication as any two people can have in this post-illness world, and even so, they miss fundamental facts about each other’s identities because of their impairment.
Themes
Obsidian pulls over and takes out a map, pointing to where they are and asking Rye to point to where she’s going. She can’t; she lost the ability to read and write with the illness. This was a devastating loss for her, as she was a history professor and freelance writer before the illness, and now she cannot even read the books she wrote. Watching Obsidian with the map, she realizes that he can read and likely write, too. This makes her feel a “deep bitter hatred,” since she guesses that reading and writing don’t mean as much to him as they did to her. Sick with jealousy, she remembers that she has a gun. After a moment of stillness, though, her rage subsides.
Here, Rye reveals how deeply she feels the loss of her language abilities. Her passion is reading and writing; she even wrote books of her own that she can now no longer read. In this way, the illness has truly robbed her of everything she loves: her passion, her work, and her family. Even so, it’s still shocking how viscerally angry she becomes when she realizes that Obsidian has the ability to read and write—she feels so jealous that she wants to kill him, which is behavior that the story associates with less rational, more impaired people. The fact that jealousy of another person’s language ability is the only thing that can rouse Rye to violence shows how powerful the connection between loss of language and violence is.
Themes
Having recognized Rye’s jealousy, Obsidian takes her hand. It unsettles her how powerfully she had wanted to kill him a moment ago. She is traveling to Pasadena because, at home by herself, she felt that she had “no reason to stay alive” and she had almost killed herself. Obsidian gestures to ask if Rye can speak, and she nods—she sees him experience a similar wave of envy, and he gestures that he cannot speak. Rye suspects that the illness took from both of them what they most valued, but nonetheless they have been able to share this without inciting violence.
This is a startling revelation of Rye’s motivation for trip to Pasadena; she fears that if she stayed home alone any longer, she would take her own life. This confirms how deep her despair and purposelessness are—she can’t bear life without her family or her work as a writer and teacher. That Obsidian reacts with a jealousy similar to Rye’s when he finds out that she can still speak shows how common this type of jealousy is. Everyone, it seems, misses language so viscerally that they’re tempted to hurt those who have it. But the fact that Obsidian and Rye can communicate all of this without either of them becoming actually violent is a good sign. It shows that they’re able to be truly vulnerable with each other.
Themes
While Rye is wondering why Obsidian still wears an LAPD uniform, he puts his hand on her thigh and—thinking of how horrible it would be to bring a child into this world—she shakes her head no. It’s a shame, though, because she hasn’t been touched in three years and she finds Obsidian attractive: he’s young, clean, and he “ask[s] for what he want[s] rather than demanding it.” As he pulls her closer, she sadly pushes away—then he pulls a condom from the glovebox, which makes her laugh for the first time in years.
Rye wants to have sex with Obsidian, but she sees the world as being so awful that she doesn’t want to risk becoming pregnant and subjecting a child to the despair she feels. This makes sense, as she previously confessed that she struggles to want to stay alive herself. It’s also noteworthy why she finds Obsidian attractive. Sure, he’s young and clean, but it seems equally important that he communicates (he asks for things instead of demanding them or taking them by force like everyone else does). This once again shows that Rye and Obsidian are able to connect only because they can communicate, even in a limited way.
Themes
They get into the back seat of his car and eagerly have sex. Afterwards, they lay together and—through gestures—Rye tells Obsidian that her children have died. To fight her grief, she tells herself that children deserve pity; they have no memory of the world before the illness, and instead they run around like monkeys with no future to look forward to.
It’s worth noticing that Rye is telling herself that children should be pitied. She has just been thinking about how her own children died, so it’s unclear whether she truly pities children who survived, or whether she tells herself this to soften the loss of her own children, a way of thinking that they’re better off not having survived. Regardless, it’s startling to think about a generation of children who have never been able to communicate and have never known orderly society—without the structures of society such as careers and family, the notion of the future is probably pretty hazy to these children, which might be what Rye means when she thinks they have no future.
Themes
Rye asks Obsidian to have sex with her again, thinking he can make her forget all of this. Nothing until now has brought her pleasure, which is why she came close to killing herself. When she asks if he will come home with her, though, Obsidian shakes his head. Disappointed, Rye imagines that he probably has a wife, since relatively unimpaired men are so rare that women try to hang on to them. When she asks him again to come home with her, he hesitates, making her think she can convince him. Through a series of gestures involving pinning his LAPD badge next to her wheat stalk, the two of them confirm that they will be a couple. Then, she directs Obsidian to return to her home—she no longer needs to go to Pasadena.
This is the moment in the story that most clearly establishes the connection between partnership and happiness. Having sex with Obsidian make Rye forget her grief and loneliness and—more significantly—finally confirming that he will come home with her makes her feel that she is no longer at risk of suicide (this is evident when she decides that she won’t go to Pasadena, since her reason for the trip was to keep herself from ending her life). It’s clear, then, that Obsidian’s companionship has completely turned Rye’s life around, making her feel a happiness and fulfillment she hasn’t known since the illness.
Themes
As they drive towards her house, Rye imagines what it will be like to have a partner—she has enough food and enough room in her house, and best of all, her predatory neighbor will back off. She puts her head on Obsidian’s shoulder to rest, but he suddenly brakes; a woman is running in front of the car, followed by a man with a knife. Shouting nonsense, Obsidian gets out of the car to help and Rye follows; both of them draw their guns.
Rye is obviously thrilled not to be lonely anymore, but part of the appeal of Obsidian’s partnership is practical: he can physically protect her from her predatory neighbor. For a while now, the two of them have existed in the peaceful bubble of the car where they communicate rationally and behave with kindness—it’s striking, then, how quickly things change when Obsidian leaves the car to help the woman. Immediately, he draws his gun and begins shouting nonsense, signaling a return to violence, chaos, and noncommunication after their interlude of peace.
Themes
The woman jabs the man in the face with a piece of broken glass, and before Obsidian shoots the man in the stomach, the man manages to stab the woman. Rye leans over the woman, recognizing that her wounds are fatal, and she taps Obsidian—who is leaning over the man—to tell him. While Obsidian is distracted, the man opens his eyes, grabs Obsidian’s gun, and shoots him dead. Rye shoots and kills the man.
Throughout the story, nobody has used a gun; in fact, Butler has taken great pains to describe guns as something that people carry more to send a message to others (thereby de-escalating violence) than to actually use. However, the fact that this man uses Obsidian’s own gun to kill him shows how thin the line between order and chaos is. That very gun is what earlier kept Obsidian from getting into a fight with the bus driver—in that case, the gun successfully sent a message—but now, in a shocking moment, the gun kills him.
Themes
As Rye leans over Obsidian’s body, thinking that he has left her like everyone else, two small children come out of a house and walk to the dead woman—the girl shakes the woman’s arm trying to wake her. Feeling sick, Rye gets up and heads back to Obsidian’s car. The children will have to fend for themselves—Rye doesn’t want to raise someone else’s children who will grow into “hairless chimps.”
The dead woman is obviously the children’s mother, and it’s a moment of extreme heartlessness when Rye decides to leave these young children without parents. She dehumanizes them by thinking of them as “chimps” instead of people, which calls back to her previous comments about how children these days run around the destroyed city like monkeys. It seems that Rye thinks that there’s no point in helping these children because it would only cause her grief and, besides, she has already said that she thinks children have no future now.
Themes
Back at the car, however, Rye realizes that she wants to bury Obsidian, so she returns to his body and sees how frightened the children are. She realizes that she cannot let two toddlers die, so she must take them—she wouldn’t “be able to live with any other decision.” Thinking of where to bury the bodies, she muses that Obsidian should have known, as a cop, how dangerous domestic violence is—but she realizes that this knowledge wouldn’t have kept him (or her) from helping the woman.
When Rye changes her mind about leaving the children, her remark that she wouldn’t be able to live with it otherwise has a double meaning. Of course, it’s an acknowledgement that it would be morally monstrous to leave two toddlers to die, but it’s also perhaps a more personal statement. Having Obsidian in her life gave Rye confidence that she could return home without killing herself, but without Obsidian she is now alone again. Perhaps when she says she couldn’t live with a different decision, she means it literally; without bringing these children home, she would have nothing to live for.
Themes
As Rye drags the woman’s body to the car to bury her at home, the little girl screams “no” and tells Rye to go away, while the boy tells the girl not to talk. The children’s speech is perfectly intelligible to Rye. Marveling at this, Rye wonders if the children’s mother shared their ability to speak, if maybe her husband—or a stranger—killed her out of jealousy. Then she realizes that the children were born after the onset of the illness, and she wonders if maybe the disease is over—maybe very young children are safe and ready to learn language, and maybe they need people to teach and protect them.
Rye is speculating here; she doesn’t know who the man was that killed the woman or why he did it, and she doesn’t know what it means for the world that the children can speak. But her eagerness to put together a narrative of hope shows how starved she is for purpose and happiness—it’s the same longing for connection and joy that led her to get in Obsidian’s car despite the obvious risks. It’s notable that Rye’s vision of children (and society) having a real future revolves around language returning. For her, the absence of language can only mean chaos and violence and despair. If language may return, though, it’s possible to think of the future with something other than dread.
Themes
Looking at the dead man, Rye understands his jealous violence, his commonplace desire to “destroy what [he] could not have.” Unlike him, Obsidian had been a protector—maybe he had patrolled the streets in his uniform so he wouldn’t kill himself. She had also been a protector, but lately she had only protected herself—now she can keep these children alive. As the children begin to cry, she tells them that it’s alright and that they’re coming with her. When the boy tries to cover her mouth, she explains that it’s okay to speak with her as long as nobody else is there. As they begin to look less afraid, she tells them that her name is Valerie Rye and that they can talk to her.
Throughout the story, Rye has wondered why Obsidian wore a police uniform even though the police haven’t existed for years. Here, she finally seems to understand: his commitment to protecting others gave him purpose, even if it seemed silly or insufficient to others. Rye seems to realize here that she has a choice between being a destructive and isolated person or being a protector like Obsidian; she wants to be a protector, and the children have given her the opportunity to do so. When she tells them her name, it hearkens back to when she and Obsidian tried to exchange names and she thought that nobody would ever say her name—Rye—again. The children will presumably now call her this, so she is already making progress towards a better life.
Themes
