As I was reading Madhu Dubey’s “Octavia Butler’s Novels of Enslavement” article I started to think about our own society. The article discusses chattel slavery in comparison to Butler’s plot in her Pattern series. I looked back at the cover of novel and saw Seed to Harvest. I wonder about America’s slavery as a seed to foster or harvest the historical remnants that exist today. The wordplay got me to think further about Doro planting the seed of slavery, which later developed a world where one group dominates. The group that dominates would obviously be the Patternists, and the Pattern Master as the leader. The Pattern Master being the only one who controls everyone reminds me of a dictatorship, which further places emphasizes on slavery. There’s a further emphasize on slavery because the Pattern Master is similar to a slave owner. To expand on this notion the Pattern Master is on a hypothetical throne like the slave master. Like most dictators and slaves masters they are overthrown, and or power is passed down. We see this conversion twice in Mind of My Mind and Patternmaster where potent political positions change. In Mind of My Mind Doro is killed by Mary and power dynamics are changed. Similarly, Teray is handed control by the Pattern Master. The changing of dominance can be related to abolishing slavery and the change in authority that occurs within. The South loses the driving economic force of slavery, but it has already left its lasting impact on the U.S. Fast forward to today slavery is still a painful reminder of America’s unsettled past. I mean just two years ago Mississppi officially ratified the 13th Amendment. On similar note we can see the remains of slavery in other countries such as Dominican Republic, which shows the extent of slavery’s affects on a global scale. Here are two articles on both matters. http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2013/02/mississippi-officially-abolishes-slavery-ratifies-13th-amendment/

http:/http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/27/dominican-republic-citize_n_4002844.html