Month: December 2019

The class text Fortune’s Bones life gives 21^st-century readers a glimpse into the life of an enslaved man in 18^th century Connecticut. Although the details of his life are not entirely clear, we do know that he was mistreated as a result of his position in society. Growing up in the northeast, most of my education on the Civil War was spent on learning about the Confederacy’s oppression of black lives. However, learning about Fortune gave me insight into slavery that proved northern states were just as guilty of contributing towards institutionalized racism. One could argue that Fortune’s master was kinder than the horror stories of slavery we may be familiar with; Fortune’s bones indicate that he was in generally good health throughout much of his life. However, a claim like this seems to be ignorant of the very fact that he was enslaved. Fortune did not enjoy the legal rights or privileges of Dr. Porter’s family, as explained by the Mattituck Historical Society. (MHS)

There were two major events of Fortune’s life that stood out to me: His religious involvement as an enslaved black man and the treatment of his body upon his death. I believe that the former may have influenced the latter event, based on the society he lived in. According to the Mattituck Historical Society, the Congregational and Episcopalian churches in 18^th century Connecticut encouraged the education of enslaved races, with the goal being that they would convert to Christianity. When I spoke with one of our class’s Teaching Assistants about this topic, she mentioned that enslaved people brought various religious traditions from Africa during their journey to this continent. In order to continue their religious traditions, she informed me that they often masqueraded their beliefs as Christian ones. This could potentially explain why so many slaves in Westbury were encouraged to adopt Christianity, since religion may be a tool for controlling groups of people. According to MHS, “Slave owners were prominent members of both the Congregational and Episcopal churches; nearly all of the ministers and several deacons owned slaves.” Furthermore, Fortune was reportedly “baptized in the Episcopal church on December 20, 1797; he died in 1798. There is no month or day given for Fortune’s death. He may have died two weeks after his baptism, or a year after.” (MHS) Was this a way of asserting cultural dominance by Fortune’s slave master? The ambiguity surrounding Fortune’s life, along with how his corpse was treated seems to suggest unholy motives on the part of Dr. Porter.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of his life was the scientific experimentation that was performed on Fortune’s body following his death. We may not know much about his life, yet there is plenty of information about his physical body. The record-keeping of black lives throughout American history fails to recognize the complexities of their life, rather it seems that many non-black Americans were invested in using black bodies for medical research.

In current day, we are encouraged to write a will stating who receives things that were in our ownership and what they are so when we die no one must worry about it or fight over anything. However, if our name is not known and our body cannot be identified then the will becomes useless. Unidentified bodies are called either Jane Doe or John Doe (dependent on the person’s gender), to respect that they do have a name. There are certain ways in which we can respect the dead properly, yet there are so many instances of disrespect of the dead.

Mutato nominee means name change in Latin. In the book Bones by Marilyn Nelson, the skeleton/man that the story centers around was an African American male named Fortune. When he passed away his body was dissected and abused, as he never provided his consent. His name became lost after some time, and his skeleton later ended up in a museum where the man’s name, who they forgot used to be a man, was changed to Larry. Luckily for Fortune, someone took interest in this story and created a book based off of this skeleton and gave readers some insight into what had occurred and honored Fortune’s story in the process.

Another example of disrespect of the dead came from Zone One by Colson Whitehead, where there are both human characters and zombies. The zombies are somewhere between life and death so there is question as to whether or not it is moral for humans to kill them. Is it putting them out of their misery like we do to animals who are so sick that they have no chance of recovery?

In Zulus by Percival Everett, the main character, Alice Achitophel, broke free from her old fat body which was beheaded and emerged in a new body that she inhibited. Although she had changed bodies, she was still part of her old one and despite the fact that her old body was beheaded, she was still able to survive and inhabit her old brain. She would have times where her new body would shut down and she could focus on what was she was experiencing in her old head, similar to when J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter would have moments where he experienced things from Voldemort’s perspective. Since Alice was unable to be killed in her old body, the abuse the rebels from the camp her old body was stuck in was even more tortuous and reminds us that we should think about what feelings a person would have when their body is opened and examined after their death. How can their body be treated in certain ways without their consent?

Henrietta Lack was an African American who died from cervical cancer and after her death, doctors extracted her cells without her consent and used them for medical research as the article Henrietta Lacks from the John’s Hopkins website describes. The extracted cells were labeled “HeLa” and the medical researchers discovered that, for the first time in history, “a human cell line was able to be reproduced in a laboratory setting.” After this discovery, the cells were used to help study many medical problems and help the researchers determine a cause and move towards finding cures. Additionally, questions of human immortality surfaced because of Henrietta’s reproducing cells.

In Home by Toni Morrison, a man was killed in a fight between him and his son that they had been forced into. The fight between the two of them ended with the father’s death and afterward his body was left uncared for. When the main characters of the book found out about this, they went to gather the bones and created a proper burial for the man so he could rest at peace, be remembered, and be respected. Since they did not know his name, the grave marker said, “Here Stands A Man.” (Morrison, 145). Another example of forgotten dead later recognized is in New York City. A large area that was an African burial ground was forgotten and the land was built on and covered as years past. According to the MAAP article on this historical burial ground, an estimated 10,000-20,000 bodies are buried in this hidden cemetery that extends beyond where the physical land dedication is. The land was forgotten about for years and then rediscovered when the area became a construction area for a new building project. When the first skeletons were discovered their remains were roughly treated and not properly cared for. After backlash from the public, those who were disrupting the remains were forced to do so more cautiously, but even then, the remains of each of these individuals was not respected. The national monument structure that was built at the site stands to represent and respect the dead. The center of the monument was built in a spiral shape with a circular globe in its center. The spiral around the globe has etched symbols in the walls in representation of different cultures, languages, and religions to honor all of the possible ways of respecting the dead underneath the site’s ground.

Another time in history when deceased bodies were disregarded was in the era of World War II when the Nazi’s became overwhelmingly powerful. According to A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust, in 1933 there were a few Nazi concentration camps that were running and at these camps the Nazis mass murdered the people they had imprisoned. Nazis would create mass burials for their murder victims. They would simply dig a very large hole and once they filled it with bodies, they would cover it and begin a new hole.

Respect for others should be given no matter what circumstances occur. Love or hate, power or not, life or death, everyone deserves some respect. But remember, dead people are still people. They lived a life and had thoughts and opinions to consider just like the living do.

Since the beginning of this class we have continually mentioned loops and cycles and applied them to what we have been learning. When this semester began, our professor asked us to bounce a ball against the wall and catch it in the rebound. The exercise came with unclear intentions at first, but after reading the class materials and reflecting, that exercise symbolized practice and reception and a continuous loop.

In Disney’s The Lion King, there is a famous song called The Circle of Life. This song encompasses the ideas of how life is a cycle. Humans, similar to animals, go through a life cycle: birth, childhood, schooling, jobs and career, retirement and death. During the years when a person’s focus is their career, they often get married, begin a family, and then later care for their elders. Throughout this lifetime humans also create their own habit cycles. The process of learning requires a loop of mistakes and reflection to allow forward progress. That loop is meant to ensure that the same mistake is not made repeatedly and that a person is able to move on and acquire knowledge. Unfortunately, sometimes one person’s progress is made at the expense of other people.

Each year we literally circle around the sun and each day our planet spins on its axis and provides us with a day and night. On our Earth, natural disasters occur destroying an area and allowing for its regrowth afterwards which strengthens the environment, allowing it to stay healthy.  Forest fires are a common example of this. The forest fires burn all the vegetation and afterwards plants begin to regrow, and the forest is eventually rebuilt. “Blood. The river of life.” (Everett, 21) is the idea that without destruction our earth would not function the same. Death often needs to occur for life to be appreciated.

Humans have created theories of Earth’s end and have been continually wrong, yet each time a theory failed a new one is created. This creates an everlasting cycle of trying to predict the future.

Home by Toni Morrison includes a scene where the main characters buried a man’s body at the base of a spilt tree. This symbolized the main characters becoming adults and beginning a new chapter in their lives. There are many ways to respect the dead through a funeral and burial based on cultural traditions. One type of funeral tradition is a New Orleans Jazz funeral where there is a period of mourning and after the burial the group parades around in celebration of that person’s life.

In class we learned about an African burial ground in Manhattan. Here there is a structure built in a spiral and when you walk down to the center there is a globe etched into the platform’s ground. This physical structure represents the cycle of life that occurs in our world.

In Zulus by Percival Everett, the main character, Alice Achitophel, breaks free from her old body and comes out in a new one as a symbol of a rebirth. Just like we are born to die, some people believe that when we die, we are reborn. Another idea of rebirth comes within your lifetime. You may find a way to cleanse yourself and move forward to become a better version of who you were. Creating a cycle of growth.

Race: a divide of power between people based on their beliefs or traits. Looks/appearances and the labels we place on people and groups affect how we view and treat them as well as their mental states. Throughout human history we have separated and categorized ourselves based on appearances. Someone always must run the top of the food chain, must lead the pack and carry all the power. The ability to lead has been chosen by ancestry and physical concepts such as wealth. The leader is the person decorated in certain attire which separates them from others.  

According to the Heng Inventions: Reinventions, Race Studies, Modernity, and the Middle Ages article by Geraldine Heng that we read in class, those who celebrated the Jewish traditions were made to wear badges identifying their religion during 1218-1275. Appearance was used to separate people based on their belief system and when these people were set apart, they were discriminated. The article called this act “Political imagery…”  (Heng, 2013). Skin color is another visual indication, representing ancestry, that people have specifically used as a social divider in United States history. Those with darker complexions were considered black and used as physical laborers while those with pale complexions were deemed white and took a role of power. In the Heng Inventions article, the word race is continually revisited. On page nineteen the article states, “race is a structural relationship for the articulation and management of human differences, rather than a substantive content.” Additionally, I thought that when race was again mentioned on page twenty that the idea of race and class relating was a good point. It reflects the idea that appearance can be used as a tool to group people and classify them, although, this is not an accurate depiction of people in most cases.

In Clay’s Ark by Octavia E. Butler, the community is not based on appearance like most. It is typical for humans to label others based on appearances. Depending on where you reside on this globe your perspective on what outsiders and/or immigrants look like and your idea of beauty changes. Clothing can be used to indicate certain qualities about a person according to society. Cliques are a popular way for people to separate themselves based on appearances. Often, these small groups of people look and dress very similarly. The movie Mean Girls is an excellent representation of cliques.

Different cultures have different ideas about what constitutes beauty or acceptance. Some traditions merit wearing specific outfits for activities. For example, Native American groups still wear traditional outfits when performing a traditional dance during ritual ceremonies. Tribes from rainforest regions are another group that look similar but, can be identified within the larger groups based on their appearances. Another example of society valuing conformity is the military who are forced to wear the same outfits and cut their hair into the same style. Convicts also are forced to wear the same jumpsuit outfits. Firemen, police officers, EMT, doctors and nurses all wear the same outfits as well. There are so many examples of these similarities in dress within groups that can be spotted in our daily lives. Sometimes certain clothing items and accessories are indicators of wealth and power.

Our government is predominantly white males. Our nation tries to represent diversity within the government but is still largely run by old white males. Looking back on the Presidential history of the United States it is obvious.

The effects of these labels could be negative or positive. Negatively, groups could be excluded, harmed, or ridiculed. Conversely, they could also be honored or viewed as role models. Labels can also affect how a person thinks of themselves and will most likely change their behaviors overtime to accommodate the label. For example, if a person was called the class clown they may begin to believe the label and become more confident in making jokes around their classmates. However, if someone was to be called fat repetitively that could also impact their self-image or mental health and drive them into having an eating disorder.

Appearance is surface level, but an individual’s character is beneath the surface. Characteristics and personality make someone who they are not what color their skin is, what religion they celebrate, or what clothing they wear.

Being a first semester freshman does not have all the perks of being a college student.  You don’t know what classes to take when registering for the first time at orientation, changing your major seems like such a foreign concept, and deciding to speak during class discussion is probably the toughest part since you don’t want to sound ignorant about a certain topic.  However, I got lucky enough to register for this class during orientation even though I saw it and initially thought it was going to be undeniably hard. After taking this class for the entire semester, I am glad I ended up registering for it that day because it has opened my eyes to a whole new world around me.

Prior to taking this course, I thought I knew a majority about African American history and frankly, wasn’t really interested in learning more due to high school history classes making learning such hell.  This class was the complete opposite. At some points, I didn’t even realize that I was learning about such historic times in our nation’s history; I thought I was just reading an article that I was told to react to and prepare for class in the days to come.  High school history classes would introduce a topic/time period in history, just scratch the surface and practically move on to the next topic a day or two later. I’m glad this course did not do that and we were able to go in depth about certain topics and discuss with one another our own viewpoints or experiences with each reading.

One book that I was not excited to read was Medical Apartheid, even though it turned out to be one of the most informational and eye-opening readings throughout this semester.  It caused me to think of worlds outside of my own and realize that unethical testings and experimentations do indeed still occur to this day, if not just a couple years prior. One experimentation that I was not thrilled to have read about was the Tuskegee Syphilis Study.  A group of sick sharecroppers had been told they were going into a study to be examined on the progression of syphilis in black men as they would be treated for this disease. The researchers had lied to the men and did not treat them for the disease, but instead did nothing to help and solely charted/documented the progression of symptoms and disorders.  The physicians then proceeded to conduct autopsies on the bodies of these men to go more in depth in their research and “trace the ravages of the disease in their bodies” (Washington, 157).  

To me, I was taken aback by the lack of informed consent given to these men who were clearly sick and dying.  I do not agree with the reasoning for conducting this study on these men: “ …it was thought to wreak its worst havoc on the cardiovascular systems of blacks, sparing their relatively primitive and ‘underdeveloped’ brains”. Personally, I don’t believe that the view projected upon black men during that time should have had such a primitive factor in being a cause for them to suffer and die from a syphilis study where they were under the wrong assumption.  As I mentioned prior, this course has opened a new world to me and made me realize certain things were occurring in this life that I never knew could even be thought of by people around me. I am glad that I took this class as a freshman, allowing me to go through college with an open mind and a new way of looking at different situations and readings.

While writing for another blog post, I stumbled upon an interview with the author of Zulus, Percival Everett. A man who I often considered to be a bit odd before looking into his other works. In this particular interview he is being interviewed by a woman named Sylvie Bauer. She correlates pieces of Everett to the alphabet and associates him with an abecedary. 

Almost instantaneously Everett is asked about the idea of nonsense and a sense of not knowing within his books. He says, “…I’m not so much interested in writing sense that sounds like nonsense, what I really want to do is write nonsense that actually does make sense,” I find this slightly ironic, only because after reading Zulus I had completely missed what was happening, and it felt like nonsense to me. I rarely, almost never, read science fiction by choice and almost never read anything of the genre in school.

The interviewer replied to him, “There is a sense of not knowing in your books, for most characters,” which he follows up later by saying, “…it’s interesting to have this landscape of possibilities, not knowing.” Everett replies by saying how is just how life goes. I am fond of his explanation because I find the answer to be truly accurate. You never know what could or is going to happen, just like his books.

Zulus left me confused because I hadn’t necessarily read the book, though I did certainly read it, I don’t believe I truly understood and comprehended the story-line. Particularly, Alice Achiptoel and her head in the box had left me lost. Everett tends to leave you lost at the end of his books, is Alice still technically alive after the gas is released? What truly happened to the world? It is all left a mystery which he never explains the end to. A blog post by my fellow classmate Ariana Vidal titled “Zulus: A -Z” discusses two separate ways on how to read the book. She states how you can begin with the headings/titles or completely disregard them (as we both had). I thoroughly enjoyed how she had gone back and reread them, to understand the book at a more in-depth level, which I hadn’t thought to do. 

“L is for Language. Language is central to your work: you play with it, you destroy it, you can manipulate it; it manipulates and puzzles the reader,” the interviewer had said. Within Zulus, there were many words I had never heard of and certain ways of reading the book that I didn’t understand as thoroughly as I expected I would.  This made me realize that the English language is so unique and complex that regardless of how advanced of a reader one may be, there may always be a novel that they don’t fully understand or can’t grasp the true meaning behind.  That ideal was true with me in relation to this book and Everett’s writing style, as he is a well renowned author with such unrealistic scenarios and a foreign writing style.

Consent can be analyzed through many different faucets. From the perspective of a woman, consent can mean many things, especially in a society that often tries to tell us what we should and shouldn’t be doing with our own bodies. Analyzing female characters such as Alice Achitophel from “Zulus”, we can unpack this idea through studying the sequence of nonconsensual actions done to her, and how she evolved because of them.  

Everett’s novel begins with a horrendous sexual assault to Alice Achitophel by a stranger. In a violent turn of events, Alice actually becomes impregnated by the man, and this is what begins her entire journey and experience with the rebels and escaping the city to avoid the discovery of her outlawed pregnancy. In Everett’s dystopian future, all women were forced to be sterilized as the nuclear-scarred earth was no longer suitable for continued life, and the pregnancies of women would most likely go extraordinarily wrong due to the high levels of radiation after the war. Yet, due to Alice’s size, she is outcasted and forgotten about in the sterilization process: “She had thought to herself then that the people at the hospital had seen her and knew she was fat and ugly and could see from her file that she was an old maid, probably knew that she had never kept company with a man. They hadn’t called her, and she hadn’t called them, and so she had not become sterilized like every other woman” (Everett 12). Just in this quote alone, we can see how Alice has an intensely negative image of herself, forced upon her by a world that told her she was different; in a way this can be viewed as something that is verbally nonconsensual. What gives someone the right to tell you that how you look and who you are is not okay? Alice is shamed for being different, but in the novel this individuality is what drives her forward through the atrocities that she is about to face. Circling back to the idea of sterilization, we can question as to whether this demanded by law sterilization of women was truly consensual. Did all the women collectively agree to this intense measure to prevent continued life on earth? When Alice becomes pregnant, she is filled with joy at the hope a child could bring to her world, judging off of this excitement we can assume that other women might very well have felt the same. Looking at the novel from this perspective, it can be speculated that Everett is making a statement about consent and women’s rights within the subject.

After Alice is assaulted, she manages to immediately know that she has become pregnant. Rather than processing the assault and focusing on its violence, Alice decides to focus on the child and the hope that it could bring to this barren and melancholy society that she is living in: “Alice Achitophel just stayed a mound of fat on the floor,… now crying and smiling and knowing that she was pregnant” (Everett 12). Alice even goes as far as to call it the “messiah baby” because she feels her child will be able to start a new hopeful age for the survivors of the war: “She began to grow fearful, wondering how she would hide the child, this special child, this Messiah child, yes, say it, just say it, the Messiah child, a little girl, the only success on a failed planet” (Everett 16). Along her journey, Alice is consistently poked and prodded against her will by doctors, and her body is quite literally put on display for everyone to gawk at without any of her consent. Alice had been ridiculed her entire life due to her size, told it was wrong that she looked different from everyone else. Now that she was pregnant, she stood out even more, the only woman left on earth who was not sterilized. Despite all this adversity, Alice managed to keep a positive attitude throughout the entire novel. She was bright eyed and always ready to start a new path that would have purpose, as demonstrated by her efforts to try and work with Geraldine Rigg in the hospital and get in on helping the rebel cause. However, this hope has a deadline as the novel comes to its conclusion.

It is not until the very end that we see Alice give up her last shred of hope. Seeing her partner, Kevin Peters, care nothing for their child’s future is what drives Alice to give up her hope. Alice comes to the conclusion that there shouldn’t be a future if the father of her child can’t even see one for their own child. In the end, Alice and Kevin quite literally end the world, releasing a chemical agent that is to end all human life on earth. Reflecting on this, I asked myself, how is this act any less nonconsensual than the act of forcing all women to become sterilized? Confused by the ending, I was shocked at the conclusion for Alice’s character, and disappointed with her choice to give up on something she deeply believed in just because someone else didn’t share the same perspective.

In Zone One we see the aftermath of the apocalypse from the perspective of the survivors, much like the rest of history. As we follow Mark Spitz, Gary, and Kaitlyn through what used to be known as Manhattan but is now recognized as Zone One, we see what daily life has come to be after the spread of the disease which turns people into “skels”. When comparing this to the current events going on around us, it becomes easy to see how the same personalities in our own time could easily spread and permeate the culture even after an apocalypse has taken place. While Zone One is a work of fiction, the attitudes of many of the characters could be transplanted into the current culture and have no problem living in our world. More specifically, I think the attitudes of many people living in rural areas who feel that they are losing control within the general population are clear in Colson Whitehead’s piece.

In the beginning of the book, we start to learn the dimensions of the characters being presented to us. Their personalities differ in many ways, but since such a large portion of the population has turned into something they are not familiar or comfortable with, there are slim pickings for friends. As part of the Omega unit, they work together to make sure spaces within Zone One are free of what they call skels, which can also be thought of as zombies. Gary, who used to work on cars, and Kaitlyn, who used to be a teacher, are both given the same job within their unit along with Mark. They have become blue collar workers attempting to clean out the city, no matter what their jobs were before. Throughout the book, we see that they all utilize their own coping methods in order to kill the skels. At one point Mark contemplates what Gary and Kaitlyn are thinking about when they kill. He thinks that Mark looks at the skels as “The proper citizens who had stymied and condemned him and his brothers all his life, excluding them from the festivities- the homeroom teachers and assistant principles’, the neighbors across the street who called the cops to bitch about the noise and the trash in their yard. Where were their rules now, their judgements, condescending smiles? (Whitehead: 266).” Gary has been stigmatized his entire life for being a mechanic, for having what some might consider a run-down yard, and for living his life how he feels comfortable. He feels like he has been excluded from the group, even though he didn’t do anything except ignore the societal pressures around him to look nice and get a white-collar job. Despite the fact that he worked hard and was a family-man, he still felt like he was being looked down upon.

On the other hand, Gary theorizes that Kaitlyn thinks of the skels differently. From her perspective, the lives she was ending were the lives of “the weak-willed smokers, deadbeat dads and welfare cheats, single moms incessantly breeding, the flouters of speed laws, and those who only had themselves to blame for their ridiculous credit-card debt… Her assembled underclass who simultaneously undermined and justified her lifestyle choices (Whitehead: 267).” From a different point of view, Gary believes that Kaitlyn finds it easier to kill when she believes that the people at the other end of her gun were drains on the system, when there was still a system to drain. While it seems that she viewed herself as a part of the group that needed to utilize systems such as welfare, she was defiant to group herself with those that abused such things.

In Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan’s piece titled “The Painful Truth about Teeth,” they uncover a world that many don’t want to look at. The working class living in Maryland voted for Trump with hopes that he would actually give them access to resources as simple as being able to afford a dentist. However simple we may see it as, it clearly isn’t since so many people are left wanting for this type of healthcare. After Trump had won and people like Dee Matello were still left without dental care they became resentful over the fact that he had not done what he had promised, with her and her husband discussing “Did we really vote for him?” The fact that many working-class people living in rural areas are feeling like they are being ignored by the government can be connected to the ways in which Gary and Kaitlyn judge the skels they are instructed to kill. They had each become resentful of the way they were being treated in their previous lives, and they were now in control of the situation. Even the act of moving the capital from Albany, which lies in a much more populated area of New York to Buffalo, which is surrounded by mostly rural areas, proves the same point. There is currently an underbelly of people living in rural areas who feel betrayed and ignored by their government, so even if they see someone come forward with an attitude they may see as problematic or racist in many ways, they may still be willing to support him if they think he will work in their best interest, as Dee Matello did for Donald Trump. These attitudes are best represented by Kaitlyn and Gary within Zone One before the 2016 election even took place, so they could be applied to politicians at any point that claim to stand for the rights of those who feel they are being marginalized.

In my very first blog post of the semester I had discussed the importance of repetition and how it plays a vital role throughout one’s life.  If you continuously use something, it doesn’t have a chance to die out and be forgotten about or looked over. Throughout this course, the topic of consent has been a predominant discussion starter in the groups during the class itself.  Each group I have been in has either opened the discussion with consent or the conversation has branched off to talking about consent and what characters may have given, or not given, consent to someone else throughout the story. I believe that this specific use of repetition has been a wonderful fueler for in-depth conversation and an eye-opening process.  

In one specific group discussion during class, we focused on the idea of consent.  Throughout the conversation, my group had begun to realize that consent can very well become situational.  In certain situations one may want to say no but can feel pressured to say yes due to an outside variable. This can be seen throughout the novel Clay’s Ark by Octavia Butler.  One specific scene that demonstrates this ideal was mentioned by Adrianna. In one of her more recent blog posts, “Right State of Mind”, Adrianna addressed that possibly the only reason Keira gave consent was due to the outside variable of love, which can make someone do things that they wouldn’t normally do.  Keira sacrificed her health for the unknown outcome after coming in contact with this disease; it could be life or death for her especially since she has a pre-existing disease, leukemia.  Although Keira’s pre-existing disease was a sole reason of her not being infected by the group thus far, it became her decision whether or not to be infected (by Eli) towards the end. Stated in the novel, “She reached out and took Eli’s hands. She had been waiting to do that for so long. The hands first pulled back from her, but did not pull away…the hands closed on her hands, giving in finally, and in spite of everything, she smiled” (Butler, 552-553).  Situational consent was very clear in this plot due to the outside variable of love and Keira deciding that she rather be infected and be with Eli than stay lonely and “healthier” with her disease of leukemia.

As well as a situation affecting someone’s terms of consent, their mindset also plays a vital role in whether or not something should happen to/with them.  Agreeing with Adrianna’s statement, I believe that Keira’s judgment was indeed clouded due to the constant outside variable. Who knows if she would’ve allowed Eli to infect her with the disease if she didn’t have feelings towards him.  That type of situation is one that an alternate outcome may never be truly known; what would’ve happened from the start if Keira never had leukemia and was as healthy as her twin sister, Rane? Some situations are never thought of by the reader, therefore limiting the possibilities of what directions the story can go.  Throughout the discussion with my groups these questions developed in my head the more we talked about situational consent and how different mindsets can affect certain situations. It goes to show that one outside variable can have a dramatic effect on everything surrounding it.