The Evening and the Morning and the Night

Fiction | Short Story | YA | Published in 1987

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Themes

Illness, Marginalization, and Institutionalization

In the “Afterward” to this story in the second edition of Bloodchild and Other Stories, Butler discusses how she created Duryea-Gode Disease as a composite from a variety of illnesses, including Huntington’s disease, which strikes in middle age; phenoylketonuria, which is treated with a restrictive diet; and Lesch-Neyhan disease, which leads to mental decline and self-harm. To that composite, she also added the “sensitivity to pheromones” and the “sufferer’s persistent delusion that they are trapped” (69-70).

This amalgamation of illnesses allows Butler to highlight and explore a variety of ways in which illnesses impact individuals and how institutions and society can improve or worsen outcomes for sufferers. First, we see that DGDs experience their illness directly and individually, not just through the progression of the illness but also through the restrictive lifestyle they must adhere to slow down that progression. For DGDs, even small mistakes can hasten their deterioration and shorten their lives. Moreover, the knowledge that their condition will lead to suffering and a short life has severe impacts on mental health. There seems to be little attention paid to the psychological needs of those with DGD due to social stigma, and it appears that attempted suicide and suicidal ideation are common among DGDs.

DGDs are marked by an emblem that they must wear for identification for medical personnel to ensure that they receive appropriate care. Even if they try to conceal the emblem, a DGD’s condition is often apparent because of their restrictive diets. If they fail to wear the emblem and need emergency medical care, the results can be disastrous. In the story, Lynn points out that the vast majority of DGDs hurt only themselves when they deteriorate, but because the illness is poorly understood and because it does sometimes lead to violence against other people, most people keep their distance. This social fear and rejection only increase DGD marginalization.

The story examines various ways in which DGD people are institutionalized and the quality of care they receive. At first, when the condition’s causes and possible treatments are especially poorly understood, institutional options are bleak. Symptomatic DGDs are often left completely isolated and consequently don’t live very long. Beatrice comments that such institutions still exist because of greed. This is a direct commentary on the role of institutions and health care in treating illness and the ways in which they might put profit before effective care.

On the other hand, as is typically the case with Butler’s work, there is no easy and straightforward pedantic moralizing as she develops this theme. She is more likely to encourage us to ask hard questions to which she does not have a clear answer. For example, while we might hope DGDs could have access to better care, Beatrice herself acknowledges that availability is limited because there are so few double DGD women. Also, while it is easy to chide those who marginalize others with an unfamiliar condition, the threat of violence against others is real even if uncommon. The complex ways in which these elements feed into each other create a moral and ethical dilemma with many variables and no simple solution.

Human Nature and Social Structure

Human nature and social structure is a theme that features strongly in Butler’s work, as she often creates dystopian settings that challenge us to explore what holds communities together and what drives them apart and how we can understand human nature in the process of building and maintaining them. As we learn more about the nature of the DGD condition in “The Evening and the Morning and the Night,” Butler increasingly demands that we contemplate the nature of social structure and our role in it. In taking on this theme, Butler may at times seem to be a social constructivist—someone who believes that ideas about how society and human nature operate are built mostly on social agreement and convention. Other times, she can seem to be an essentialist—someone who argues that social structure emerges as an inevitable byproduct of our innate natures. Sometimes she might seem to support both seemingly contradictory positions at the same time.

Writing at the peak of second-wave feminism, which focused in large part on equality for women, and the beginning of third-wave feminism, which tended to emphasize diversity and individual freedom, Butler often zeroes in on traditionally feminine roles through this theme. We can see this in Beatrice, who has taken on the role of caretaker of other DGDs, and Lynn, who, by the end of the story, seems apprehensive but also resigned to her future. The difference here is that while a feminist of Butler’s day and ours might argue that we don’t value caretakers, in the world of the story, these caretakers are recognized as extremely important and valuable because of their rarity and their capacity to manage other DGDs, which in turn allows those DGDs to lead productive lives making valuable contributions.

The value given to a certain kind of caretaker in this story represents an interesting inversion of gender roles, in which typically masculine roles are traditionally seen as more valuable and important and in which the male “breadwinner” brings security to the family through his individual effort. In the world of the story, however, Lynn, and not Alan, is the one who can expect a well-paying job because of her ability to perform a traditionally feminine role. Moreover, the kind of work she might do as a caretaker will create the conditions in which DGDs like Alan can make their individual contributions. In addition to highlighting aspects of what we value, Butler’s inversion asks us to consider if we really understand how society is structured, how and why we come to inhabit certain roles and not others, and how that is tied (or not) to an underlying nature we can only partially understand.

Self-Determination and Individual Responsibility

Do we ultimately have free will, and, if so, to what extent are we obligated to fulfill the roles to which we are best suited in our communities? While Butler might not suggest any firm conclusions on whether we possess free will, she tends to place community responsibility before individual desires. These are questions that have been important to philosophy and ethics for a long time, but they might have been felt particularly poignantly in Butler’s day. Butler wrote this story at a time when the focus of left-wing cultural movements and theories was expanding from a focus on equality to an interest in the nature of identity. The tendencies of such movements have been to embrace social constructivist views. Moreover, the rise of genetics in the latter half of the 20th century gave credence to the competing claim that much of our nature is determined by nature, not nurture.

When considering self-determination as it relates to this story, there is the degree to which individuals are free to decide the trajectory of their lives independent of social obligations. Here, Butler’s answer often seems to be that one should put community before themselves. This conflict is most apparent in Lynn, who, by the end of the story, doesn’t really look forward to her future but seems resigned to it because of the good she feels she can do. To a lesser extent, we can also see this in Beatrice, who has seemingly come to terms with the individual sacrifices she has made to manage Dilg and help DGDs. This can also be seen in Alan, who, as his DGD condition progresses, might still be able to make important contributions if he allows himself to be managed by someone like Lynn.

Alan’s ultimate trajectory is unclear. Part of the reason for this is because it is not clear if he, or really any of the main characters, has free will. Free will is the second way in which we can consider self-determination. When Beatrice speaks to Lynn about Alan, she emphasizes that she can push him away even with her abilities to manage DGDs, indicating that she does not feel he really has a choice in the matter. In addition to this, it’s not clear if Lynn and Beatrice have free will either. Lynn feels conflicted about the role she will take on, but, as Beatrice points out, she has already fallen into this role as housemother of her housemates. It seems that even without Beatrice’s guidance, Lynn would fall into the role of DGD caretaker because it is in her nature.