Story  Analysis

Story: The Screwfly Solution

     By: Raccona Sheldon or James Tiptree Jr.

Characters:Alan

                  Anne

                  Amy

                  Barney

                  

The novella The Screwfly Solution  tells us a story of a world where men are going mad and killing women.We find out at the end of the story that an alien race had spread a virus or biological weapon that disrupts the natural arousal state in men and instead makes them aggressive with deadly consequence's to the female gender, which also dooms the rest of the human race.

The story is told to us mostly over the use of letters givin back and fourth between a couple, Alan who starts out in South America investigating ways to create a biological pest control system. Anne his wife lives in America, where she comments on a new religious movement called the sons of Adam, that has sprung up in the South where they seem to be killing the women of the area, even the young females.

Also Barney a close friend to the couple supplies Alan with news reports and headings that build up a clear picture of what is occurring World wide. As the story unfolds we learn more about what is happening back in America, where Anne is getting more worried about the situation and wondering why nothing is being done about it.Alan gets worried and attempts to get home. While waiting in Florida to get home he realizes that in fact the madness spreading is caused by something biological rather then psychological like thought by the government, when he realizes that he is infected.This leads him home where he wants to isolate himself and find a cure, however their daughter who is going through puberty gets into argument with her mother and visits Alan at the lab, where we find out a bit latter that he kills her and himself.

The story then changes to Anne,s perspective as she is hiding out in Canada. At this stage she is dressed up like a man, and trying to life away from people.It is hinted that she could be the last female alive.As she is hiding out in a woodes near the end of the story where she has got quiet desperate and hopeless she discovers that the angels that people have reported  seeing are in fact Aliens that have polluted the air with some sort of biological weapon to cause the extinction of the human race.

The story is told to us mostly through the perspective of the couple, through the readings of the letters, and through various articles that their friend, who we never meet,sends Alan. I enjoyed the story, it reminded me of the book World War Z, in the way it was written, through a kind of journalistic, investigative way. We slowly learn that there's more to the religious cult then just belief, as we read that the events are world wide but also localized in those countries, spreading from a localized spot.

At the beginning of the story we see things unfurl from Alans point of view, even though most of the information is coming from Anne.Its through him reading the letters that we learn of events. This changes just before the finale act where it quickly changes to the kids point of view and then Annes for the finish. The fact that the main male lead is killed off  also gives the story more impact, as we read about this through Anne's letter to Barney. Also the fact that he and the daughter are killed off screen as such is striking. We are given an insight to how the couple love each other which adds to the tragedy, the fact that we are in Alan's mind when he realizes that he has been infected with whatever drives the men Psychotic.

There is a feminist sway to the story, the fact that one story has a mayor of a town kill a professional woman saying that those kinds of women where the worst types"cripto females".The fact that men seemed not to care to much about the cults killing females when it was first spreading. Men are the monsters in this story, albeit not under their own control but under the control of their biological urges.This could also be interpreted by mans slavery to his own primitiv impulses.

Although women aswell are represented oddly, maybe its like a woman in an abusive relationship, no one really understands why they stay with that figure, just like how no women in this story fight back. They are well and truly the victims, scared into moving around in groups, asexually dressed.

The stories twist ending then shows us how we are the pest, we are the screwfly who is being dealt with by a superior race.I quite enjoyed this revelation at the end, it tied the story up nicely where we get to see why and how this epidemic of deadly misogyny began.

Apparently these themes are repeated in Alice sheldons other short stories, in particular the themes of death  and biological determinism. books such as "Love is the plan the plan is death" and "The women that men don't see".