Shortly thereafter, the settlement was raided by the Tehkohn, a rival group of Kohn, and several Garkohn and Missionaries were captured, including Alanna.Įventually, the story reveals that just as Alanna once altered her behavior to fit in among the Missionaries and 'survive,' she also was successful in joining the Tehkohn, ultimately marrying their leader, Diut, and bearing a child. Although the Kohn had fur, camouflage abilities, and claws, they were broadly humanoid, and the local tribe-the Garkohn-assisted the Missionaries in developing their settlement. Some time later, the Missionaries receive an opportunity to flee Earth on a Patternist starship as part of a program to seed humanity on other planets in order to preserve the species from the Clayark plague.Īfter arrival on the planet, the Missionaries encountered the Kohn, intelligent inhabitants of the planet. Although some of the Missionaries distrusted Alanna, either because of her wild upbringing or because of her African American and Asian ancestry, she adapted quickly, and became the foster daughter of the group's leader, Jules Verrick, and his wife Niela.

After several years living as a feral child, Alanna was captured by a group of Missionaries, a Christian religious sect dedicated to maintaining humanity as God's chosen form in the face of Clayark and Patternist competition. Prior to the main events of the novel, Alanna's parents died saving her from a Clayark attack. (The development of the Patternists is described in more detail in Wild Seed and Mind of My Mind, and a later stage of their conflict against the Clayarks is described in Patternmaster.) At the time of Survivor, humanity is threatened by the 'Clayark plague,' an extraterrestrial disease that has destroyed half of the Earth's population, either by killing them or by mutating them and their children into the bestial 'Clayarks.' Humanity survives in an embattled state, supported somewhat by the 'Patternists,' a group of mutant humans previously living in secret. The novel is set in the indeterminate future, sometime after the events that Butler would later describe in her novel Clay's Ark and before the events of Patternmaster. Through this literary device, the readers learn about Alanna's past gradually, even as they follow the efforts of the other characters to discover that past as well.Įventually, the narrative reveals Alanna's background. Although the main narrative follows Alanna's perspective after the rescue, Butler also inserts a series of flashbacks, some of them from the perspective of other characters. Although set within the broader plot of the Patternist series, the entire plot of Survivor is largely separated from the events of the other books in the series.īutler begins the novel in medias res, during the 'rescue' of the main character, Alanna, from the 'Tehkohn,' a group of extraterrestrials.

Survivor octavia e butler