A Tight Knit Family In today’s day and age the American families are closer than ever before and a good amount of people would say that they are very close with at least one of their relatives. However, in Octavia Butlers “Near of Kin” the norm for close family relationships are broken in an emotional way to encourage the reader to question what is acceptable and unacceptable and decide for themselves what they truly believe. The short story tells the tale of a girl who grew up with very little interaction from her mother. After her mothers passing she is talking with her uncle who she is very find of. Her uncle is discovered to be not only her mother’s brother but her lover as well. While this short story incorporates several themes within …show more content…
Cristina Bicchieri in her journal “Social Norms and Fairness” agrees that social norms are “constituted by the beliefs of individuals and conceptualizes the role of norms in influencing behavior by incorporating the influence of norms into individual utility functions that—as in orthodox economic models—represent individual preferences” (Bicchieri,1). The main social norm in this story is incest or better yet, the disgust of incest that is accepted in our society. It is assumed that if you asked a few random people on the street how they felt about incest, you would get weird looks and a lack of variety in answers. Butler going against a social norm, especially one that has so many strong opinions built on it was very bold and caught many readers off guard, which is exactly how she intended. Although overall, the connection to the characters created in the reading is what brings it all together. Butler grew up feeling her parents were ashamed of her and felt a little disowned by them (Ratterman, 1). This certainly has a large impact on the characters in the story and her relationship to them herself helped make them so