I am going to start this review off by asking a theoretical question. There is a huge wave coming, it will wash you and everyone you love out to see. What do you do? Do you back up away from the water? Move to higher ground? Build a boat to ride it out? Or do you turn your back on it, play on the beach and pretend that it isn’t coming? Now imagine that it isn’t a wave of water, but a wave of violence, crime and people that will be unstoppable. No wall will hold them back. You may have nowhere ideal to go. But you have access to books, learning materials and you have time to prepare, pack. Octavia Butler speculates that most people would ignore the coming onslaught and attempt to go about their daily business, not prepare and not learn. It is scary to move forward and change behavior and scary to imagine the world as we know it is ending. But change is necessary to survival, according to Butler. This is what Parable is about – change, adaptation and working together in a community to accomplish the change in order to survive. The main character in Parable, a teenage girl named Lauren, is an agent of change. Lauren is unwilling to turn her back on the huge wave she knows is coming; instead she teaches herself through books everything she can learn and she prepares for what she knows and fears is coming. Lauren is inspired from inside herself and is somewhat of a prophet of a new religion and philosophy. Her belief is “God is Change.” And she goes out to preach it. The creation of the religion is a vehicle for Lauren’s story to be told and for hope to be seeded among her followers. Octavia Butler published her book in 1995, so many apocalyptic novels have come after hers have incorporated elements that are present in this book. It is interesting for me that Butler appears to have less acclaim but she is the predecessor of so many well-known novels. There are books that tell the story of the world ending by an apocalyptic event and then there are books that show you what the world would be like during an apocalyptic even – without holding back. Parable of the Sower is the latter. The images of lives being destroyed and violence being wrought on people just for living and just for having something, anything that is wanted by those who do not have anything – these images are described in details. They are not described, I think, for the delight of reading gore, but to serve as a marker of how far society has fallen. And it is a scary world that Butler describes; scary and realistic. Despite that I have absolutely no point of reference for the scenes described in this book, while reading I felt as though it could have been happening right outside my door. There is nothing about this apocalyptic world that is romantic. In Parable, much of society’s downfall appears to have been caused by environmental devastation, which has in turn caused economic and political devastation. Polluted water, toxic chemicals, failed pharmaceutical and science experiments resulting in dangerous addictive drugs. Butler’s book is a scary warning of pushing consumer and corporate demands to the extreme. Reading this book created questions in my mind. Is this book really about an apocalyptic event? It does take place in the US (California) and the society that is disintegrating is American society, but is this an apocalyptic event or the failure of one society? So many apocalyptic books describe world changing events; but in Parable, it is shortages – gas, water, food, governmental collapse (or increasing ineffectualness) but some infrastructure remains. There are police, but they investigate and then charge user fees; there are property taxes and there are colleges; there is electricity and there are entertainment outlets (like televisions, etc.); there are insurance companies and resources --- but everything for an elevated price and most people do not have the ability to pay for these items and services. What happens is that these institutions are not efficient, they are not accessible to most individuals and there is a heavy cost to purchase their services. There are still jobs and corporations and apparently very successful corporations. People without education and without jobs, crowd in to smaller housing and share space. Corporations dominate certain sectors of society and provide protection and infrastructure to those who can afford it. Punitive debt policies and employment policies are in place that hurt individuals but benefit corporations. Isn’t this describing the current state of some countries in this world right now – maybe even in this hemisphere? Where there is no protection for the individual beyond what they can obtain from people in their community and families? Don’t people already go on migrations to new places (bordering countries, mega cities, factory rich regions) with nothing but a small savings and a hope for anything different? I see this book as an envisioning of what if these situations happened in the United States. The scenarios described in Parable, the extreme violence, the extreme fear and the absolute lack of choices are just so out of the realm of anything most people in the US experience while living in the US that it is hard to imagine, understand and relate to images like written in this book that we may read about in the news, blogs or in non-fiction books. Butler brings it home; she recreates it here and it is absolutely terrifying. At one point in the novel, Lauren travels disguised as a man but she travels along side a woman who is described as highly desirable, Zahra. Zahra encounters problem after problem because men will just not leave her alone – and in a threatening way. There is no government, no structure – and no laws to protect the weak. Butler describes horrible crimes that happen to females of all ages and most of them sexual. What point is Butler making about the physicality of being a woman? Is she saying that in the absence of the protection of a societal framework a woman is more at risk, simply because she is a woman? Does this mean Butler believes this threat is inherent? I have a hard time accepting this concept, but I also know I approach this concept of equality and physical integrity from an extremely privileged position. The mass rapes that happen in war torn countries, the use of rape as a weapon of wars, and the kidnapping and use of children soldiers – these horrors that take place and demonstrate this fragile place in society that women and children can occupy. But again, from my extremely privileged position, I have a hard time grasping that in the absence of government and infrastructure, human beings will turn violent and devoid of empathy. The mass chaos Butler describes is only kept out by walls, guns and guards. However, I have mentioned this and been told by some people, very intelligently, that it does not take a majority to create chaos. A minority of criminals and desparados are enough to create the chaos that endangers people, the forces them to withdraw from society and that puts women and children at risk. If the natural condition in a situation devoid of an effective government is chaos and danger, how could society have evolved? Why would we be here? I do think the answer is that people would join together, form a community, work as a group and attempt to protect the community members. And that, is what I think this book is about – community, bonds, joint action and moving forward as a group. The acceptance of change and the trusting of each other. For more reviews like this one check out my blog: www.badassbookreviews.com
This was a compulsive page-turner for me.Compared with at least one contemporary USian perspective, say, that of the low waged service worker, Lauren lives in one version of utopia: a close-knit community, like a village, shaped by an ethics of care and mutual support. She does not have to work, except to share the unalienated labour of social reproduction (childcare, food preparation, education of the young) which leaves her time to pursue her own preoccupations*. The person in her family who provides money only has to go out to work for it one day per week, leaving him plenty of time to spend at home participating in social reproduction and leisure. Food production is local; families grow and share vegetables, fruits, and nuts. There is no light pollution, so the stars are brightly visible, inspiring Lauren's dreams.The early exchange between young child Lauren (who's Black) and her (Euro-Latina) stepmom Cory, in which Cory says she would like the city lights back while Lauren says she prefers the stars for me represents a 'choice' (the choice is for authors and readers, but of course this reverberates...) between an increasingly struggling and desperate 'developed' civilisation and its collapse: a collapse that gives the biosphere time to recover from our ravages and the stars a clean dark background against which to be seen. By the privileged few who remain. Butler of course, confronts us absolutely unsparingly with the victims of such a (horrifically realistic) collapse, not as faceless numbers of convenient dead, but angry, naked, filthy, wounded, diseased, maddened, threatening living, screaming, tormented, starved dying, rotting, dismembered, wormy, stinking, half-eaten corpses. And just in case you thought you could ignore all this, Butler afflicts her narrator with 'hyperempathy syndrome' which causes her to feel all the pain she sees other humans and even some animals feeling. At one point, Lauren reflects that there might be some benefit in others experiencing this illness: 'a biological conscience is better than none' but in a context so bristling with merciless violence it leaves her appallingly, terrifyingly vulnerable. It is pointed out that this would be a very 'useful' quality in a slave.This quality of utopia reminded me of Le Guin's fable The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas. This could be thought of as an inside-out version, and thus one cannot walk away, because one is surrounded by the mirror of horror. This also speaks to the situation we live in of the carceral state. Prisons exist in The Parable of the Sower but what can they be like? The police are completely ineffectual and corrupt, but if they weren't, who would be left outside the jails? And to what extent can the residents of walled neighbourhoods terrified to go outside be considered free? Butler invites us to speculate on realistic possibilities of (re)enslavement as wages fall, climate stability falters and corporate power sheds ever more fetters.Lauren's 'discovery' (as she feels it) and articulation of the religion she founds was extremely thought provoking for me as I tried to feel my way into it - this aspect of the book functioned as a kind of backdoor world-building that allowed deeper insight than other modes of description, supplementing Lauren's austere narration (which gave the book a young adult feel) but also something fresh and exciting in itself. The element of possibility modelling was thrilling: sure, a black teenage girl can found an empowering, non-hierarchical religion in terrifying conditions of social collapse. Why not?Well why not? Butler quietly indicates a few obstacles. As soon as Lauren begins to talk about her own carefully worked out, deeply felt ideas, a white guy demands some documentation. Race is a low key issue in Lauren's peaceful birth community and in the one she creates, but Butler makes clear that outside white supremacy is more or less as lumpily operative as it is today, and shows that corporate power and state corruption and disintegration exacerbate it. Also, many young women and girls have predictably become chattel, without any discernible ideological shift towards more regressive gender frameworks in evidence. Butler has, it seems to me, taken a realistic image of USian culture, shifted a few contextual (broadly ecological) parameters and hit 'run simulation'. I'm an outsider saying this, but I hear the word from over the pond, and the UK isn't so different.Among future dystopia type novels, this puts others in the shade for me on a lot of levels. Instead of focussing on the extension of state power, Butler envisions a scenario of extreme privatisation, climate change and widespread desperate poverty. The state has apparently ceased to provide education, so most people cannot read. Most of the jobs available pay only 'room and board' or company scrip - Butler exposes this as debt slavery. Police (and other emergency services) are corrupt, useless, profit making, just licensed thieves, although some people are still inclined to trust them. So yeah, this feels a lot more prescient today than, say, Brave New World or even 1984. While state power is increasing on the level of surveillance and the erosion of civil liberties, state responsibility to provide anything whatsoever - health and social care, welfare, education, decent pay and conditions for workers and so on is being gradually dismantled, sold off to profiteers, swept away, CUT.*Hito Styerl has written that work has become occupation. Thus, playing on words, a preoccupation could be what defends you from an occupation
Do You like book Parable Of The Sower (2000)?
A TERRIFYING YET INSPIRING VISION OF DAYS TO COMEOctavia E. Butler's PARABLE OF THE SOWER is one of those rare, dangerous novels that succeeds as both fascinating fantasy and uncompromising social commentary. Within its first dozen pages, we encounter members of a typical family, armed with guns, on their way to church, a headless corpse, a naked homeless woman, a community walled in by terror, and a young woman dreaming of stars. The dreamer is 16-year-old Lauren Oya Olamina, the would-be sower and teller of this parable. The place is California. The year 2025. And nothing in the United States is how it once was. Lauren is a "sharer," or what some might describe as an empath. With her family destroyed by lawless ravagers, Lauren becomes the leader of a band of desperate wanderers. Despite constant violence, hunger, and the threat of firestorms sweeping across the land, they maintain their vows to protect each other and even find love among their numbers. Although barely existing at the bottom of hell, these characters levitate naturally toward a sense of family in order to survive and flourish. Racially, socially, and temperamentally diverse, they manage to achieve a strained but functional unity. The late Butler's PARABLE OF THE SOWER, filled with deep thought and elevated feeling, highlights and magnifies the social ills of the years 2025-2027 to forge a mirror that reflects much of what too many people choose to ignore in contemporary times. Despite that, every page shimmers with hope and inspiration that makes this book one fantastic read.by Aberjhaniauthor of ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE and THE WISDOM OF W. E. B. DU BOIS
—Aberjhani
What if Global Warming truly devastated our environment, and that destroyed the economy and made government useless, and homelessness the norm? What if water was a rare, expensive commodity? Add in a drug that makes people set fires for pleasure.Octavia Butler creates all of this in her book Parable of the Sower.This isn’t my usual book. I normally try to avoid the kind of violence and language that occurs within. It was –barely- within my tolerance levels but confirms that I still don’t enjoy reading graphic writing.One thing that bugged me about this book was Lauren’s arrogant attitude. She was able to predict the coming chaos and was impatient with the denial of the others in the community. She had a strong urge to prepare for impending disaster, but others around her shut down when she tried to talk about it. I became frustrated with her complaining. I also felt I didn’t get to know the characters other than Lauren on any more than a superficial level.Midway through the story the plot got moving and flowed quickly. For the most part, I followed it as one might stare when passing a car accident; a morbid fascination rather than true enjoyment of the story.The whole Earthseed Religion aspect was hard for me to follow. I think this is because my own ideas about God are so firmly entrenched, and important to me, that I was unable to put them aside. I usually am able to put aside my own beliefs to understand another POV, but I really had to work at it this time. It helped if I substituted the word change for the word God.Some of the themes in book include...Global warmingThe importance of waterChange: The idea that it’s unavoidable, and being aware and prepared can help you “shape” the change in ways that will be beneficial to you.Importance of a group- watching out for each otherHow quickly society can break down into violence.The reoccurrence of slavery, due to “the company store” and the elimination of labor laws.Destruction (fire), poverty, and homelessnessThe idea that the survivors of this society are the seeds for the next generation, for what society will be like in the future.
—Beth A.
I just skimmed a few other Goodreads reviews of Parable of the Sower and felt confused about why difficult subject matter seems to be a weakness to many readers. If anything, I wish Octavia Butler were around so I could thank her for that. She wrote about survival, change, and power with incredible insight; she grapples with some Big Stuff but her novel, ideas, and genre also manage to be accessible. Butler's clarity is a strength and perhaps a stylistic weakness, but mostly I think there's something great about directly addressing change and survival--noting the potential horrors but also the possibilities of change, of creation, of our responsibility to ourselves and each other. Butler made that clear while maintaining the complexities of survival, and inspiring a lot of additional thought. On top of that, she demonstrated how sci fi can be relevant to race and gender issues, and how literature can be relevant, and enjoyable, for important work. I get so excited when I realize how remarkable that is, particularly while reading, and that happened often during Parable of the Sower. Right now I'm thinking of Octavia B as sort of a cross between Doris Lessing and Kazuo Ishiguro and Toni Morrison and oh, I just love her.
—Parvoneh
