Parable of the Sower is perhaps one of the most frightening books I’ve ever read. Not because it’s intrinsically terrifying or meant to be scary, but how insanely accurate it is for being published almost 30 years ago. The raw emotion and forewarning of this novel had me scared for America’s future.
Set in 2024, in a community 20 miles out of LA, the world is drastically different. Income inequality has decimated the US population, with the majority of people being homeless and/or absolutely destitute. Corporations have taken over many services previously fulfilled by the government, as profit is more important than anything else. They create towns for people to live and work in, paying them starvation wages only enough for room and board, and further pushing them into debt. Environmental catastrophe has also ravaged the country, making water and food precious resources. Gas has become so unaffordable that people cannot afford to drive cars (I’m telling you, this book is scary from how accurate it is). They lie unused and broken along the streets. The novel follows Lauren Olamina, a black teenager, who lives in a community outside of the violence that is normally found in most of the country. Lauren and her family’s community help and protect each other from threats outside their community’s walls, although these threats have gotten more and more pronounced over the years. Many people outside their walls vandalize, rob, or try to burn their community, almost succeeding each time. Lauren sufferers form a condition called hyperempathy, in which she physically feels the emotion of other people. If she sees someone breaking their leg, it feels as if she has broken her leg. If she sees someone being extremely happy, she is able to share in that happiness. She often wishes that more people had hyperempathy, pondering whether it would make people more cautious and empathetic before violating and killing other people, as they would experience the physical pain inflicted upon their victims.
Lauren’s father is a college professor and Christian pastor, and thus she was raised educated and in a spiritual environment. However, seeing the destruction that has razed most of the country, she becomes disillusioned with the Christian God, believing people have become too reliant and dependent on Him to change their situations, rather than trying to improve their situations themselves. Lauren begins developing her own religion called Earthseed, and each chapter of the book begins with a quote from the central book of Earthseed, The Book of the Living. The Book of the Living is a fascinating and rich book, that allows one to explore the ideas of Lauren’s philosophy. Both large and small, it provides insights on people’s existence that is relevant to the society they live in, while promoting humanity’s larger role in propagating the cosmos. Earthseed’s main tenets are that 1. God is Change; 2. We must shape God (that is to say change); and 3. In order for humanity to thrive, it must go out into space and “take root among the stars”. The first verse from The Book of the Living summarizes Earthseed’s main point amazingly:
All that you touch
You Change.
All that you Change
Changes you.
The only lasting truth
Is Change.
God Is Change.
— From Earthseed: The Books of the Living
Some people, after the book was published, started summarizing this with the mathematical expression: ∞ = Δ.
Simple, yet quite effective.
Earthseed’s God is not an omnipotent, omniscient presence like that of the Abrahamic religions. Its God is merely a fact of life, cold and indifferent. But if shaped, if controlled, if utilized, it provides endless opportunity and power.
Lauren’s wish to spread beyond Earth, to spread the seed of Earth and humanity across the universe (roll title sequence), stems from seeing the destruction of her own planet. She becomes convinced that humans must actively seek out new life and new civilizations ;-), to explore and settle other planets, shaping God to benefit them. Thus her religion is a project on the time scale of millennia.
Over the course of a few years of developing Earthseed, Lauren’s father goes missing, shortly followed by her community being slaughtered and burned to the ground, by hordes of people, high on a new drug that gives immense pleasure watching people and things burns. They paint their faces with colored paint, red, orange, blue, green, and shave their heads, giving them an inhuman appearance. Lauren is lucky to survive, but her entire family gets killed. But she finds a small group of survivors, and they begin to head north. Along the way, their group attracts more and more people. Lauren begins preaching Earthseed to them, and most of them adopt this new religion, forming a new community. They are able to settle in farmland in Northern California, with their goal of shaping God, and venturing out into the stars.
Parable of the Sower is also a prime example of Afrofuturism, which is “a cultural aesthetic, and philosophy of science and history that explores the intersection of African diaspora culture with science and technology”. Butler compares and contrasts the institution of American slavery with the indentured servitude that companies in the novel partake in, effectively creating modern-day slavery. Especially since most of the people in the novel who work as indentured servants are black and brown, Butler emphasizes that point that racism and slavery need not be legally codified in order for them to effectively exist. Lauren is very cognizant of this fact, and reflects on how her identity shapes her beliefs.
Butler’s work stuck with me the most of perhaps any book I’ve ever read. Her ability in predicting the future was so accurate, it’s uncanny, and makes me feel legitimately anxious, wondering if this is the state for which America is heading. In 1998, Butler released a sequel to the book called Parable of the Talents, in which a Christian far-right presidential candidate running on the slogan “Make America Great Again” (I swear to God, I kid you not), wins and begins to purge America of so-called anti-Christian values. I have not read the book, but I plan on reading it this summer, and I wonder just how accurate it will be.
Parable of the Sower is presented as a collection of journal entries from Lauren’s POV, and reading it, one gets the sense that Butler wrote it as a manual rather than just a book. Lauren is a fierce, intelligent, and quiet protagonist. Reading the book, there is a mysterious quality always enveloping Lauren, despite the fact that she is the central character writing about her own experiences. You get the sense that there’s more to her than reads off the page, something not really experienced with any of the other characters. Both depressing and uplifting, Parable of the Sower, serves as a reminder of what happens to a society when norms and mores breakdown.
God is Change.
Beware:
God exists to shape
And to be shaped.
Cities controlled by big companies are old hat in science fiction. My grandmother left a whole bookcase of old science fiction novels. The company-city subgenre always seemed to star a hero who outsmarted, overthrew, or escaped “the company.” I’ve never seen one where the hero fought like hell to get taken in and underpaid by the company. In real life, that’s the way it will be. That’s the way it is.
Embrace diversity.
Unite—
Or be divided,
robbed,
ruled,
killed
By those who see you as prey.
Embrace diversity
Or be destroyed.
People are setting fires because they’re frustrated, angry, hopeless. They have no power to improve their lives, but they have the power to make others even more miserable. And the only way to prove to yourself that you have power is to use it.
Changes.
The galaxies move through space.
The stars ignite,
burn,
age,
cool,
Evolving.
God is Change.
God prevails.