One of the superpowers of independent bookstores is how curation can change a shopper’s discovery process of otherwise unnoticed books. Page Against the Machine in Long Beach is an example of such a store, with its focus on media related to activism and social/political movements. It then shouldn’t be a surprise that I came across the 2019 edition of Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler (PotS) featuring a quote on the cover from the New York Times: “Brilliant, endlessly rich…pairs well with 1984 or The Handmaids Tale.” This burb alone sealed the deal and rushed it to the front of my TBR stack. In fact, Octavia Butler has become one of my favorite authors in the last three years. Thus, I went into Parable of the Sower with high exceptions given the author and the high praise of reviewers. And it did not disappoint.
PotS takes place in a dystopian and very ominous 2024. Butler does a masterful job of weaving references to climate change, displays of social unrest, and rampant drug abuse, which the reader gathers from descriptions of the protagonist, Lauren Olamina’s home life in Southern California. There were a couple of slower passages at the beginning where establishing information obscured Lauren’s journey and motivations. But these brief sections didn’t stop the story from sinking its teeth into me.
PotS digs deep into the facets of what makes and breaks a society. Lauren lives in a gated community, not because of affluence but because the streets are dangerous. And yet, even with the walls, gates, and community watch, houses are constantly broken into and robbed. Lauren admits that the gates are an “illusion of security,” unable to protect them from the growing dangers outside. The anxiety-producing horror of PotS is the ease with which the reader can imagine this future. How much it resembles a not-too-distant version of the divided America we find ourselves in today.
And yet, unlike in 1984 or The Handmaid’s Tale, there is no past inciting incident to create the present. No Big Brother or political revolt ala Gilead to impose an authoritarian state. Lauren remarks on this when writing of a newly formed company town that her mother desires to join:
“My grandmother left a whole bookcase of old science fiction. 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.”
Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Sower. 1993. Grand Central Publishing, 2019, pg. 123-124.
This meta-like discussion of science fiction grounds the PotS in stark reality. Unlike other works which shun self-awareness of the genre, whose characters seem not to have read or watched anything remotely sci-fi, Lauren is very aware of the precarious situation of the world. Whereas many dystopian stories are, in essence, about revolution, about the overthrowing of a power apparatus, there is no sense of a unifying uprising among the people of PotS. If anything, one of the multifaceted enemies of this future is Keynes’s invisible hand of the market. And how do you fight an illusive enemy?
The answer, echoed in the refrain of the parable itself, is change. Many of Lauren’s neighbors, and even her father, long to return to the good old days. These characters hope society will, through strife or a charismatic President, return to better times. To the era of conspicuous consumption without the threat of violence, climate, or economic displacement. But Lauren, with her connection to Earthseed (a religion/philosophy she founds), understands that change is inevitable. That going back isn’t an option. And everyone who professes a desire to regress to the past, ultimately, is killed or vanishes (presumed dead). Butler removes these characters to demonstrate the fatality of clinging to the past. There is a real sense that acceptance of change is crucial to survival.
Similarly, one of Lauren’s brothers, Keith, runs away from home to escape their father and the failing community. In essence, Keith also understands the community’s decline and cannot shield them from the violent forces of the streets. However, his venture into the outside world corrupts him quickly through sheer brutality, and he, too, is soon killed. There is no regression or stagnation in PotS. There is only progression.
Butler uses the burgeoning conception of the new religion, Earthseed, to force Lauren into action. Lauren, who starts as a precocious, well-read sixteen-year-old daughter of a preacher, isn’t infallible. Many times in the novel, she admits a decision might lead to her death. She is not a prophet who, through unwavering faith, believes salvation is possible through divine intervention. Not when her God is the embodiment of change itself.
However, true to form for a book grounded in the shortcomings of humanity, it takes an outside force to push Lauren into action. For how much she desires to change the future, give people hope, and nudge society onto the correct path, it isn’t until the novel’s mid-point that the change she professes to worship makes her current situation untenable, and the journey to Earthseed truly begins. Proof confirmed that change is inevitable, or per Lauren: “God is change.”
In PotS, Butler crafts a tight narrative which confronts the reader about what makes a society, how people fit within it, and in the end, what is the purpose of a life. The book ends on a more uplifting note than many others within the genre, and I eagerly await the second book, Parable of the Talents. I agree with the reviewer that this book belongs on the shelf next to the other greats and should be mandatory reading for high school students, eager, bright-eyed, and cautious of what the future may bring.