PARABLE OF THE SOWER by Octavia E. Butler (1993)
The Parable Of The Sower is set in the near future (2024 – 2027) . It is the story of a small group of people clinging frantically to hope even though the fabric holding society together is in tatters.
Its central character is an 18-year-old black woman named Lauren Olamina. She is the daughter of a preacher and part of a close-knit family in a community trying to preserve order and dignity aware that outside the wall of their protected world there are hordes of have-nots wanting a piece of what they have. Lauren’s family are not wealthy but she knows that “to the desperate we looked rich”.
In presenting this doomsday scenario Butler could be describing the background today’s occupy movement:
“I thought something would happen someday. I didn’t know how bad it would be or when it would come. But everything was getting worse : the climate, the economy, crime, drugs, you know. I didn’t believe we’d be allowed to sit behind our walls, looking clean and fat and rich to the hungry, thirsty, homeless, jobless, filthy people outside”.
This imbalance becomes the human equivalent of a ticking time bomb so that it is not a question of if but when it will explode. Lauren’s brother Keith sees no point in waiting for the violence to sweep his privileges aside and advocates fighting fire with fire arguing “If you’ve got a gun you’re somebody. If you don’t you’re shit. And a lot of people out there don’t have guns”. Needless to say, his short-term solution fails.
Lauren believes the only way the downward slide can be averted is by setting aside selfish, ‘me first’ habits and embracing the notion of sharing. The selfish desire to accumulate money, food and possessions has the inevitable consequence that these advantages are enjoyed by the few, leaving the majority (the 99%?) scraping by with a hand-to-mouth existence.
Her alternative strategy is built around a pragmatic religion she calls Earthseed which “deals with ongoing reality , not with supernatural authority figures”. The scepticism towards the concept of a supreme being does not mean that she entirely rejects deism since she recognises that “people forget ideas, they’re more likely to remember God”.
However, her attitude towards belief is at best ambiguous; at one point to says that she remembers parts of the bible “even after I stopped believing”. At the same time all her poems/prayers contain the mantra “God is change” on the basis that people must learn to “embrace diversity or be destroyed”. To me , it represents God as a convenient concept while advocating principles that are essentially those of humanism.
Lauren suffers from ‘hyperempathy syndrome’ which means that she quite literally feels the pain (and pleasure) of others. This condition means that she is physically bound to the principle of sharing. When her old community crumbles, she is forced to seek other ways of living and takes to the road on foot in heading towards California, gathering a small band of followers en route.
On her journey she has to contend with scavengers and cannibals which is why many have compared the book to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. The dystopias are, however, quite different. McCarthy’s is a post-apocalyptic nightmare which ends with only a faintest glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. Octavia E. Butler’s novel is a more optimistic vision rooted in a faith in humanity even though she concedes that a darker side of human nature exists.
I believe wholeheartedly that the occupy movement is an important force for change but in sowing the seeds for a brighter future there also needs to be discipline and compassion. Octavia E. Butler’s parable should be read as a warning that even righteous rebellion must operate within boundaries; as Butler wrote: “once people get the idea that it’s all right to take what you want and destroy the rest, who knows where they’ll stop”.
