C
Imagine this: the year is 2025. The newly elected president, who promised job opportunities and an end to high crime, is stripping the remaining rights of workers away. Highly skilled workers can barely make ends meet, and do whatever work they can from home or via teleconferences. Food and water prices have skyrocketed, and the value of the dollar has declined in tandem. The US’ space program has been defunded and sold off to private corporations. California is on fire, and measles has broken out. But enough about real life, I’m talking about Octavia Butler’s 1993 book: Parable of the Sower.
It really is shocking, and one of the first things I noticed when reading this book, just how accurately it predicted the future 30 years after it was originally published. Butler’s world, once a warning, is essentially our reality now. This book is more of a must-read now than it was back then… is what I feel like I should be saying, but this is not the ray of light in dark times that I was hoping this story of finding community and greater purpose would turn out to be by its ending. I actually find this book more pessimistic about the human condition than reality, and it really comes down to how humanity outside of Lauren’s immediate community is portrayed.
In the spring of 1992, the Bosnian city of Sarajevo was laid siege by Serbian secessionist forces. This siege lasted for nearly four years, and is still the longest siege in modern history. Over 5000 civilians were killed during the siege, averaging 3.8 deaths a day. The city was shelled by artillery from the surrounding mountains daily, and any living creature was target practice for snipers. Food, water, and medicine were nowhere to be found, and moonshine and cigarettes became the currency to use for supplies from the black markets that arose. Despite these conditions (which I would argue are even worse than the conditions seen in Parable of the Sower, as Bosnian winters are cold on top of the resource scarcity), civilization carried on. University students still got their degrees, the newspaper still published out of its bombed out building; even public transit still ran in some capacity. While theft, rape, and murder no doubt happened in these conditions, this did not consume the people of Sarajevo like it does to the people of California in this book. I swear, every unnamed character in Sower is either a thief, rapist, or other violent criminal, or the victim of one. Society cannot, and does not function like this in the absence of stable government. And this depiction of the poor masses self destructing undermines many of the better parts of the book.
I really liked the first half of Sower. The walled neighborhood that Lauren lived in was a good metaphor for the middle class. They were “safe” in their community, but had it just as bad as anyone else. The residents were almost all highly skilled workers, and Lauren’s dad was a strong leader as the reverend for the local church, but none of that meant anything when they could barely make ends meet any more than the people outside the walls. Reverend Olamina offered some wise quotes about teaching instead of instilling fear as a call to action, and how freedom is dangerous, but too precious to sacrifice for safety. The philosophy of Earthseed that Lauren forms throughout the book starts out promising, attributing abstract concepts of the world (particularly change) to God and offering a physical heaven among the stars as a greater purpose than mere survival. I was really hoping that finding religion and creating community as a means of resistance against oppressors and a bleak future would be the kind of optimistic outcome that was being set up. But Lauren’s neighborhood isn’t destroyed by a higher power. It’s consumed in a selfish and short-sighted attack by those who envy their neighbor and want to destroy them so that they too must suffer. It’s destroyed by the poor, unnamed masses. It would’ve been a great metaphor for the type of people who believe life is a zero sum game, but this harmful mentality is not defeated by the end of the book.
In fact, the book doesn’t feel like it ends positively, or at all. The final chapter is the ragtag followers of Lauren settling down on some remote land, and it not only feels a little cultish, but the characters even acknowledge how their future is just as bleak as it was before they lost everything. I wouldn’t even consider them followers of Earthseed, as many of them said their own form of prayer for the dead they lost along the way instead of one unifying mantra. Questions raised about why continuing to live and spread life in such an abhorrent world don’t feel like they were fully answered by the end, and the sheer amount of violence depicted throughout the book feels pretty distasteful as a result (and I say that as a fan of James Ellroy). Maybe the sequel provides that conclusion I’m looking for, but there was also a third sequel that was to be written that unfortunately died with Octavia Butler, so I’m a bit hesitant to continue to look at this pessimistic world when I already live in one that’s bad enough.
Imagine this: the year is 2025. The newly elected president, who promised job opportunities and an end to high crime, is stripping the remaining rights of workers away. Highly skilled workers can barely make ends meet, and do whatever work they can from home or via teleconferences. Food and water prices have skyrocketed, and the value of the dollar has declined in tandem. The US’ space program has been defunded and sold off to private corporations. California is on fire, and measles has broken out. But enough about real life, I’m talking about Octavia Butler’s 1993 book: Parable of the Sower.
It really is shocking, and one of the first things I noticed when reading this book, just how accurately it predicted the future 30 years after it was originally published. Butler’s world, once a warning, is essentially our reality now. This book is more of a must-read now than it was back then… is what I feel like I should be saying, but this is not the ray of light in dark times that I was hoping this story of finding community and greater purpose would turn out to be by its ending. I actually find this book more pessimistic about the human condition than reality, and it really comes down to how humanity outside of Lauren’s immediate community is portrayed.
In the spring of 1992, the Bosnian city of Sarajevo was laid siege by Serbian secessionist forces. This siege lasted for nearly four years, and is still the longest siege in modern history. Over 5000 civilians were killed during the siege, averaging 3.8 deaths a day. The city was shelled by artillery from the surrounding mountains daily, and any living creature was target practice for snipers. Food, water, and medicine were nowhere to be found, and moonshine and cigarettes became the currency to use for supplies from the black markets that arose. Despite these conditions (which I would argue are even worse than the conditions seen in Parable of the Sower, as Bosnian winters are cold on top of the resource scarcity), civilization carried on. University students still got their degrees, the newspaper still published out of its bombed out building; even public transit still ran in some capacity. While theft, rape, and murder no doubt happened in these conditions, this did not consume the people of Sarajevo like it does to the people of California in this book. I swear, every unnamed character in Sower is either a thief, rapist, or other violent criminal, or the victim of one. Society cannot, and does not function like this in the absence of stable government. And this depiction of the poor masses self destructing undermines many of the better parts of the book.
I really liked the first half of Sower. The walled neighborhood that Lauren lived in was a good metaphor for the middle class. They were “safe” in their community, but had it just as bad as anyone else. The residents were almost all highly skilled workers, and Lauren’s dad was a strong leader as the reverend for the local church, but none of that meant anything when they could barely make ends meet any more than the people outside the walls. Reverend Olamina offered some wise quotes about teaching instead of instilling fear as a call to action, and how freedom is dangerous, but too precious to sacrifice for safety. The philosophy of Earthseed that Lauren forms throughout the book starts out promising, attributing abstract concepts of the world (particularly change) to God and offering a physical heaven among the stars as a greater purpose than mere survival. I was really hoping that finding religion and creating community as a means of resistance against oppressors and a bleak future would be the kind of optimistic outcome that was being set up. But Lauren’s neighborhood isn’t destroyed by a higher power. It’s consumed in a selfish and short-sighted attack by those who envy their neighbor and want to destroy them so that they too must suffer. It’s destroyed by the poor, unnamed masses. It would’ve been a great metaphor for the type of people who believe life is a zero sum game, but this harmful mentality is not defeated by the end of the book.
In fact, the book doesn’t feel like it ends positively, or at all. The final chapter is the ragtag followers of Lauren settling down on some remote land, and it not only feels a little cultish, but the characters even acknowledge how their future is just as bleak as it was before they lost everything. I wouldn’t even consider them followers of Earthseed, as many of them said their own form of prayer for the dead they lost along the way instead of one unifying mantra. Questions raised about why continuing to live and spread life in such an abhorrent world don’t feel like they were fully answered by the end, and the sheer amount of violence depicted throughout the book feels pretty distasteful as a result (and I say that as a fan of James Ellroy). Maybe the sequel provides that conclusion I’m looking for, but there was also a third sequel that was to be written that unfortunately died with Octavia Butler, so I’m a bit hesitant to continue to look at this pessimistic world when I already live in one that’s bad enough.