Parable of the Sower
Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower is both rough and beautiful. It dredged up a lot of thoughts and feelings and had me balanced precariously between despair and hope for the entire story before finally weighing the scales in favor of hope at the very end.
Butler creates a dystopian society in the not-to-distant future. And really, the dystopia isn't too far removed from the current state of things in the US, which made it hit all that much harder. he gap between the rich and poor has become even wider and the middle class, such as it is, is only a step above poverty.
Lauren's family owns their own house and they live in a gated community. Between her father's job as a college professor, role as the community's minister, and more than a little gardening and gathering, her life seems fairly stable. But there's never an excess of food or money. There's a constant danger of drug-addicted arsonists or desperate homeless people getting over the wall and destroying everything they have. When it inevitably happens, Lauren finds herself on the road, hoping for a better life in the North.
The story is comprised of her journal entries over the course of four years in the mid-2020s. Alongside society's slide into ruin and poverty, and against a backdrop of rising seas and droughts, Lauren begins to develop her own religion. One in which God is not there to love and protect or smite and punish, but is simply there. Her mantra, that God is Change, becomes the backbone for her new religion and it takes most of the book for that concept to really sink in. Her coming of age and strengthening belief in her own concept of God give her the strength to keep trying to make a better world.
Like I said, the book is really rough. Any number of terrible things happen, and they keep happening so often that you nearly become desensitized to it. But through it all is the thread of Lauren's hope. She's determined to not only survive but to create something worth living for. It predates both Atwood's MaddAddam and Mandel's Station Eleven, but it has the strongest elements of both. The book is a roller coaster ride of emotions, but I came through the end of it more secure in my own belief that humanity will be okay.
Butler creates a dystopian society in the not-to-distant future. And really, the dystopia isn't too far removed from the current state of things in the US, which made it hit all that much harder. he gap between the rich and poor has become even wider and the middle class, such as it is, is only a step above poverty.
Lauren's family owns their own house and they live in a gated community. Between her father's job as a college professor, role as the community's minister, and more than a little gardening and gathering, her life seems fairly stable. But there's never an excess of food or money. There's a constant danger of drug-addicted arsonists or desperate homeless people getting over the wall and destroying everything they have. When it inevitably happens, Lauren finds herself on the road, hoping for a better life in the North.
The story is comprised of her journal entries over the course of four years in the mid-2020s. Alongside society's slide into ruin and poverty, and against a backdrop of rising seas and droughts, Lauren begins to develop her own religion. One in which God is not there to love and protect or smite and punish, but is simply there. Her mantra, that God is Change, becomes the backbone for her new religion and it takes most of the book for that concept to really sink in. Her coming of age and strengthening belief in her own concept of God give her the strength to keep trying to make a better world.
Like I said, the book is really rough. Any number of terrible things happen, and they keep happening so often that you nearly become desensitized to it. But through it all is the thread of Lauren's hope. She's determined to not only survive but to create something worth living for. It predates both Atwood's MaddAddam and Mandel's Station Eleven, but it has the strongest elements of both. The book is a roller coaster ride of emotions, but I came through the end of it more secure in my own belief that humanity will be okay.
Comments
Post a Comment