Parable of the Sower
Author: Octavia E. Butler
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing; Reprint edition
American release date: April 30, 2019
Format/Genre/Length: Paperback/Dystopian Fiction/368 pages
Overall Personal
Rating: ★★★★★
Lauren Olamina is fifteen years
old, the daughter of a Baptist preacher. She lives a sheltered life with her
family inside a gated community in the Los Angeles area. But sheltered is a
relative term as the world has become something virtually unrecognizable from
what it once was. Drastic global climate change and a series of economic crises
have proven to be too much for mankind to handle and society has disintegrated
into lawless chaos. Mere survival is a struggle and the luxuries of yesterday
but a dream. What is left of any government is of no help. If you want police
protection, you have to pay for it, and there is no guarantee you’ll receive
it. Building on fire? The fire department will charge you for the water to put
it out.
Lauren lives with her father and
stepmother and three brothers. Her birth mother was addicted during her
pregnancy to a drug that caused Lauren to become hyperempathetic – she can feel
other’s pain, and that is not a good thing. Even living in a gated community
isn’t a perfect solution. There are problems within and problems without.
Junkies and others break in to rob and harm people. A new drug, called Pyro,
causes those who take it to enjoy setting fires, so that is what they do.
People dream of leaving the state
and heading north – to Oregon, Washington, or even Canada. But there is no
guarantee that safety lies up North, or that other states will allow people
inside their territory.
Lauren has listened to what her
father preaches all of her life, but at fifteen, she no longer believes in his
religion. She has her own ideas about how things work, and she begins to write
them down. She calls it Earthseed, and at the core is her belief that God is
change. She keeps her writings secret, and she also prepares a pack of
necessities, in case she has to leave in a hurry. Her forethought proves to be propitious when
an unexpected calamity drives her away from her home, heading who knows where.
Now it’s a question of how she can survive, and who can she trust?
This is my first time reading
Octavia Butler, but it won’t be my last. She is an excellent writer who draws
you into her world so that you quickly become immersed. The dystopian world she describes is eerily
similar to the world we now live in, although written in 1993. But the book
itself begins in 2024, which is unnerving at times, and continues up through
2027. I have to warn you that it is a bleak story in many ways, where the rich
have everything and the poor are fighting for scraps, with little protection or
guidance. It’s almost as if she could read the future.
I like the basic concept of
Earthseed, but I would make one change in her philosophy. I would not refer to
any God, for that term is really outdated and archaic, but I think Life works
instead. Life is change. And that we know to be true. If this is our future, it
is bleak indeed. Change needs to happen, and quickly. There is a second book in
the series, which I intend to read. I’m hoping for a happy, or at least a
happier ending. This book is well worth reading. And hopefully someone will
come away from it with ideas on how to keep it from happening.
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