Butler published Parable in 1993, but in 2017, one critic wrote of the book and its sequel that “in the ongoing contest over which dystopian classic is most applicable to our time, Octavia Butler’s ‘Parable’ books may be unmatched.” Where, if anywhere, do you see the present day in Butler’s book? Does the novel seem particularly applicable or insightful about the present in ways that other dystopian texts don’t?
8 thoughts on “Parable of the Sower”
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There are many similarities between the world created in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and the present day. One of these similarities between this novel and the present is inequality. Although in most dystopian texts inequality is almost always there in some form, the world Butler creates in Parable of the Sower allows for striking comparisons to be made in terms of inequality. It is quite clear early on that the world in Parable of the Sower far more unequal than our society today. While crime (especially arson) is rampant, most people cannot call the police or fire department due to their cost. Meanwhile in our society, people are not able to have important surgeries due to the cost associated with the surgeries/inadequate access to healthcare. On a similar vein in countries where children have to have uniforms for school, many families do not send their children to school because of this cost. Education and healthcare are important to our world, yet as inequality increases, these services are only available to the rich similar to the inability for most people in Lauren’s world to call the police. In connection to inequality, we see similarities in the role of corporations in this novel and present day. In similar respects to works we have previously looked at, such as Ex Machina and Blade Runner, corporations in Lauren’s world have become more powerful than the government. They additionally abuse their power, something our current society is afraid of, especially in regard to Big Tech. Inequality in Lauren’s distopian world brought a back the existence of slavery, in this case not to robots or AI, but to people, something less common to the science fiction genre.
Octavia Butler in her “Parable of the Sower” effectively captures the present day in her vision of a dystopian future. Although exaggerated, the novel tells of a world where walls define communities and destitution runs rampant in the streets. It is impossible to not see parallels between this dystopian condition and the present day. Today, on the state level, nations fear their security and resort to isolationist tactics such as closing off borders to refugees. The world’s bottom billion are left defenseless like those in the novel who live on the streets outside the walled off communities. Basic rights such as water are highly commodified in the novel, a phenomenon that is not uncommon in developing countries and authoritarian regimes in which the government controls their people by withholding vital resources. On the individual level within the state, the wealth gap in the novel is highly reflective of the current dominance of billionaires in the world. While states define themselves through divisions and walls against other countries, they also inhibit monetary walls that separate the wealthy, who enjoy a surplus of resources, from the rest of the population who fight for basic rights of medical care, clean water, and freedom. The impending doom of climate change, billionaire domination, and strong state borders promise a future of dwindling resources, exploitation of the majority by the few and isolation that, if the world doesn’t take action against now, will spell out a future mirroring Butler’s dystopia.
“The Parable of the Sower” is perhaps the most misanthropic dystopian narrative presented in the course so far. The people in the 2020s can be divided into three general categories: the people of Robledo (and later “Earthseed”), the street poor, and the government. The people of Robledo, despite displaying a plethora of character flaws and morally questionable behaviors, are relatively “good” people. The gated community in which they live is governed by a group-oriented sense of self-preservation. They do what they can, together, to survive. The street poor are dangerous, drug-crazy thieves and murderers with virtually no moral compass or boundaries. Government-affiliated groups, like the police and firemen, are useless in protecting the innocent, and are only interested in their pay. The government itself has no presence in California, and elections are mere formalities, incurring no manifestations of change.
So if we’re to consider “Parable of the Sower” as a narrative of the present day, we must consider the minority that Lauren and her followers represent. If they are good, which is not easy to claim – we maintain suspicions about many of the characters up until the very last page – they are such a small fraction of the overall population so as to be almost obsolete. We therefor look at the two other aforementioned groups for Butler’s message – humans are evil. Pyros burn and pillage, street poor steal and kill, while those employed to protect the innocent do nothing but contribute to their predicament. We have altogether a bleak society. Lauren and the rest of Earthseed MAY have found refuge, but have no plans to save their world. Human nature has created this economic and environmental disaster, and morally-commendable people can only hope to survive it.
Parable of the Sower reflects many notions of present day society through the elements of her text being mundane versions of Science Fiction. While fending off the poor and homeless with weapons does not seem like something looming over our society’s heads, the issues of climate change, wealth inequality, and political instability seem to be woven deeply into our current society. The familiarity with being “warned” about what environmental degradation may mean for our current society is a dystopia acknowledged by society, yet largely ignored or put to the side. For example, the way in which Butler chooses to portray fresh water as an item of incredible value in the novel can be compared to talks revolving around the future of our planet’s fresh water.
Comparing Butler’s use of wealth inequality to that of our current society shows abstract parallels as well. By placing the longevity of people’s future on their economic or elitist standing in the book, Butler, knowingly or not, has provided a discourse to discuss present day issues of wealth inequality in our country. While at this very moment wealth inequality does not literally dictate life or death for people on either end of an economic status, one can sensibly relate how the current climate in American society can dictate a figurative life or death scenario depending on one’s economic status when considering things reliant on economic standing such as access to quality housing, employment, and education.
The novel depicts a setting where Lauren grows up in Robledo, California in 2024. Butler presents a very possible and realistic dystopian world that is ironically somewhat similar to present day California’s impact from climate change. Lauren says that, “people have changed the climate of the world.” Drawing on parallels with the real world, Butler may be alluding to the increased carbon emissions released into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution. The looming threat of climate change, in recent years, has gained attention due to numerous events (i.e. wildfires and droughts) playing out in California that are caused by increased temperature and rising sea levels. Butler has acknowledged an inevitable societal problem and she portrays it in a way that differs from other dystopian representations of the apocalypse. The details of the story are mundane and close to real life problems on Earth, rather than some strange foreign planet light years away. Butler purposely does not include technological inventions in her novel. Instead, she addresses this dystopian outcome as one that draws on a pattern of human inaction, or our inability to deal with a large scale problem.
From the onset of the Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, there’s a clear emphasis placed on the role of the wall that protects Lauren’s family and community. Beyond an obvious connection to the border wall that our current President is attempting to build, the gated community portrays a sense of polarity to life in Lauren’s world that is startlingly similar to polarity that is increasingly present in the modern day. A central theme of the novel appears to be economic inequality and the wall serves as a physical manifestation of the divide between the “haves” of society and the “have nots” of society. While today, communities do not employ physical barriers to divide groups along socioeconomic boundaries, skyrocketing costs of living, and privatized education may lead to gentrification in communities, and more noticeably in cities that essentially has the same impact as erecting a physical wall.
A key focal point during the 2016 presidential election was how candidates aligned themselves with voting blocks that saw themselves as being outside of the “top 5%” of the nations wage-earners. The run up to the 2020 election has been no different as candidates have attempted to portray themselves more and more as being “outside of the elite”. This urge to distance themselves from the “elite” demonstrates a clear understanding that the majority of Americans recognize growing inequality and are ready for a change. Whether this came in the form of Donald Trump’s “drain the swamp” slogan or through recently renewed calls from Democratic candidates to “break up big tech”. The bipartisan consensus seems to be that this gap has gotten so large that it’s now impossible to have access to resources and education across classes that allow for social mobility. Butler paints a picture of what such intense economic stratification could look like , although parallels to modern American class stratification are impossible to ignore.
Parable of the Sower is the first dystopian text I’ve read where the dystopia is created as a direct result of the type of climate change that we are currently experiencing (Interstellar is probably the only other example in same realm, but Interstellar doesn’t focus on the climate dystopia). Butler’s vision of climate change causing the collapse of our society is particularly prescient for a book from the early 90’s. Like Tori said, part of this is that Parable is set only 5 years from now, and it feels like our society is trending towards a version of it, where corporations are becoming more powerful than governments and inequality is rising across the globe. The lack of faith in government is a part of the dystopia Butler creates, and an issue that is also a problem today, far more so than it was in 1993. The fact that the United States government still exists, in a weakened state and abusive state, ties the dystopia to our world effectively. Although the results of the dystopia seem a bit exaggerated, it is built on issues in today’s world.
Echoing what Tori said, it also feels insightful in that the older people living in the dystopia seem to deny that they are living in the dystopia. They are constantly hoping that things will go back to the way they once were, and as a result are not well prepared for the ways in which life gets continuously worse for them. It reflects a generational divide seen today, where older generations grew up in a world of constant improvements, while younger generations grew up in a world of existential threats. One thing that I see today that Butler didn’t seem to anticipate is that, in the face of severe governance and economic problems, people would become more politically active rather than less.
From what we’ve read of “The Parable of the Sower” so far, it’s absolutely still very much applicable to the world in which we live in today. At the center of Lauren’s dystopian world (set during years shockingly close to our own moment) is human-driven climate disaster which has all but destroyed the physical world and the societies constructed upon it. In its wake is a complete unravelling of law and order, of systems of governance and human progress. The world the book creates sounds like the grim future we all are told are not far off.
Besides climate disaster and its potential to destroy civilization as we know it, I also see similarities in the way people respond to that. For example, there are countless examples in the book in which Lauren attempts to share her thoughts on how to actively combat their despotism, only to be shaken off by those who doubt her, or threatened by the complete panic her words can instill in some who aren’t ready to face the almost certain doom awaiting them. Much in the same way, our society is constantly having to defend against those who deny that climate change is accelerating our own unravelling. Similar to The Parable of the Sower, I think a lot of this is rooted in fear, or simply an unwillingness to fight against what doesn’t feel like an immediate threat. Humans seem unable to be stirred into action against distant threats which may or may not come. It’s much easier to deny or ignore it.