What is one important distinction that Butler draws between her father’s understanding of the world and Lauren’s? Where is the specific point in the novel’s first half that made that distinction clear to you?
6 thoughts on “Parable (first half)–Group 1”
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While Reverend Olamina works hard to create a sense of normalcy and safety to the dangerous and crazy world of Earth, Lauren doesn’t seem to see the point in this useless yearning for the past. Both Lauren and her dad share the feeling that the nation’s current state is bleak, but her dad has hope that things will go back to normal and Lauren only sees them getting bleaker. The section in Chapter 3 where space travel is discussed points to this stark difference in the father-daughter duo’s understandings of the world. While discussing an astronaut who died in space and the Secretaries of Astronautics, Lauren’s father brings up the Presidential candidate Christopher Donner and his promise to close the space program if elected. Reverend Olamina agrees with this policy and believes that space exploration is a useless waste of money. Meanwhile, Lauren sees space travel and settling on other planets as an important part of the future.This is one of many examples where Lauren’s sights are set on the future meanwhile her father’s are stuck in the past. Perhaps this is because her father sees the world around them differently than Lauren because he was alive before everything was so dangerous. He remembers what the world was and what he hopes it could be again. Clearly Reverend Olamina doesn’t want to give up on this hope, meanwhile Lauren has no hope for the world that’s left and is intelligently looking for new solutions.
Butler explains a distinct generational difference between Lauren and her father on their understanding of the abysmal world. After describing how medieval people created a new world after the bubonic plague depopulated Europe, Lauren says, “Things are changing now, too. Our adults haven’t been wiped out by a plague so they’re still anchored in the past, waiting for the good old days to come back…Things are always changing.” At this point I realized the inevitability of Lauren leaving her community. She loves her family, but she sees no future there. Her dad wants to keep the community safe and protected from intruders but nothing else. Lauren wants to protect her community for the time being, but at one point she says if she ends up living there forever and marrying Curtis, she would probably kill herself.
After she explains to her friend Joanne how she’s learning to live off the land and escape the walled city, Jo freaks out and Lauren’s father tells her not to scare others because it inhibits their ability to learn. He explains the goal is to “teach them… without making them look down.” Her father goes on to explain how the adults have been balancing on the edge of the abyss for years while Lauren just noticed it, and he urges her to keep balancing. This passage provides a stark contrast between Lauren and her father because although they both agree on the current issue of survival in their world, they have entirely different methods for addressing it. Lauren wants to escape and look for a better life in Canada, Alaska, or even another planet. Her father wants to hold on the illusion of a nice suburban community. This passage in the story provides two bleak choices for existence: face the harsh outside world, or live in an illusion that isn’t even a good one.
There are some marked differences between Lauren and her father’s way of approaching their world. Early in the book it becomes clear that Lauren has a different way of seeing her religion and her God and is extremely hesitant to share that with her father. She intentionally keeps it to herself as she is unsure how he is going to react. They also differ in the way they see politics. Lauren feels as though her world is completely lost and mentions that she likes the idea of space travel since life on Earth feels so doomed. Meanwhile, her father thinks that space travel is a waste of government money that could be spent on improving American citizen’s lives. They also have a small fight in Chapter 6 where it becomes clear that they do have a lot of similarities in the way they see their world. Deep down, they both know that their society is spiraling and crumbling beneath them. Lauren’s father, however, is a lot more hopeful than Lauren is and a little more realistic. He knows that the best course of action is for their community to band together to protect itself and prepare itself against the outside world. Lauren wants to become independent and self sufficient and venture outside living off the land. He knows that this is kind of a pipe dream and not really a feasible way to live but she struggles to reconcile with that truth. It is really clear that Lauren blames her father’s generation for allowing things to get this bad and for not instituting more extreme change sooner. She believes him and other people his age to be a little slow on the uptake that things are really becoming horrible. He might think this way too, but also understands and laments that there really is not a whole lot for him to do other than stand his ground as long as he can.
I think that one important distinction that Butler shows between Lauren and her father’s understanding of the world is that they perceive institutions differently and have differing levels of faith towards them. It is clear that the pain and suffering that has been normal and commonplace throughout Lauren’s life has made her cynical to the effectiveness of institutions such as the state or the church, and this cynicism is no doubt influenced by the hyperemphathy that amplifies her perception of the pain of others around her. Her father, on the other hand, grew up in an era where institutions played an important and major role in the running of society. Therefore, even though he witnessed the degradation of those institutions first hand, he still seems to subconsciously hold on to the belief that the institutions could succeed in helping the people.
One of the specific points in the novel that made this distinction clear was the difference in the faiths of Lauren and her father in God and in the church, and how their perception of the baptism ceremony and its significance differed. Also, another specific point that highlighted this distinction was that Lauren had little faith in politicians and in their political institutions, and while her father seemed to share some of her cynicisms about politicians and corruption, he nevertheless made sure to vote in elections. This implies that maybe he still wants to believe in the process.
A really interesting distinction between Reverend Olamina and his daughter Lauren that Butler draws in “Parable of the Sower” is how they see pain/suffering in the world around them. I found the distinction most specific and glaring in chapter 4, when the two of them (amongst other people) go out to the “hills” for target practice. Lauren mentions in the narration that she thinks her father wants to see how far her hyperempathy will go, and if it will be triggered intensely when she shoots and kills animals. Lauren herself is uncomfortable with seeing any amount of pain, and he surely knows that, so to me it’s striking that her own father would wish to see his daughter’s reaction to such an intense form of pain. The difference between how they view pain and suffering comes up again at the very end of the chapter, when Lauren’s father shoots one of the stray dogs following them. Though he shoots the animal three times and it is clearly dying, he leaves it to die a slow and painful death. Lauren is able to feel the dog’s pain and acts to put it out of its suffering by shooting it one more time. Reverend Olamina knows that Lauren can feel the animal’s suffering, so by not fully killing it he puts her at risk seemingly without really caring. Lauren’s hate for suffering is noble in theory, but when it comes down to it she cares about others’ suffering because it causes her physical pain– however, it still causes her to act in ways that benefit others. Her father does not seem to care about the suffering of other beings in this chapter, including his own daughter. They both have very shallow ideas of pain, but in very different ways.
In Octavia E. Butler’s novel Parable of the Sower, the narrator, Lauren, and her father both have very bearish outlooks on the nation’s current state and what the future might hold if nothing changes. During their conversation on pages 72 through 77, it is clear that Lauren’s father understands Lauren’s rather bleak and cynical outlook on their prospects, but the two differ in how they should prepare for the bleak future. Lauren’s father, who is the de facto leader of their gated community, had subtly been organizing the community by “teaching, not scaring” the community. By this, he means to teach them survival techniques rather than telling them about the political future that awaits them. By contrast, Lauren believes that they should say to the community the apocalyptic reality that the future might hold. This difference in opinion exemplifies an important yet obvious distinction between the two characters: their age. Age is what makes their similar outlooks yield different actions. Lauren, being young and rebellious, believes that a drastic action should be done. Her father understands the world around them differently as he was alive when the world wasn’t so chaotic and violent. Subconsciously, he doesn’t want to give up on the dream that their world will return to the way it once was, while Lauren sees that the world has changed and will continue to change and will never return to the way it used to be.