In the slides, I try to suggest that Butler’s book has, at the end of the day, profoundly utopian urges, the proposition that alternatives to late capitalism and its many problems might exist. What do you think? Do you see anything hopeful in the book? If so, what? Is it possible to feel any drive toward something better after all of the brutality?
6 thoughts on “Parable (second half)–Group 1”
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I, like the previous posters, feel that the book ends on a hopeful note. Despite all the violence and destruction throughout the story, the end makes it clear that community will prevail and everything will eventually be alright. While the old world is destroyed, a new one is being built. Lauren is the brightest beacon in this hopeful future, with her assertion that God is Change and her understanding that looking to the past does no good and they must instead look forward. In this book, Lauren is Jesus and her new religion acts as the seeds she sows. It seems that those who follow her will be saved from the wretched earth, meanwhile there may be a more grim future for those who reject her radical religious ideas. It is the very fact that the book is filled with so many horrors that the hopeful ending is so bright and clear. It’s as if Butler is saying that no matter how dark the world gets and no matter how trapped one feels, there is always a way out; a path forward.
Terrifyingly, this book felt uncomfortably close to the world we live in characterized by economic inequality, racial discrimination, and unstable climate catastrophes. The government hasn’t fully collapsed and money works, but rulers have no care for people. Funny how the book would be less scary if it was apocalyptic.
The book does end with a bit of hope that inspires me to focus on building my own community and imagining a better world in the future. If I don’t have hope for Lauren and her Earthseed, what hope do I have for our world? At the end of the story when they arrive on Bankoles property, the initial discovery of his murdered sister and family is devastating, but the group looks inward for support. They believe they can start a new way to live rooted in compassion and kindness rather than fear and violence. The violence is not over, but the funeral for dead loved ones spawns a moment of hope for the future. Additionally, I find the diversity of the group inspiring. This book is the first one to even mention race, and throughout the novels I saw bits of white supremacy in the world and distrust of other races. This new community is diverse in every way including age, race, and past living conditions from escaped slaves to a once prestigious doctor, and forces us to aspire for a fully integrated world. Every character has been turned equal by the harsh living conditions and commits to each other. I would not call the book a full communist text, but it’s definitely not capitalist. Furthermore, I find Lauren, Emery, and Grayson’s condition of hyperempathy hopeful. Obviously it’s a disease and difficult to live with, but I think Butler gives us a leader who literally feels the suffering of her people. Our President and politicians claim they side with average people and understand their struggles, but they can’t understand fully. If Lauren turns her back on the people around, it physically hurts. A world full of hyperempathy would lead to more pain at first, but it would force everyone into compassion and kindness.
I definitely have to agree that the book ended on a positive note, and left me feeling hopeful about the future of Lauren and the rest of the Earthseed community. Staying truthful to the main principle of her new religion, that God is Change, Lauren does not let the destruction of Robledo and her old life stop her and instead pushes forward while saving and inspiring others. Her leadership is what draws people to her and her religion, and she is the reason why I believe that the new community can succeed. Lauren shows through her actions that peaceful and prosperous coexistence is possible in the landscape of increasing violence and brutality around them.
Therefore, while the end of the novel leaves the future of the group uncertain, I’m sure that Lauren will be successful in leading her community because only she seems to understand that progress is necessary to adapt to the constantly changing environment. Even if the new community is not yet a utopia, the series of events towards the end of the novel make me believe that they will continue to strive towards their perfect society under Lauren’s guidance.
The most hopeful aspect of Parable of the Sower to me is Lauren’s refrain that “God is change.” Although the world and society that Lauren exists in is brutal, violent, and often terrifying, this is the truth that she lives by. This is what we, as the readers, are reassured of. Even if the world is brutal and difficult, it is not permanent. Change must come eventually. Clara brings up a great point that the book does have a large focus on community organizing and banding together to support one another. It is what Lauren’s father strongly believes in and the only source of stability they seem to have. It is clear that police do nothing but that when the community bands together they can effectively protect one another. I also think that there is a lot of hope present in Lauren’s focus on being self-sufficient. She actively wants to learn how to live off the land itself and how to forage and be a craftsman. She knows deep down that the land itself will always provide for her and it is her job to learn how to work with it. This is an extremely hopeful idea to me. There certainly is a search for and movement towards a greater life that enevelops all of these things as Lauren strives to create a community. Hope can only truly exist in dark places, in my opinion. I think that this book is very emblematic of that.
The world in which Lauren and the rest of the Earthseed inhabit is riddled with starvation, violence, and death- all very dystopian characteristics. As Professor Newbury pointed out, there are utopian characteristics that arise, especially when imagining the thriving Earthseed community that might come into existence on Bankole’s piece of land. The teachings of Lauren would guide the community, and I would imagine that their slogan would be God is change. With this motto leading them, I can’t imagine them being anything but successful in building a community. The envisioned Earthseed community would preferably sustain itself outside the capitalist system that caused the dystopian world. Still, they would undoubtedly have to buy, barter, and trade with the surrounding community occasionally. Lauren, as compared to her father and Bankole, is a visionary. She knows that the world will never return to what it was back in the 1970s, which is why she may successfully lead the Earthseed community. Every older character in the book had a yearning to return to the “good ole days”, which disallowed them to envision a different future. Lauren does not have that problem. She envisions a community that is like nothing else; a utopia of sorts. I believe this book is very hopeful. Even though the old world is crumbling, a new world is being built.
I see a lot of hopeful things in Butler’s book! I think first and foremost is the idea that community prevails through everything. In finding a struggle, and a hatred for the world around them, Lauren and her companions/friends have a common ground in which to survive together. That is furthered by the extension of Lauren’s personal philosophy, which drives the group to survival and continuation of the community they established. Lauren’s whole goal for Earthseed philosophy is to “take root amongst the stars.” I think that idea surrounds her community with a generally utopian feel– they haven’t reached utopia by my current standards perhaps, but they are striving for it.
In the end, the group has their own little version of utopia anyway. A community that relies on each other and enjoys each other despite horrific events in the world around them sounds pretty utopian to me. After all, a utopia is a world that exists with perfection for its members within their society. What is stopping a utopia from existing within a dystopia? I believe it can, and Lauren and her companions are well on their way/may already be living their own utopia as Earthseed and as humans (a society within a society). Another portion of utopia is living without divisions. Each member of Lauren’s group is unique and diverse, and coexists (and mingles) despite racial and class boundaries in the world around them. That coexistence in itself is a very hopeful idea within a very grim society, and clues readers in to the knowledge that harmony is achievable. Change can, and will come.