Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Published: 1993 by Four Walls Eight Windows
I've said it before, I love books that change the way I see the world. Some books are like putting on a permanent set of glasses - the way you perceive the world is forever changed.
"Parable of the Sower" and "Parable of the Talents" changed more than my perception and way of thinking. They changed me. The way I speak, the way I shop, the way I engage with friends and family, even parts of my lifestyle have changed as a result of reading this book. I |
| author Octavia E. Butler |
have too much to say about this author and this series to lay it all out here and now. Much of it I'm still processing.
This morning I cried. I curled into a ball and wept from fear of the future. My husband is at work for the first time in a month. Our savings are down to the nub after buying our home. He can't afford to take any time off, but Christmas is coming and they are laying people off for the holiday. Now he is wondering how he'll pay the bills when we are already in the whole up to our ears. I'm here looking for another job myself, looking for hope but finding only a new crop of rejections. I've cast out so many applications and received so very many rejections that my soul is bleeding from the shame. It's almost Christmas and the baby only has one present under the tree. We may have to take her out of daycare, but I needed today to fold in on myself and weep.
A calm came over me. I was exhausted and staring at nothing when a thought bubbled up from my swampy misery. I thought about all of the applications I've put out there - all the seeds I've sown. Some have landed on hard, dry earth; others have landed on stone. But others are still out there still floating on an uncertain breeze, and others are waiting to be spread. A small ray of hope crept into my misery.
I thought back to this book, and where I was when I read it two years ago. Back then we lived in a house that was falling in on itself; an unhoused man sometimes slept in his car next to our yard; an odd neighbor insisted on cutting our grass and learning our names. Strange people day and night wondering the streets around our home. I had just learned that I was pregnant. We'd both been laid off. We didn't know how we'd survive then. But we did. We survived and moved on to something better. In that spark of hope I'd found it was possible to stretch what we had to move on and upward.
We bought a house in a quiet neighborhood. Now this the first year of keeping it. We survived the slums. We will survive the suburbs. We just have to keep spreading our seeds.
I smiled and whispered: "God is change."
It is with this feeling of hope, and the desire to spread that feeling to others, that I write this meditation down. I want to make a space to discuss what I've learned from the experience of walking the world with Lauren Olamina.
This is a message to my present self, and to my future self, that I've been scared before, and I will be again, but I've gotten through it wiser than before.
Lessons I learned from Parable of the Sower.
Lesson 1: Don't waist time dwelling on the past. The present is the only time we have to prepare for the future.
Our protagonist Lauren Olamina is fifteen years old when our journey with her begins. Like most of Octavia's characters, she is a strong willed black woman with a very strong since of self. She knows that her little community with it's wall and it's harmony will not last much longer. She is scared of what will happen when the wall gets breeched, as she knows it will. But no one wants to listen to her. No one wants to imagine that the world around them has gotten that bad, or that there wall won't protect them. Most of all, no one wants to listen to a young girl warn them about danger. She should have boys, and school, on her mind - not doomsday prepping. Lauren seems to be the only one who realizes that doom doesn't happen in a day, its a long slow deterioration that started long ago, and continues all around them.
Lauren does not dismiss her own instincts. Her fears, from her point of view, are reasonable and logical. But she doesn't let that fear paralyze her. Instead she uses her fear to prepare for all possible futures while she can.
She insists on learning how to use a gun, and encourages even the weakest willed females in her community to do the same. She learns from books what plants are medicinal or safe to eat. She learns how to read people, and how to hide her weaknesses. She stashes several bug-out-bags around the community. She collects maps, and even sets her mind to leaving before the wall comes down so that she has an idea of which way she will walk when she leaves.
When the wall comes down she is the only one who is prepared for it. She looses everything and almost every one in one night. Only two members of her old community survive, Henry and Zarah, and she barely knows them. The only things she regrets about her personal preparations was that they never setup an emergency meeting spot. As a result her brother Marcus, who also survives the fire, goes on to live a terrible life on his own. She won't meet up with him until Talents series, were he comes her worst possible foe.
Lesson 2: God is change - Everything changes.
"All that you touch you Change. All that you Change, changes you. The only lasting truth is Change. God is Change."
This is science. Don't sit pretty and comfortable in the belief that being a good person will protect you from harm in this world. No one is safe from change, but you can prepare for it if you don't get complacent.
To be fair, I already had my own ideas about God being a force of nature, an element, or uncaring movement of energy that can be pulled and manipulated by intention of willfulness. Think bad things, bad things happen. Think good things, good things happen - that sort of thing.
The sermons in this book have really touched me. I'm one of those looking for a new understanding in this world beyond the white Christian hate spirit that I was raised to believe in. God being an uncaring mass of energy is more appealing to me than It being a conscious being that picks and chooses who It will help and when.
That being said I still find comfort in prayer. I still find warmth in the memory of my parents and grandparents who were all God fearing people. I still pray and I intend to teach my daughter to, as well. I'm complicated.
Lesson 3: People need people
I am a proud introvert. The pandemic started off as a smug blessing for me. I didn't have to go to work! I could just stay home, collect unemployment, and not have to jump through social hoops for anyone.
Then I learned that I was pregnant. Travel was restricted so my parents were hesitant to come see me for fear of making me sick, or being trapped out their city. My husband couldn't come in to any of my doctor appointments, my mother couldn't be there for the birth of my baby. I had no sitters, no close family nearby to lend me a hand, and all of my best friends were sick, or suffering from their own Covid horror stories. Didn't matter, I couldn't go anywhere anyway. My daughter has been my constant companion for two years now. I am a mother in need of a village, but I'd spent years distancing myself from everyone.
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| art by Justin Swindall; owned by PS musical |
As Lauren moves through the world she learns how important having people around her is. She starts off thinking about how she will leave her community and forge a life on her own. After loosing her family though she laments not having them around her. She learns better ways of talking to people, of persuading people to follow her. She learns that having the people makes you vulnerable, but the right kind of people, well trained and working together, keeps you safe.
Lauren builds a community around wonderers that see her strengths and lend her theirs. She teaches, and is taught. She listens and is listened to. By the end of "The Sower" her dream of forming a community around Earthseed has blossomed into Acorn. There are families that commune with her, and children learning how to read. She's found love and is recreating a community like the one she'd lost but stronger and healthier because they are working together as one large family.
Lesson 4: You have more than you realize.
In the meditation of present mindfulness, in your state of here and now thinking, keep stock of all of your resources. What you have right now may already be a key resource to your survival. Pour energy into the useful skills, and people, in your life. Let the useless atrophy and fall away.
In "The Sower" and "The Talents" the ability to read is a valuable resource save her brother's lives. The ability to speak well and persuade others is a kill that Lauren uses to grow her community, she's also an impressive writer - almost everyone who reads "Earthseed: The Book of the Living" fall under her spell.
Are you a good shot, or fleet-footed runner is? Do you know how to take care of babies or talk to children? Can you find or grow food, or fix machines? These are all valuable talents that our current society down plays as unskilled labor. But they are incredible useful attributes. You are more of an asset than you realize. And if you don't have any basic survival skills do you have the ability to listen, and learn? Being a good student may someday save your life!
I could go on. Parable of the Talents has lessons about choosing good leaders to follow, and good ways to be a leader. But I think this is enough for now.
Come back for more discussion on Mrs. Octavia E. Butler. I intend to write two more essays soon: one on the common tropes I've learned to look for her work. The other will be a complimentary essay between the Parable Series and Dune! Join me.
Please, share below what lessons you learned from Parable series.
What do you think of my take away?
Until next time, I'll see you on the next page!
Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi
