Gone With the Wind by Margret Mitchell: A Beautiful Romance & A Beastly Fiction

Intro

April 2024, I’d just finished working on my tour guide for the city of Atlanta ( Live Like a Local: Atlanta, Georgia USA).  During my research for the tour guide I learned so much about the history of Atlanta: her rise from a train depot into a prosperous city, her fall during the siege of Sherman and all the landmarks that left behind, and eventual rise again giving the city it’s iconic motto “Rise Up!” And its symbol of the phenix flying from fire. 

And of course, I came across The Margret Mitchell House, a historical landmark in Midtown where the journalist Margret Mitchell lived, cooped up recovering from a leg injury in 1926 and began, out of boredom, to pen her one and only novel.  

After the book was published in 1936 it captured the hearts, minds, and imaginations of millions around the world and Margret found herself to be a legend.     

For the tour guide I also researched the history of Stone Mountain and its connection to the Daughters of the Confederacy. I found myself going down a worm about Atlanta, the Klan, and found myself back at Margrett Mitchel’s novel.  It has been speculated by some that either the Daughters of the Confederacy were inspired by Gone with the Wind, or the other way around.  I was curious as what possible connection this famous romance novel could have with the equally famous group, and the “Lost Cause” rhetoric of the Civil War.  

 I downloaded the fifty hour novel using Audible. I really enjoyed walking the streets of my hometown with Scarlet O’Hera and seeing my city through her green cat-like eyes while I ran around the same locations running errands and doing chores.  Linda Stephens does a masterful job narrating this bold, brazen and beautiful story.  Her character range and perfect, and she represents Scarlet's growth, maturity, and downfall with amazing presence, yet she never got in the way of the story.   If you are intimidated by large books, Audible is definately a great alternative in this case.

However, if you have the time and interest and prefer a lofty page turner that operates without batteries please considering using my Amazon link to purchase either the novel  or  the  movie .  It would really help me out.  

   

    What I liked

The History

Gone with the Wind is a beautifully written work of historical literary romance.  It paints a lovely picture of the Old South.  Southern Belle’s in beautiful dresses take walks among the magnolias, verandas, pines and oaks.   Where handsome Southern gentlemen ride well-bred horses.  Beautiful Southern women are courted by well-bred men.  The story is at times satirical and other times grandiose - it swells, and ebbs like symphony leaving you rooted to the spot at times, and furious at other times.  

As the plot kicks off every detail of the movement of the armies echoes the courses followed in my research of Atlanta’s 

Civil War history.  It was fascinating to hear the names of places I recognized in the novel and having a literary interpretation of the same facts and scenes I’d read about in researching the tour guide.  Kennesaw, Fayetteville, Jonesboro, Decatur, and Five Points are major locations mentioned multiple times in the novel – places I also happen to have history in but probably looked worlds different back then.  It was also amazing to have a real visuals of just why Atlanta architecture is so mixed with buildings both modern and historical.  The novel  also an explanations for the hundreds of dilapidated shacks that are dotted all over The South.      

What I Loved 

The Unreliable Narrator

Scarlett O’Hera/Hamilton/Kennedy/Butler is almost a perfect metaphor for the City of Atlanta.  She is born at the same year the city was named.  The story starts with Scarlet and Atlanta both as young sexy ladies with green hills and verdant trees, and lovely dresses, bonnets, and hats looking to get up in the world.  Scarlet as the luxury and privilege to be ignorant, spoiled, and selfish.  She ignores the strugglers of her mother, the plight of neighbors, and the unpleasant business of slavery.  To her the “darkies” singing their songs on the way home from the fields at night are part of the pleasant background or Tara, her home.   

She ignores the ugly things - as she should.  She’s a lady. It is within her character and the times, that no one should tell her about the causes leading up to the war.  She’s proudly uneducated.  She doesn’t want to read books or listen to war talk.  Her attitude towards everything to do with wars, state’s rights, and men’s talking is dismissive at best.  

Scarlett believes that it will not affect her.  Atlanta seems untroubled too.  They are both too pretty, too popular, and too protected to ever be hurt.  The nasty old North is too far away. No one believes that the Yankees will ever reach them.  So, Scarlett ignores the war until it’s literally happening right in front of her

Margret Mitchell used this unique perspective to describes the Civil War in such a way that prevents it from becoming too violent, too graphic, or too real.   Wealthy women did not pay attention to politics or the war.  Their jobs were to stay loyal and empty headed.  They were fiercely loyal to their men, their god,

Image borrowed from
 https://gwtwscrapbook.blogspot.com
/2011/05
/school-days-of-scarlett-ohara.html

and The Southern Culture in that order. These southern white women in Scarlet’s life didn’t believe in women’s suffrage or women’s rights.  They believed thinking too much or hard will cause them to develop a fever.  Their way of life, as fundamentalist Christians, self-sacrificing mothers, and weak-minded wives make them endearing allies to their strong protective husbands.  And they will do anything, anything at all, to spare their husbands and sons any shame or embarrassment.  

Thankfully this is not how Scarlett sees things.  She doesn’t care one lick about traditional feminine weakness except where it can used to get her what she wants.  Throughout the books she present-minded, determined, and doggedly pursues her own self-interests.  This makes her an intriguing and endearing character, even when what’s she’s willing to do comes off evil at times.  She’s different than the women she was raised with, and she doesn’t care.  

To her eventual detriment, she behaves as a man – she buys a business, she rides alone, she handles money and she doesn’t share with her husband.  She’s unladylike in every way except one.  As a wealth white southern woman, she doesn’t care about “the cause”, she doesn’t even know what it is.   Therefore “the cause” is barely mentioned in any detail.  Whenever someone tries to explain the war in any real way Scarlet loses interest and so the story moves on. 

In this way the reader is spared all the nasty politics of “the war” and “the cause” and “state’s rights”.  We are spared the dark side of plantation ownership because our guide is a pretty young female whose only job is to marry rich and make wealthy babies.

 The Romance

And what does Scarlet want?  A husband of course, but not just any husband.  The plot is driven by her incorrigible pursuit of the distinguished Ashley Wilkes, a man who is happily married to his cousin Melony Hamilton.  When Ashley goes off to fight in the Civil War, Scarlet finds her self living with and taking care of Melony.  It is this conflict, and the dogged pursuit of Rhett Butler to win Scarlet’s icy heart away from Ashley.  This drives the A plot.   The cat and mouse games

Image from the 1939 Film

between these four characters festers and flowers, booms and bursts as Atlanta is destroyed by war and built up again.  

At the end of the novel, Scarlet has ruined her whole life, burned every bridge she ever had and is left with children doesn’t want, a weak coward to take care of, and a husband that no longer loves her.  And she’s only 28 years old.  

But she is Atlanta.  So I’m sure she didn’t stay down for long.  

The Dangerous Part

 The book is so thorough in its depictions of southern culture, southern traditions, and southern hospitality.  In several places the writer describes the cast system of the slaves.  House Negroes are selected when they are young among the dark children who show apitude and willingness to learn a skill such as driving, cobbling, and tending to the animals.  All who are "not willing to work" as Scarlet puts it are put to the fields and made to earn their keep.   They are the lowest rung of the Negro class and house servants give him hell.  

 So, as I read Scarlet bemoaning her fear  of large, lazy former-fieldhands that in ACT 3 are lurking the woods, robbing homes and pestering white women, I caught myself, for the barest moment, feeling proud that at least I’m not descended from those "free-issue niggas" as Mami calls them.

And that right there is what makes this book, and others like it, so dangerous.  You’ve been through so much with Scarlet, seen so much through her eyes, heard her voice in your head so long that when she starts talking this racist non-since it’s easy, for some, to think she’s justified.  Why won’t these free-darkies work?  She can’t even hire them to work the lumber meal because they are useless without drivers and whips.

And to make it worse not Scarlet, nor anyone else, reasons that the darkies have less than nothing by way of education, home, or skills.  In Scarlet's veiw they had been given a chance to learn a trade, because on her plantation only the darkies that wouldn’t learn a skill quickly enough were turned into field hands.  And on Tara, Gerald O’Hara was always nice to them, never beat them even when it was good for them.  Gerald even bought the useless Prissy when Pork asked him to buy is wife so that she wouldn’t miss her daughter.  

Image owned by the Library of Congress

Speaking of Prissy, she ends up being the example of the useless ignorant slaves who are too cowardly and superstitious Negro that should never have been set free.   Never mind that Prissy is fourteen years old when she’s asked to help midwife in that famous scene.  And never mind that Prissy knows well that freedom comes with the Yankees.  But we never see her perspective.  Only Scarlet’s.  And to Scarlet, Prissy is useless.  Its at this pivotal moment in the story – when Scarlet slaps Prissy for admitting that doesn’t know how to birth a baby, that Scarlet finally mentions that Yankees want to free the slaves.  And in this mood she says go on and do it.  

 

Though this book features a lot of history it is not a history book.  This novel was written by white woman who grew up sitting on the knees of former Confederates and listening to stories about “when America was great” for them.  This is fictious novel is written in such a way that makes the dark, hatefulness of slavers pretty, palpable and easy to swallow.  And once you’ve swallowed it you may believe the re-write of history that this fictional novel is telling you – that blacks were happy and well taken care of until the Yankees showed up and told them what to think.  That the plantation owners were good people who took care of black children, and nursed black elderly when they were too old to work.  And that all the horror stories black Americans have been raised up hearing from our parents, and grandparents, were all propaganda and lies told to the newly freed blacks in order to get them to vote against their own interests during the reconstruction elections.   

Scarlet never blames the “darkies” for turning on the their owners.  She blames Yankee carpetbaggers, scallywags, crackers, and poor whites – ergo Democrats – for turning their blacks against their former masters.  Again, Scarlet herself had no idea what most of these former slaves were experiencing.  Or at least she’s not saying so.  

This is the same re-write of history that the Daughters of the Confederacy have used in our textbooks for decades.  I for one was taught that Sherman was a villain in school, and  that the Civil War was fought over “states rights” and not slavery.  Though I always knew to fill in the blank, “state’s rights to have slavery” thanks to my parents.  

I’ve grown up right alongside white peers who swore that slaves were treated well on plantations and that slavery would have ended on its own as soon as the cotton gin was invented.      This is the cause for the rift between southern blacks and southern whites that still has not healed.    And there are people to this day who will read Gone With the Wind for the romance and walk away feeling that their view of the Civil War and lazy blacks who won’t work is justified and accurate. 

  And if you can believe that these Yankees were telling black people that they were equal to white men, and giving them permission to marry white women; if you can believe that black men were pushing white women off of sidewalks, and grabbing them through kitchen windows … especially so soon after slavery ended… then you can believe that the rise of the Ku Klux Klan was necessary in order to put darkies, and “Nigga-loving/ cracker/poor whites back in their places, to uphold the status of the Old South, and protect the virtue of white women.  And I'm not sure why you're still here.  

The “N” Word

Now that I’ve read both books, I find it interesting how Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn” was up for discussion about the removal of the “N” from its pages, while there has been no discussion of editing it out of Gone with the Wind.  In both novels, I find its presence jarring but vital to the understanding to character, culture, and relationships – but in Gone with the Wind the word is whipped in far more harsh ways, than in Huckleberry.  Mark Twain’s novel discusses the unfairness of owning people, while Mitchell’s novel explains the situation from the point of view of planters and plantation owners.  While it doesn’t glorify slavery, her characters see no problem with it.  Even in the passive benign, innocent, anti-violent gentleman Ashley Wilks joins the Klan.  And our beloved Rhett shoots a black man for speaking unkindly to a white woman.  

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is set in Missouri during the 1830s or 1840s when Missouri was a slave state.  Everyone person refers to the blacks by the “n” word in various ways with different endings to denote children, women, and ages.  The words is as slippery as though  as mister or misses but it is always nasty, belittling, and serves to separate the slaves from any sort human respect.  The ugly word is even used by the children to refer to adults and never doesn’t sting.    So separated are the slaves from any empathy or respect that Huck is surprised to discover that Jim has run away from home at the same time he has because Huck has had no idea what Jim’s life is like even though they live in the same house.  Huck is disappointed to find that Jim is bad, and a law breaker just as he is, and Huck honestly thinks they are both going to hell.  This becomes an emotional conflict that he struggles with for most of the book. 

  Gone with the Wind is set in Georgia during the American Civil War (1861–1865) – twenty years after Hucklberry’s adventure.     We get more of how the world began to change between the transition of southern culture.  At the beginning of the novel the “N” word is rarely uttered.  White people with any class or status are restricted from using such ugly language.  They prefer to call black people “darkies”, bucks, pickaninnies, nigglets – anything but human.  Only poor whites, trash, and other Negros use the “N” word.  

Scarlet doesn’t even utter the word until after war and then it’s for shock value.  The moment is used to show how much Scarlet has changed.  After this the word becomes more prevalent and is mostly spoken by Yankees, poor whites, and other blacks talking to or about each other in nasty ways.  

I feel it when Uncle Peter gets mad at white woman from Main for calling him a “nigger” or when Mami shoots that word at unfamiliar black man on her porch - because among older blacks (my grandparents for example) that word with the hard R is only used to refer to dumb, feckless Negros with no dignity or shame.  

Conclusion

This is honestly a great, well written book.  Margrett Mitchell wrote only this one novel and managed to rewrite the history of the south to something more palpable for certain people and for that she has been championed.  Even at the beginning of the Audiobook this introduction of the story calls it the best book written since the Bible!  

It is very well written.  It tells a mostly accurate history of siege of Atlanta and provides some color to real historical events and locations.  However, it is a fictional story.  Most of the fiction is fun romantic drama.  But some of the fiction this book chooses to tell that has kept the south divided for generations.   

Using Scarlet as an unreliable narrator to tell the history of the Civil War as she saw it – Margret Mitchell managed to avoid talking about the ugly business of slavery, and why the states went to war in the first place.  Though it’s hard to tell whose side Mitchell was ultimately on, as parts of the book read as the darkest satire, and her description of the main character is heroic at times, and laughably stupid at others – Mitchell was in real life celebrated by the Daughters of the Confederacy and raised by former Confederate soldiers.    

I recommend this book but only to certain readers. Anyone inclined to believe this fictious novel is fact, or who was raised seeing these “alternative facts” as accurate should avoid it as they find it difficult to see it through the critical eye it calls for.  The romance and the drama make this story easy to be swept up in.  And the accurate bits makes the misconceptions easy to swallow.  I recommend this book to African American studies scholars with a more critical eye for American history.  This book pairs well with a reading of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain and "Uncle Tom’s Cabin" by Harriet Beecher Stowe. 

ONE MORE THING:

As a sidenote I need to state that I would never advocate for the banning of this classic historical romance novel.  I would never ask for the removal of literature that shows the world from a different POV than my own.  In fact, I read this novel to look through this perspective and try to understand the people who disagree with me politically.  I would not ban Gone with the Wind any more than I would a Huckleberry Finn novel or Uncle Tom's Cabin

Is Sex the Root of Racism?: An Essay about Shirley Jackson's: Flower Garden

    
The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars


 "The Lottery" was stunning.  I read it twice to make sure I picked up on the clues that foreshadowed the ending.  At first, I didn't understand how the other five works were even in the same book.   I just didn't understand what was so scary about "The Other Stories" Then something happened in my life.  And the chill of the Lottery suddenly stood out to me much more clearly.     

       Shirley Jackson writes horror for polite white women.  She teases them for being tight lipped and proper, pokes at them for being terrified of what what other people might say or think.  "The Lottery and Other Stories" are tales of what happens when you find yourself on the outside of the society that raised you.  When you make just that one wrong choice and suddenly you are "Put Out".

 

   Among the other stories "Flower Garden" stood out to me the most.  A young woman, Mrs Winning, is the newest member of the Winning family, the oldest family in a of their small  Vermont town.  She makes friends with a new comer, Mrs. MacLane.  Mrs. MacLane is a widow from the city. She's beautiful and has bought the lovely cottage that Mrs. Winning has always wanted to live in.

photo by Ksena Chernaya 

     They become fast friends and get along well until the widow MacLane defends Billy Jones, a mulatto boy, from being harassed by her son and the Winning's boy.  Mrs. Winning is stunned.  She can't believes that MacLane went so far as to make her own son apologize to the "colored" boy.  To make it worse she then hires the boy's father, Mr. Johns, as a gardener.

       Mrs. Winning tries to warn Mrs. MacLane; she points out that all of Johns children are mixed with white, and that their mother moved away. Mrs. MacLane doesn't hear the warning.  She continues to behave "oddly".

    The story is told from Mrs Winning so we can see her react in horror as the town suggests that she warn Mrs. MacLane, seeing as how they are friends.  Mrs. Winning doesn't want the community to think she'd be friends with someone they are obviously turning against. 

    When Mrs. MacLane finally catches up to Mrs Winning she asks her if her new gardener is
the reason everyone has suddenly turned on her.  Mrs. Winning smiles and lies.  She even promises to visit.    In her head though she's disgusted that Mrs. MacLane would openly complain and even more so that she'd blame the poor Negroes for her troubles.    

    "The nerve of her, trying to blame the colored folks" (99) After all between Mrs. MacLane and Mr. Johns, she's the one with the all the power. It's not the Negro's fault that she is taking advantage of them. 

      This is how so many white people talk about race, even today.  "I'm not racist but -"  "I'd never say that word."  "I just don't see why they can't get over it."  "We just want everything to stay "nice" and "pleasant", equal and never ever changing."  

    What puzzled me, after reading this, was the hypocrisy.  The black man is a handy-man in town. Others had hired him before.  What was the big deal?

      The problem, I gradually realized, wasn't what he was doing - it was who everyone thought he was doing.  Mrs. Winning was trying to warn MacLane that the man was unmarried, and that he already had a history of sleeping with white women.    They'd be alone together in that house without any supervision. "People will talk!" 

    

    The problem is sex!  

    Is sex the root of a racism?

   

    "Flower Box" by Shirley Jackson goes hand in hand with  "The Boy Detective and the Summer of 74 by Art Taylor. 

 In this story a young man at the cusp of puberty stumbles upon a mystery that no one cares about but him.  He discovers several large bones in the neighbor’s yard and wonders where they are from.

  He throws himself into the mystery to distract himself from the fact that this is the last summer of his childhood.  His friends are too interested in a torn page from a playboy magazine to help him. His father is always lecturing him about the approaching responsibilities of manhood.  A new girl in town further complicates his feelings by taking interest in the case he's trying to solve. 

     Everything comes to a head when Cooper learns that he is to meet this girl for a play date.  His mother is nagging him with questions about her when, thanks to his rising hormones, Cooper solves the mystery.  To distract his mother from his personal thoughts and feelings he blurts out his conclusion. Thus, utterly ruining the lives of two adults that have nothing to do with him, the girl, or the end of his childhood.  

*spoiler!**spoiler!**spoiler!**spoiler!**spoiler!**

    Cooper discovered that the Negro butcher from the far side of town visits the lonely white widow next door after dark.  The butcher brings a soup bone to keep the widow’s dog quiet when he comes into the yard. It's that chewed up soup bone that capture's Cooper's curiosity.   

*End of Spoiler***End of Spoiler***End of Spoiler**

    Because Cooper was nosey and insisted on being a detective, he may have gotten the butcher killed. Because of the racism of the rest of the town, that lonely woman was probably
left traumatized and further ostracized when Cooper's father, and the other men of the town, descended on her home to reinforce their social order.   No one cared about the widow, and she’s not likely to ever marry again after this incident.  The butcher was a threat purely because "We can't the other's think it's ok.  We let one get away with it, others may try". 

And because Cooper's just a little white boy, he moves on with his life oblivious to the damage he's done until well into adulthood. and is reflecting on the last summer of his childhood.  The worse thing that happened to him, was that his father stopped going to the black side of town to get stakes after that.  

    Like the Flower Garden the characters in the story do not acknowledge the injustice of the situation.  The characters are on the side of the status quo.  They keep the their side of town pure.  A black man vanishes and everyone just goes on with their lives as though nothing happened.  

    The horror lies in the shadow of innocence.  That's what Shirley Jackson was writing.   I didn't understand it fully until I myself was married to a white man, gave birth to our little light skinned daughter, and began to experience the disguised kindness of “well meaning” strangers - the doll-like smiles, the out of nowhere compliments "Oh what a beautiful child!" "What lovely hair!" from people who would not otherwise have seen me.  It's my own family code switching in front of me to talk to my husband, then getting hand-written responses declining the invitation to our wedding.  It's the not really being welcomed at Christmas anymore because my presence makes a certain uncle fighting mad.  It's folks on the white side of the family not existing until after the election in 2016, then suddenly being very vocal about their beliefs, but not about me or us.  I'm “one of the good ones".

    Its idiots marching in the streets, and barking online about being replaced.

It's about a black man being gunned down while jogging, not because he looked at house being built, but because his killer's daughter was dating a black guy.  

    Racism is about sex.  About keeping the races separated so that we always know who’s them and who’s us. 

How would Shirley Jackson have written the years following the 2016 election?  What young Art Taylors will grow up to speak of the horrors outside of their bedroom windows that they didn't see until they were older?  Where do we go from here, now that the curtain has been pulled back, and we see how nasty the glass has been all this time?  

Photo by cottonbro studio:

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Parables of Dune

A comparison Essay connecting The Dune Series to the Parable of the Sower and Talents.  

    Parable of the Talents is a dark, damaging, triggering, wonderful, awe inspiring post apocalyptic dystopian series. There are many beautifully written reviews explaining this masterpiece by the late great Octavia E. Butler.  That's not what this is. 

    This is a discussion of how well Octavia's Parable series works  as a companion  to Frank Herbert's Dune series.   It's my opinion that all nine books work together to tell one, nearly complete story with Parable of the Sower & Talents tying in as precursors to the Dune Series

    Spoilers ahead for all nine books! 

 

    How did I come with this?  Simple answer: I listened to all seven books of Dune on Audible during the 2020 pandemic lockdown.   Then I washed it all down with Parable of the Sower  and Parable of the Talents because I hate myself.  

    I'd heard that Octavia passed away without finishing the series, but upon reaching the end of Parable of the Talents I felt satisfied that 

she'd taken her characters as far as she needed to.  I looked into what more she wanted to say about the Earthseed community and realized that she was, in essence, trying to write the beginning of Dune.  

    At the end of of Parable of the Talents, Lauren Olamin's Earthseed family has finally achieved space travel. They will at "take root among the stars".  

    Octavia's tale ended here, but she intended to write more.  Famously, she suffered from a horrible case of writer's block and was not able to complete the third book in the series, Parable of the Tricker, before her death in 2006. 

    

    In her notes on the third book, Octavia struggled with details of Earthseed's survival in space such as - how would they grow crops, how might the food on another would affect their minds, how the atmosphere of the new planet would affect the bodies of the pilgrims, how leaders would be made, and other such details.

    

    Meanwhile, Frank Herbert's Dune has all these details wrapped around the same themes of leadership as Octavia's world, though Frank never mentioned how humanity branched into space to begin with.  How did these empires take root.  Why had they fled Earth?  Was Earth still around?  

    Octavia wrote "They must evolve or die"And Frank answered with the Xi, Bene Tleilax, and the Bene Gesserit.   He also answered with a God Emperor who could restrict the waves of change just to show humanity how important change is.  

     Throughout Dune there are subtle hints as to the world the human's left behind, but it is never answered why they took so drastic a step as to leave their life support planet to start over elsewhere.  To this Octavia has the answers with a pox, a drug, and war devastated an entire hemisphere. 

Yes Sir Mr. Charismatic Leader!

    Both writers were alive at the same time.  Frank was older and published Dune a series of short stories in science fiction magazines.  It's possible a young Octavia who would have been in high school at that time saw them, read them, and internalized the stories.  However she would not write the parable series for another ten years.   I am not accusing her of playing off his ideas in anyway.  As a student of writing, and writer of sci-fiction it's likely that she read Dune.  She may have inspired by it, as so many of us have been.  But I've found no record of her ever mentioning either the novels nor the writer.   It's possible that Dune was the cause of Butler's writer's block - not wanting to get too close to a well none work with our own ideas is a common woe among writers.  

     Both writers were inspired by the assassination of Kennedy, the Vietnam War and the fall of Nixon in the Watergate scandal.  Both writers were disillusioned, adults wary of the power that charismatic leaders have on the population overall.

images taken from msnbc.com

   The Dune series and the Parable series warn of being carful of such charming leaders who can take the reins of a loyal flock and lead them to slaughter for their own selfish gains.  Frank himself went on record many times and stated plainly  that  charming leaders are the most dangerous types of people.  He creates such a leader in Paul Atreides in Dune, and Messiah of Dune.   The reader cheers for Paul despite his starting a holy war it avenge his father and reclaim his throne.

    "I wrote the Dune series because I had this idea that charismatic leaders ought to come with a warning label on their forehead: "May be dangerous to your health."  One of the most dangerious presidents we had in this century was John Kennedy because people said "Yes Sir Mr. Charismatic Leader what do we do next?" and we wound up in Vietnam.  And I think probably the most valuable president of this century was Richard Nixon.  Because he taught us to distrust government and he did it by example." ~ Frank Herbert. 

     Octavia has been credited for predicting the pandemic, and the election of Donald Trump.  Her fictional president Andrew Steele Jarret, even charms the masses with the phrase "Make America Great Again!"  twenty years before Trump ran for office.  

    "Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought.  To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears.  To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool.  To be led by a theif is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen." - Parables of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler.

God is Change 

    Both series connect to each other through the theme of human evolution.   Both series feature a drug that changes psychological or mental function.  In Dune it's the legendary Spice Melange that enhances mental function to the point that people can see the future, or think with the swift effeciency of computers.  In Parables it's a drug called Parateco that enhances a persons intelligence. It was used by teachers, and white collar workers who needed to think or focus more clearly.  The drug lead to a common birth defect in user's children called hyperempathy - that is they can feel what other's feel both pleasure and pain.

    Hyperempaths play a big role in the Parable series.  The main protagonist, Lauren Olamina is one.  Through her perceptions that we witness many terrible painful acts as she feels them, including the deaths of people she kills in self-defense.   In her notes for Parable of the Trickster, Octavia wonders what will become of the hyperempaths once they encounter the foods of other worlds.  

    Foods such as spice melange for example?  What might something like spice do to an already highly wired nervous system capable to feeling the pain of others?  What else might they observe?  Over time and with training would they not learn to control their empathy, to read others from a distance, or control every muscles of their own bodies independently?  How many ways might they evolve after generations of? 

Learn from the Past

    These two book series could even be read, not just as companions to each other, but as continuations of the same story.  Frank's highly evolved humans, ergo the Xi, Tlilaxu, and of course, the Bene Gesserit, are all the descendants of Octavia's hyperempaths.  The human colonies from Ocatvia's unwritten novel, Parable of the Trixster, where aided in their evolution by the food or maybe the very "dust" of the new worlds they discovered.  They lost contact with Earth and eventually any desire to return there - though through art, history, and enhanced memory they are still connected to it.  Millions of years into their new history the Empires of Dune are formed, wars are fought and life goes on.  Humanity survived by evolving.  

 Sometime after that Leto II is bred into the Kwisatz Haderach - that is born able to see both the memories of both his matriarchal and patriarchal memories.  He can see both his ancestral past, and the
future of humanity with terrifying clarity.  He lives whole other lives
in his dreams just escape his reality, and learn from past lives.  He knows that something coming that will wipe out all of humanity. Because of this knowledge he also knows that he alone can prepare man kind for it.  Using lessons of his past he chooses to take the Golden Path.

    What lesson from his past does he see?  The very same lesson that Lauren Olamina learns after surviving the complete destruction of the community she built for her people.  

   After Acorn is captured by Christian America  the Earthseed
community is held hostage.  They are blessed by the God of Change, by the foolishness of their captors and a shift in the weather.  They manage to free themselves, then they burn Acorn to the ground. They gather what they can in supplies and affection and run.  When her people ask her what they should do next Lauren tells them:

     "Today or tomorrow, we must separate.  We must leave here in small groups." After some protest she goes on to say: 

    "Earthseed continues.  But Acorn is dead.  There are too many f us.  We would be too easy to spot, too easy to recapture or kill".  pg. 259 ch 15 Parable of the Talents.

    

    The Earthseed verse that heads this chapter reads as follows:

We have lived before.

We will live gain.

We will be silk,

Stone, Mind,

Star.

We will be scattered,

Gathered,

Molded,

Probed.

We il live and we will serve life.

We will shpe God

And God will shape us

Again,

Always again,

Forever

     

    

    

    In order to survive they had to scatter, because the group together is too easily traced and destroyed. Her people took what she had taught them and they went their separate ways.  Each person continued to spread her message of hope, education, and acceptance of change, as well as her vision that their destiny was to take root among the stars.   

      Leto II perceives the same lesson from looking back into his own history.   He realizes that this is the solution for his current problem.  He knows that in order for humanity to survive what is coming they must also scatter, just as the people of Acorn did.  But not just the few people who will listen to him.  He needs all of humanity to spread out as far as possible. They must move with the swiftness and alertness of prey animals dodging a predator.  And they must learn to distrust their leaders in the process. 

    As result in God Emperor Dune, Leto II has become that predator. He is called The Tyrant - a man in the shape of a giant worm feared, and respected.   He has taken over the known universe and restricts space travel to nearly everyone.  He forces humanity to sit still for centuries.  This breeds hatred and defiance.  Their attempts at his life, and attempts at escape, but they are stopped by Letto II's Fishspeaker warriors - who as it turns out, also have a valuable part to play in the Gold Path.   

    When Letto finally dies humanity  indeed scatter.  As Letto wanted they look back at their past to avoid making the same mistake in their leadership in the future.  Just as Earthseed did several millennia pryer they spread out thus making themselves harder to reach, govern, or kill.   This also teaches the Bene Gesserit the dangers of their breeding program - they no longer attempt to create a Kwisatz Haderach.  In fact they make sure to avoid one for fear they might accidentally create another tyrant like Letto II.    

    Many will point out that Lauren's daughter Larkin did not share her vision, and never went into space.  Therefore, Letto II could not have seen this wisdom from Lauren's ancestor memories.  This is true.  Lauren only one had one daughter, and she was stolen away from her.  Lauren doesn't get to the stars.   However, she was teacher-and she touched many young lives during her life.   There was one boy in particular that the story follows pretty closely. 

     Justin Gilchrist grew up with Lauren as his teacher, leader, and
friend.  He and the other children called her 'Shaper'.  He was taken away when Christian America attacked their home, but he escaped the family they put him with.  At eleven years old he knew who his real family was fought to find them again. .  She told him what happened to Acorn, their home.

    "Acorn really is gone," I said.  When we finally broke free, we burned what was left of it."

    "You burned it?

    "Yes.  We couldn't stay there.  We would have been caught and collared again or killed.  So we took what we could carry, and we burned the rest.  Why should they be able to steal it and use it?  We burned it!" - Parable of the Talents. p 274. Ch 15

 

       Later Justin Gilchrist is apart of the first mission to space. 

    

    "I was not on any of the shuttles, of course.  Neither was uncle Marc, and neither of us has children.  But Justin Gilchrist was on a ship. He shouldn't have been at his age, of course, but he was." - Parable of the Talents; p 387 Epilogue.  

 

Photo by Helena Lopes

    Larkin goes on to list several other families who made the trip, but Justin is my favorite for being a an ancestor to the Atreides line.  We follow him from an orphaned baby in Parable of the Sower, all the way to manhood.  He's mentioned by name in the final paragraph of the story.  He fought his way from an abusive family back to those he knew and loved, and if he had children, he would have passed on that hardened bloodline, and long with his noble teachings.  And who better to become a king of a planet than the decendant of on of the original Earthseed settlers?   

  As the Kwisatz Haderach, Letto II would be the first of his ancestors to reach all the way back, and witness the teachings of Lauren Oya Olamina in Justin Gilchrist's memories.  He would have learned the lessons she'd taught as Earthseed Shaper, and passed them along.   Many of Letto's speeches echo's Lauren's writings - most notably about choosing good leaders.    

    But that's Letto's patriarchal line.  His maternal would still be completely mysterious.  I do wonder how Octavia E. Butler might written the Bene Gesserit if given the chance.  Can you imagine?

Conclusion

    Reading both series together gives a complete account of one human history and the extraordinary lengths that can be achieved when humanity is brought together under a common goal and good leadership.  Both stories. show the hell that can be created from bad leadership.  The messages of both series are the same:  

We must be adaptable.  

We must change the shape of our thinking as the world changes around us. 

We must be diverse.

We must be wonderers. 

We must embrace change

We must be wary of our leaders, and willing to fight them when they fight us.

    Though both stories were written by different authors at different times and places in their personal lives, isn't it fun to imagine that somehow, thorough cosmic magic, the continuation to Octavia Butler's series was written almost thirty years before she set pen to paper?  

     Neither Frank nor Octavia finished their series.  Both passed away before reaching the endings they wanted in their stories.    

   Octavia's ending leaves us looking up at the stars wondering what will come.

    Franks story begins with us so far in the future that the original Earth seems completely unconnected.  Together, however, they tell one complete story - one jumping off where the other ends.  

    But what will become of humanity now?  This new predator is man made.  It lurked in every book.     The face-dancers have evolved through the sins of slavery, something Letto could not have prevented for it has gone on since Lauren's time and continued even lightyears away form the home planet.  The Atreides line is completely burned out by this point.

    Now the face-dancers are sentient, self-affirming, and free.  The enslaved never forget their enslavement, they never forgive their bondage.  Now they hunt The Masters. For what purpose we may never know.

 Who will write the next chapter in this saga?

Or perhaps it is already written.   

END

If you know of a book that pulls these series further down the rabbit hole, please let me know!  I'd love to see how it all ends.  

    If you enjoy these wacky-deep dives, or have another comparison to offer please mention it in the comments.  

You can learn more about me on my page pbyeary.com, or linked to me on twitter at PB@JellyPhish

Thanks for stopping by, and I'll see you on the next page! 

    

I actually thought Parable of the Sower would be fun -  you know because Bloodchild was fun. I don't know why I thought this. I'd already read "Lilith's Brood" and "Fledging" - nether of which should taken lightly.  And yet, I thought perhaps Parable would more fun than

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's "Half a Yellow Sun" or "Americana" both which I'd listened to right after Dune, again thinking they would be light reading after such a long novel series.  Did I mention that I hate myself? 

 

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