Review: Strangers on a Train

Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

      It's June 2023 - Pride Month - and it's with pride festivities and honors popping up all over my feed that I decided to busy myself by reading Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith!   I mention this  because without this context I may not have noticed that Strangers on a Train is not really a murder mystery, but a story of gay love gone tragically wrong.

Here let me explain: 

 

      I love mysteries.  In fact I’ve begun the process of learning how to write one.  I already have a few novel ideas that I’ve roughed out.  So, of course, I’ve begun reading more mysteries.  I made up a list of novels to try - cozy, classicals, noir, ect.  One title on the top of my “psychological mysteries” list stood out: Strangers on a Train

    I knew the premise already.  This was the first double murder swap.  Many stories have referenced or parodied this plot.  It was the novel that inspired one of the great American film directors, Alfred Hitchcock, to create a film of the same name.  I haven’t seen the film yet, but I’ll watch it soon after this is posted.  

  Going into it, I assumed that both men on the train agreed, eventually, to swap murders.    You kill my wife and I'll kill your father – handshake - deal.  I assumed that one guy got cold feet and tried to stop this “run-away train” of events.  But he was unable to prevent his victim from being murdered by his new friend, now he’d be forced to follow through or die.  That is what I thought I was getting into.

   Instead, I learned (and spoilers from this point on) that Guy Haines wanted nothing to do with the proposal of the man on the train.  He just wanted to read his book.  But Charles Bruno would not leave him alone.  Bruno sees Guy reading a book, and sits himself down nearby. Guy is annoyed by this man from before they even exchange hellos.  That doesn’t stop Bruno from following him, talking to him, and inviting him to have dinner in his sleeper car on the train.  It’s here where Bruno makes his famous proposal.

  “Hey! Cheeses, what an idea!  We murder for each other, see?  I kill your wife and you kill my father! We met on the train, see and nobody knowns we know each other!  Perfect alibis! Catch?”

 

It’s obvious Bruno has been planning this moment for ages.  His speech is so rehearsed that he just steam-rolls over Guy’s objections and rejections.  He’d gotten on this train planning to find someone to help him. He’d expected the conversation to go one way, but Guy refused to take the bait.  After the proposal is made Guy leaves. 

  Bruno has no illusions at this point. He knows Guy is too decent to help him commit murder.  But he can’t stop thinking about him.  Even when he’s back in Santa Fe he calls Guy to have an uncomfortable conversation. Guy  once again expresses no interest whatsoever in Bruno, or his help.   Still Bruno is single mindedly obsessed with Guy. He knows that his new best friend is unhappy.  He knows why, and he knows what to do to help. 

“When his mother left town, he intended to crack open the idea and start thinking in earnest.  His idea was to go and get Miriam.  The time was ripe, and the time was now.  Guy needed it now.  In a few days, a week even, it might be too late for the Palm Beach thing, and he wouldn’t.

 - Bruno ch 10 p 59

 It can be argued that Bruno planned to murder Miriam just to prove that he had planned a perfect murder and that he could/would pull it off.  Sure, he intended to kill someone.  He wanted to one up Walter.  He wanted to feel special.  

“Whether Guy came through with his part of the deal or not, if he was successful with Miriam, he would have proved a point.  A perfect murder.  Some day, another person he didn’t know yet would turn up and some kind of deal could be made.”  - Bruno ch10 pg 62

But why Miriam?  Bruno had no confidence that Guy would hold up his end of the deal. But he also believed that Guy would be better off without his cruel wife hanging off of his neck.  If he was going to commit murder, he wanted to kill someone whose death would benefit a good man like Guy.    

When Guy isn't grateful for Miriam’s sudden death, Bruno gets offended. He needs Guy to see how similar they are - how they are kindred spirits.  And the only way to achieve this is for Guy to fulfill the other side of the deal.   

    

  Thus begins chapters and chapters of Bruno tormenting Guy, pushing him, bribing him, fighting him, lurking after him.  Guy is on the verge of quitting his job and his engagement to Ann all because he won’t talk to someone about Bruno. Between Guy's pitiful self-inflicted torment, and Bruno's savage drinking, this part of the story is a real slog.  I nearly put it down several times but kept going wondering if Guy would ever actually be pushed to murder Bruno’s father.  And when he finally does so, because I guess he thought Bruno might hurt Ann if he didn’t, it kicks off more painful chapters of Guy’s absolute mental dissolve. 

Once again I wonder why I’m still  here. Sure now there is a private detective sniffing around trying to solve the murders.  But most of the tension really comes from whether or not Guy is going to crack and tell on himself or Bruno.   And it’s agony.    That is until I realized what I was reading.  This wasn’t a murder mystery.  I already knew who-dun-it.  What I was reading, what Strangers on a Train is, is a gay romance.  Or a romantic tragedy with at least one gay character written in the format of a suspenseful mystery. 

  I am ashamed to admit that it took me until the third act to realize that Charles is very queer coded.  It took a certain episode of Frasier (Season 2, Episode 3 The Matchmaker) for me to even playfully consider it.   To be fair it wasn’t as obvious as Joel Cairo in  “The Maltese Falcon” being described as “the heavily perfumed man” over and over.

Unlike Dashiell Hammet, Patricia Highsmith is not making fun of men who behave a certain way in her story.  She wrote Bruno as a more realistic gay man.  It isn’t painted all over his personality.  He reads as an average man with a sinister plan, who just happens to have a crush on a man he met on a train.   Bruno's queerness was so realistic that it’s easy to miss.   He has such an intense personality that the character reads as a straight but muscular bully who is hounding a weaker willed man to push him into doing something he doesn’t want to do.  But once I noticed it, this character trait created a clearer picture.

There are little clues in the story that confirm that Bruno is a queer character.  The  most obvious clue is Bruno in his private thoughts.  By himself he’s allowed to react to Guy with passion that he doesn’t dare show externally.  There is also the way Guy, Ann, and others treat Bruno that show that he’s no threatening thug.   And lastly, the writer herself offers clues to the character and the way the story was written.  

Bruno with himself

      

  Privately, Bruno through his own mental dialogue  admits that he doesn’t have much use for women.  His best friend is his wealthy, beautiful and graceful mother.  She is the only woman he has time for.  Even though he "finds himself a woman" after killing Guy's wife Miriam he later mentions how much he hates women, and doesn’t like having sex with them.

“Not only hadn’t he ever fallen in love, but he didn’t care too much about sleeping with women.  He had never been able to stop thinking it was a silly business that he was standing off somewhere and watching himself.  Once, one terrible time, he had started giggling.”  

This is a common, almost stereotypical, trope of gay men worshiping their mothers but having little respect for any other women.  

When Bruno calls Guy after killing Miriam, Guy says he never wants to talk to Bruno again.  Bruno reacts with heartbreak. He cries broken by Guy’s rejection.   His deep depression sends him straight into a bottle of Scotch. This is why he's such a sloppy mess halfway through the book.  Guy cannot, or will not give him the love and gratitude that Bruno is so desperate for.   

  This is why Bruno pushes Guy into killing his father - to make himself Guy’s only confidant.  To give them a common secret, and thus pull them together - to make himself something special to Guy. When Guy goes through with it, Bruno feels justified.  Now Guy has confirmed to Bruno that he feels the same way they are one.  They are blood brothers, sewn together through this deed they’ve both done.  Bruno expects Guy to be as changed as he was, and as attached to Bruno as Bruno is to Guy.  It breaks his heart that Guy continues to push him away.   

As detective Gerard gets closer to finding the killers and understanding the mystery, Guy is tormented by what he's done, but Bruno is tormented that Guy has other friends.  Guy goes on a cruise with Anne and Bruno nearly dies from heart ache.  Bruno has a nightmare about Guy being caught, and bleeding out in the woods as Gerard chases him.  He knows that he needs to stay away from Guy to prevent him being caught, but he just can't.  He has to see him, call him, be near him.  

In Bruno's final scene he meets Guy's other friends.  He gets into a competition with Guy's best man, Bob Thatcher, over which of them has known Guy longer.  He sees them all as idiots whereas Guy is a genius.  He knows that none of them love Guy as he does.  But he also knows that Guy will never get rid of Ann, and will never love Bruno the way he wants him too.

 When the case closes Bruno and Guy have nothing to fear and nothing more to bring them together.  Guy has friends now, Bruno has no one.  Even his mother has gotten sick and ugly.  Bruno isn’t welcomed with Guy or among his friends.  The case appears to be closed so Bruno has nothing left to tether him to the man that he loves.     

 

Bruno To Others

When I go back looking for quotes and reread earlier parts of the book with this new trait in mind, it’s obvious by how Bruno speaks and how others react to him that Bruno is not the thick-necked, muscular thug I originally pictured.   

When Guy first meets Bruno on the train, and Bruno mentions how silly women are, Guy casually notes, to himself, that he didn’t imagine Bruno has much interest in women.  

Later Guy mentions how Bruno always notices people's clothes.  This is confirmed by how Bruno judges people by what they are wearing in his POV chapters.  Guy does the same but to a slightly lesser degree.  Bruno even gives Guy a fancy silver belt as an "I'm thinking about you" present. I’ve never noticed two straight guys offering their buddies accessories as presents in my personal life.  This silver belt is the same one Bruno’s mother thought about gifting to one of her gentleman suitors a chapter or two before.  

Bruno’s queerness is further confirmed through Guy’s fiance’ Ann.  Would a smart, wealthy, beautiful woman like Ann, allow a man with any sort of sexual interest in her to spend the night in her house while her husband was away in Canada?  Would a threatening man be allowed to crash their wedding with no questions asked, or to become drunk and rude at a dinner party then allowed to sleep it off on the sofa?  Would they have not called the police when he shows up at their home repeatedly, especially after she’s realized that it was Bruno whom Guy had fought some months before?  If Bruno were a truly threatening individual in appearance and casual behavior he would not have been allowed such forgiveness over and over.    The truth is Bruno doesn’t come off as threatening, even when Gerard introduces the possibility that he may have killed his own father.  Ann questions this notion repeatedly even when Guy practically confirms that he thinks it's possible.    Also, when Guy comes home and finds that Bruno has spent the night at his home he gets angry - not because he’s afraid Bruno might steal Ann from him, but because he’s annoyed that Bruno might seduce Ann just to be closer to him, or to annoy him.  

Guy for his part is also kind of queer coded.  He’s painted as a less-than-masculine man.  Bruno is obviously more aggressive than Guy is, but Guy is more of an intellectual.   No one looks at Guy and thinks he could be a murderer.  Everyone sees him as a  nervous fellow who couldn't harm a fly.  

Bruno becomes infatuated with Guy from afar on the train. Perhaps, he hopes that maybe they have a common oddness. Guy even notes how Bruno becomes less friendly when he learns that Guy is married.

  My favorite scene in the story is the wedding.   The murders  of Miram Hains, and Sam Bruno are paralleled with Guy's engagement with Anna.  Guy kills Bruno's father just a few months before his wedding, thus in essence declaring his love to Bruno - at least in the sick mind of the psychopath that is infatuated with him.  Bruno, therefore, has no qualms about inviting himself to Guy's wedding.  He sits at the front and meets Guy's eyes. Guy can’t look away.  As a result Guy states his wedding vows, not to Ann, but to Charles Bruno. 

   

When Bruno falls overboard from the boat, Guy jumps in after him… Mentally, Guy is furious that he’s the only one who cares that Bruno has fallen.  He calls Bruno his best friend - his brother!  

Bruno’s body is never found and in some way I suspected Bruno might have faked his death.  But in doing research for this post I found a quote I’d forgotten about.  On the train, before Bruno made his infamous proposal he said this when talking about whether or not he could commit murder:

   “I’ll do it, don’t think I won’t!  Know what else I’ll do some day?  Commit suicide if I happen to feel like committing suicide, and fix it so it looks like my worst enemy murdered me.”

As they say, there is a thin line between love and hate.  

    

The Writer and Director

Patricia Highsmith  was an out of the closet lesbian writer.  She was born in Texas but spent most of her adult life living in France and Switzerland.  Her second novel The Prince of Salt was rejected by American publishers for its “frank explorations of homosexual themes''.  She later regained some notoriety in the U.S. for her 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley.   

She has published over twenty books, has won the O. Henry Memorial Award, the Edgar Allan Poe Award, Le Grand Prix de Littérature Policière, and the Award of the Crime Writers Association of Great Britain.  She died in Switzerland in 1995. 

 

Alfried Hitchcock's 1951 film Strangers on a Train has been shamed by critics as being vulgar for its ``insertion” of homosexuality into the film.  In fact eight minutes of the film had to be edited out of the U.S. version for being too perverse for American audiences. 

 

My Takeaway 

My word.  Such delicate snowflakes we must be in the U.S.

As I’ve said, the book was a bit of a slog for me and I haven’t yet watched the movie.  Recognizing the gay overtones really brought the characters new life for me.  The context that Guy was agonizing over Bruno’s infatuation with him, and that perhaps he had similar feelings towards Bruno, makes some of his anguish between confessions make more sense. 

If he wasn’t struggling with some sort of interest in Bruno, or some sort of appreciation for him, then he would have just told Ann about the weird interaction on the train, and told the police everything when Miriam was killed.   

But if on some level he liked Bruno back,  then he didn’t want Bruno to get into trouble for trying to help him out of a tough situation.  Guilt wouldn't have been eating at him so hard that he was about ready to call off his engagement.  And if his resolve against Bruno had been strong at all, he wouldn’t have killed Sam Bruno for him.  

Without Charles Bruno to define him, Guy spirals out of control.  He finds someone to confess his guilt too, someone else who doesn’t care.  Just as he’s about over it all, about done with the whole thing, Gerard finally tricks him.  Guy is caught for something he never even wanted to do, and he doesn’t even have Bruno to keep him company in jail.  

I argue that none of this would have happened if consenting adult men were allowed to love each other in the 1950s.  How many women could have been spared loveless marriages wasting their valuable maternal time?  How many men could have been spared agonizing shame, guilt, and lust if only they were allowed to pursue the kind of love that was right for them? How many lives could have been spared if such men weren’t shamed into becoming villains and killers?

  I can’t say I loved this book.  But I have deep respect for the author.  Patricia Highsmith wrote a dark gay tragedy and sold it under the nose of the publishers.  She wrote directly about the fears of men, finding themselves the victims of an unwanted love, discovering through force that you might be persuaded by that love.  And she did it without a kiss, or a rape scene - just blood, sweat, and tears.  

 

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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

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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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Review: Children of Blood and Bone

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this young-adult fantasy.  Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi is a beautifully page turner set in an fictional Nigeria, where magic is real but only the poor have been blessed to receive this favor of the Gods.   This is why the tyrant king, King Saran, sought and found a way to break this connection to the dive thus taking away the magic of the maji people.  The king's then teaches that magic is evil, all and magic users are dangerous thus generating fear and hatred for the rest of the Orisha people. 

    King Saran's hatred is strong but not as strong as the willpower of the young protagonists' that defy him. Once they learned that they have a chance to bring magic back into the world, nothing short of death will stop them.  

      Zelie's power over Death has been restored to her by the king's own rebellious daughter Amari.   The two girls, with the help of Zelie's skilled  brother Tzain, embark on a mission to restore magic to the maji people. 

  The only real threat to this is Inan, the prince, who will do whatever it takes to destroy magic once and for all.  He and Zelie have some odd, wild, passionate connection through Inan's own awakened powers over minds and dreams.   

    Children of Blood and Bone is  a dazzling adventure through a fictional Nigeria that will have you pouring over the pages to find out what happens next. 

Don't have time to read?  Well try listening to this book while work, drive, or shower.  The narrator, Bahni Turpin, does a five star job of narrator all the characters and points of view on Audible.  

   If you enjoyed the Avatar: The Last Airbender series,  then I strongly encourage you to give this book a read.

Children of Blood and Bone is book one in the series. Please come back and read my reviews for Children of Virtue and Vengeance, and Children of Anguish and Anarchy 

Other Books and Series you may like:

Monstress - by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda

Children of Virtue and Vengeance - by Tomi Adeyemi

Children of Anguish and Anarchy - by Tomi Adeyemi

If you liked this review, or if you want to discuss the book please a comment below or find me on Facebook at: P.B.Yeary

Twitter:  PB&Jellyphish

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Lessons of the Sower: A Meditation on Parable of the Sower

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. 

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?

Also if you've read the books you may be interested to know about the The Parable of the Sower Musical, written by Toshi Regan.  And the Octavia's Parables Podcast hosted my Adrian Maree Brown and Toshi Regan.  

Learn more about me at 

pbyeary.com or follow me on twitter at PB&JellyPhish

Until next time, I'll see you on the next page! 

 

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Star War's Fan Edit: Palpatine Genes Prt 1: The Inspiration

The story of Dune is an intricate tapestry of plots and politics woven together with intriguing cultures and heavy philosophical ideology.  Every fight and every victory has huge sweeping consequences that ripple through a culture for generations.  

By contrast, the Star Wars series is a fun romp through an epic space fantasy.  The original three films charmed the childhoods of an entire generation, and those viewers passed their love of Luke, Leia, Han and Chewy on to their children.  

Creator George Lucas was inspired and heavily influenced by legendary works of fiction including the Flash Gordon series, Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress, as well as Frank Herbert’s Dune series. 

Sprinkles of Dune's special seasoning is littered throughout the Star Wars universe.  It can be tasted in the heavy political plotting that reverberates through several generations, the diversity of cultures, the strong female characters, as well as a fascinating seed of science that can potentially connect the two vastly different stories.

 

George Lucas is no longer involved in the new Star Wars stories which have spun off from his original creation, and with his absence some of the Dune flavoring was lost.  

I believe Dune could have been of further inspiration, adding a dash of its spice to the weaker plot points of the Star Wars sequels that left so many fans disappointed.  

How?  What if Rey isn’t just Palpatine’s granddaughter.  What if she is his female clone which he had specially made to raise as his replacement?  He just needed his inferior clone reserves to keep him alive long enough for Rey to grow up and rise to power.    

Spoilers ahead for most of the Star Wars, as well as the first three Dune novels.  

The main thing that bothered me about Rise of Skywalker was its setup.  Somehow Palpatine returned.  Seasoned fans will have guessed within moments that he's simply using his clones to regenerate himself.  Though no longer official canon, Tom Veitch's six-issue comic series Dark Empire introduced this concept to Star Wars lore in 1991. Rise of Skywalker clearly used this concept for inspiration, but was uninspired in its implementation. A slew of what ifs spring to my mind, but the greatest of them is this; what if Rise of Skywalker had better used the ideas within Dark Empire, and then added a heavy sprinkle of inspiration from Dune?

To preface my idea I must make a couple of points first.  The first is that this isn’t entirely my idea. Frank said it first.   

 What does Dune Have to do with it?

 In Dune, Lady Jessica finds herself amongst the Fremen, natives of the desert planet Arrakis. To become their Reverend Mother, she must undergo the Spice Agony by consuming the Water of Life, a toxin created by a drowned Sandworm. This process awakens her ancestor memories, thus allowing her to look back and learn from the wisdom of her maternal/mitochondrial ancestors.  And she does this while pregnant with her daughter, Alia.  As a result, Alia is “pre-born”, born fully self-aware with a mature mind, and also filled with the memories of her ancestors long before she’s had a chance to develop her own personality.

Mitochondrial DNA is the common cellular chromosome that we all share with our mothers. It’s what ancestry trackers use to trace a person’s bloodline back through time. 

  

Alia’s mind  ages faster than her body.  She’s born a fully realized Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother but without any of the training needed to control her impulses, or focus her mind.  

She’s merely a child when she kills her own grandfather, the Baron Harkonnen, to defend her big brother Paul.  This allows Paul to establish his reign on Arrakis, but Alia is left vulnerable to her own hyper-sensitive mind.  

 Through two books Alia struggles with the voices in her head who are trying to take over her mind and body. She is an abomination and yet she is left in charge of Arrakis when Paul disappears into the desert.  

The only one that steps up to help her is the ghost of the long dead Baron Harkonnen.  

The Baron is able to speak directly to Alia’s mind because he is Jessica’s father, ergo Alia’s maternal grandfather.  The Baron’s personality possesses Alia:  he sleeps with her husband and her servants; he conspires to kill her niece, nephew, and mother; he takes over her guards.  Her potential victims look at Alia with pity instead of fear.  They know she is too far gone to be saved and too blind to be a real threat to them.  

Second: According to George, Palpatine was always cloning around.

When the plot of Star Wars is considered from the dark side point of view, it could be seen as the saga of Palpatine and his quest for immortality.  Every third Star Wars movie in the main series shows the rise, fall, and eventual success of Palpatine’s mission to escape death.  

At a young age Palpatine discovered that it was possible to gain immortality.  He’d heard stories of the dark side master who’d found the secrets he sought. Uncovering these methods for himself  became his personal quest.

Everything Palpatine did, from conquering the galactic government, to killing off the Jedi in order to unbalance the force in his favor, was to gain more power while he sought immortality.  He seduced the young Anakin Skywalker to be his apprentice easily because Anakin was also interested in this ability.  As the Emperor of the galaxy he’d had the resources to research and chase every lead.  

This research lead him to be interesting in cloning.  He'd learn by cloning himself he could make copies that he could then jump into when his current body died.  He didn't care about the clone army he'd created - only the information that could gained from the project.   

    

In Attack of the Clones The Jedi discover a factory already in the process of creating a clone army from the DNA of a man named Jango Fett.  Jango has agreed to this under one condition - that he be given one special clone that ages at a normal rate which he will raise as a son.  This boy grew up to become the legendary Boba Fett. 

This introduces the concept that such a clone, one with a slow healthy growth rate, is possible.  We learn later that Palpatine is behind the creation, training, and programing of this army as part of a plot to whip out the Jedi with the infamous Order 66.  

The new Disney animated series The Bad Batch reveals to us that the empire experimented with gender switching in clones.  One of the main characters of this story is a female clone created with the Jango DNA.

In Conclusion:  

Perhaps Palpatine ultimately learned that immortality was really a sort of ancestor hopping through time, probably by using midi-chlordans - or force molecules.  Such molecules might influence  the mitochondrial DNA of one’s descendants.  It would make since then that a female body would be able to pass this DNA on to her offspring, thus providing stronger vessels in the future for his soul to hop into.  

It therefore makes since to Palpatine's character to have experimented with these things and found out that they could be done.  So why not do them?  Having a female clone capable of carrying parts of his DNA into future generations could give him exactly what he's looking for.  He only had to be a little patient while his female clone grew to an independent adult and came looking for power.

  

Check out part two to see how I think this might have made for an interesting addition to the Star Wars lore.   

If you're like me and studying how to write picture books, feel free to check out my picture book breakdowns at PB&JellyfishTalez.  

   

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Finally, if you just want to learn more about me, myself I tweet at PB&Jellyphish or check out my website: pbyeary.com

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I'll see you on the next page!

    

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