Parable of the Sower

First, I would like to say how much I love the way Octavia Butler shaped Lauren. The way she writes is as if it is Lauren herself writing. She creates a normal teenager, giving her normal teenage thoughts, and then adds in a handicap. She makes Lauren into somebody we can all relate to, having had all the rebellious, philosophical, and contrary thoughts to our parents before. Then Butler takes it a step farther by placing Lauren in a situation where she has been forced to grow up and made all of her normal teenage thoughts that much more serious.

            Second, the world that Butler envisions doesn’t seem so improbable. At moments while I’m reading, I almost feel like I’m reading about a foreign third world country in our present time. Butler nonverbally shows us what is wrong with the way we are currently living and wasting resources and what will be the unfortunate outcome. She addresses how in desperate times, people fall onto prejudices and don’t work together in multiple groups, but rather stick to one intimate group. She takes a mindset with the adults, a mindset that people still have today, and plays it up, having them think that tomorrow will be better.

            Finally, Butler does an excellent job of grabbing at our emotions in subtle ways. She uses descriptions such as the naked dazed woman and the raped seven year old to grab at our heartstrings and tug. She wants us to glimpse this destroyed society in little bubbles that only hints at how truly bad it must be. She wants us to use our imaginations to create a world we most certainly do not want ourselves or anybody else to live in. Then she offers small glimmers of hope. Butler gives us moments where Lauren’s neighborhood works together to prove that people can be kind to one another. She shows us that people can be smart, like when Lauren’s dad listens to her about helping their neighborhood get prepared for disaster. She takes small experiences that are common to the common class world and morphs them into something new so that every person is reading the page wondering what will happen next.