Gabby Maddaloni Final Entry

            I had hoped, being the hopeless romantic I am, that this novel would end happily.  I suppose I should have guessed from the way the events of the book always seemed to go.  As far as I could tell, whenever anything looked to be going fairly well, disaster would strike.  Yet, when Lauren’s group on the highway became strong, I found myself hoping along with Lauren that going north would be better for all of them.  I thought that maybe this story would have a happy ending, but to my dismay, all they found was more disappointment.  When they found Bankole’s land and all they saw was burned buildings, and when all the law enforcement proved to be there was greedy also, I felt the disappointment that all of them had to have been feeling.  Yet, I couldn’t feel completely hopeless, because of course Lauren in no way gave up.  She immediately thought that the group could stay there, grow food and become a community.  She convinced everyone that they could stay safe with dogs and night watches, and make money by selling food.  Even though she had been so hopeful that water would be cheaper, and jobs easier to find, she still found a way to stay positive.  I’m almost happy that the book ended this way, not as I had hoped.   The stereotypical ending would have been for all their dreams to come true about how different the north was.  Instead, this book proved to be what it always seemed to be, real.  Octavia Butler only wrote what she thought could be, not what others wanted to be.  She wrote of all the harsh truths, that could in fact exist, if we let the world go on as it is.  She wrote of the one always certain, always promised idea, which is change.  Change can always be counted on to be there, when you least expect it, and when you know it’s happening.  Nothing can stop change, and it can’t be altered within itself.  It just is, and that thought, that idea is life altering.  The only thing that is grounded, the only thing you have when everything else is gone, is the promise of change.