Jacob Brown Parable of the Sower final post

             Reading some of the other blogs I noticed that that many people were unhappy with the way the story ended. I would have to agree. Although I wasn't expecting Bankole’s land to be everything they may have expected it to be, I did not expect it to be completely destroyed. They survived all they survived only for a place where they might, if their lucky, be able to survive.  However, as I thought about the ending more, it made a lot more sense to me. The ending is exactly what should have been expected from Octavia Butler, a self-described pessimist. With the country in the state it was in and the flow of people heading north, how could we have expected it to be all it was advertised to be. Surely they were not the first to head north looking for a better life, and surely many dangerous people like the people they encountered on their journey also headed north for wealthier victims. The north Lauren’s group was searching for would certainly be a place thieves and murderers would flock to for better opportunities at what they do best. With the world as violent and chaotic as it was, finding a place so drastically different not that far north was a little foolish. 

          Earthseed is definitely one of the things from this book that will come to mind when I think back on it. Earthseed was a major part of this novel from the beginning. A lot of Earthseed reminded me of the philosopher Heraclitus and his philosophy of Panta Rhei, or “Everything flows”. This Heraclitus quote, “everything is in flux and nothing abides / everything flows and nothing stays fixed / everything is constantly changing and nothing stays the same,” sounds very similar to several Earthseed poems. I would be very interested to know if Butler was influenced by Heraclitus when writing the Earthseed poetry.