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Review: "Parable of the Sower" by Octavia Butler
Title: The Parable of the Sower
Author: Octavia Butler
Genre: Science Fiction
Page Count: 295
Publisher: Warner Books
Basic Plotline: In a decaying future America, Lauren Olamina is an empathic young woman living in a walled community trying to hold together while the world around them falls apart. After her community is invaded and ransacked, she and a small group of survivors make their way north, hoping to find somewhere better. As they travel and collect fellow travelers, they are guided by Lauren's vision of a new community, a new religion - Earthseed.
The Positives: There are so many things about this book that Butler gets right to my mind, and why it's another reason that I think she may be one of the greatest writers (in any genre) of the 20th century.
There are many reasons why I think this book is even more appropriate and terrifying now in 2010 than it would have been when it was published in 1993. In fact, I think it's almost a tragedy of historical happenstance that this book was released during a time when America enjoyed great relative prosperity because I think it's something we should be reading and thinking about now. I can well imagine myself having reading this in 1993 or even in 2003 and discarding it as too radical, too ridiculous, impossible. Now one can only feel a creeping sense of realistic foreboding.
Butler lays out one of the best written dystopic visions of the future I've read and hers has what so many others lack: plausibility. Whereas other writers imagine a society that crumbles in an instant, becoming more like a zombie apocalypse than a believably dark future, Butler is chillingly realistic in how she lays out the future downfall of America. I think it is telling of her genius that her version of the apocalypse, of the end of a great civilization does not come from a virus, a technology, or even an armed political conflict.
America's downfall comes from an all too likely economic turbulence that takes over because the gap between the richest and poorest has become so wide, with so few hoarding so much that it sends society into a tailspin, with the majority of Americans scrambling to collect what crumbs drop from the tables of the wealthy. In other words, Butler lays out the consequences of creating a top-heavy society where honest economic advancement becomes all but impossible. There's a lot of room for thought about class struggles here and how easy it is for the poor to become slaves to the rich. The scenarios that Butler lays out of a return to company towns, legal slavery, and other forms of labor abuse all come about because bit by bit, politicians and society have removed the restrictions that level the playing field, that force the wealthy to let some steam out of the pot, as the expression goes.
The true genius of her dystopia is in her ability to show that it came about step by step, not at all once. There was no great Judgement Day that descended upon the world, but rather hundreds of days of judgement where a society failed to measure up until finally things began to collapse.
Where her worldbuilding is superb and subtle, Butler's protagonist is vivid and almost larger than life. I think Butler does a good job of trying to portray such a large theological and philosophical concept coming from a such a young woman. The journal format of the novel works well give a good view of Lauren's inner self, but to keep the story moving well and to allow us to gain insight into Earthseed that a straight-up first POV narrative might not have allowed readers. You can see the mix of youth, inexperience, and prodigious wisdom in Lauren's writings as she goes along.
The other characters are not as bold or as jump-off-the-page as Lauren is, partly due to the format and partly due to Lauren being such a forceful, powerful personality in and of herself. However, I think this is good, because it shows - very believably - why Lauren becomes the leader, why she succeeds, and why Earthseed has a chance of succeeding by the end of the novel. I think it also shows what it takes to repair a fractured society. In Lauren, Butler gives us not just a view on the ending of America, but on what it will take to build something up again. She shows us that in troubled times, we not only need leaders, but leaders with big ideas who are willing to take risks and make plans and accept change when others cling to what they have left, hoping that if they dig in and hold on that things will revert back to better times.
As with other novels, the meditations on big, broad concepts such as race, class, gender, violence, society, wealth, and community are sharply and deftly brought to the surface. And though Lauren preaches her new religion, there is no element of preachiness in the story.
The underlying philosophy, as well, merits great thought even after one has finished the book and is something that I think entire college courses could be dedicated to, either as a philosophy or a piece of literature. While Butler emphasizes community, even over family in some instances, as the means for her character's survival - she lays out what could be a really striking thesis on why the human race became the dominant species on the planet, and that is because we not only respond to change (as all life forms do, either by dying or adapting), but we initiate changes ourselves. We don't wait for the environment to alter us, we alter the environment.
For the second time, I find myself left with a brain full of thoughts, philosophies, considerations - many of them troubling and shudder-inducing - from a Butler book even while I was told a compelling story by a powerful character.
The Negatives: I have few if any negatives to list.
I do think the storyline of the book is somewhat weaker than the other elements of character, worldbuilding, and philosophy. The actual plot itself is not bad, as plots go, but is somewhat too straightforward. Stories of nitty, gritty survival can often be repetitive after a while when the reader experiences encounter after encounter after encounter that's life or death. Just as Lauren becomes used to gunfire and able to sleep through it, the reader becomes used to disaster after disaster. This novel does take a slower, more cautious pace than others, and that might throw readers who like their narratives going at light speed.
The other significant negative is that Lauren's empathy seems somewhat tangential to the story. It was interesting, and I suspect that Butler played around with it more in the sequel, Parable of the Talents, but for this novel it didn't seem to fit in or play much of a role, besides offering more obstacles in Lauren's path than already existed. I wasn't sure what the purpose of Lauren's hyper-empathy was, and it seemed less developed than every other part. While it does make for a lot of great metaphorical thinking, it didn't serve the story as well as other elements did.
CoC Score: 10. While this novel is not as concerned outwardly and overtly with racial topics as Kindred was, I felt Butler did a fantastic job of writing a book in which whiteness was completely de-centered. There are white characters and mentions of racial tensions (not just between whites and blacks, but between all the many races that comprise the population of California), but the novel does not dwell on or give excessive attention to whiteness or white characters.
Gender Score: 10. When I say the words "strong female protagonist", I think a picture of Butler's heroines ought to appear beneath it. Lauren may be flawed and overbearing at points, but she is definitely strong, despite what would have become a crippling disorder in the hands of
GLBT Score: 0. No significant discussion or characters that were identified as GLBT. I felt this was a shortcoming of this book. In 2020's California? There's just really no reason why, unless society went on a major anti-GLBT backpack, there wouldn't be at least one one character who ID's as GLBT or as queer in one form or another.
Ablism Score: 0/7. I'm adding ablism as a factor I'm looking for because I realize its something that I've been overlooking in my scoring and there's just no reason for that besides me exercising my privilege, and that's something I want to stop doing.
Ranking this book is tricky for me because a) my privilege makes me something of an idiot when it comes to this and b) it depends upon whether you view the protagonist as a PWD or not.
In the book, Lauren's hyper-empathy is a known, medically identified disorder in her time, caused either by genetic inheritance or by drugs mothers take during pregnancy. Others have disorder, and society thinks of it in a lot of the same terms it might think of schizophrenia or high-functioning autism. It comes with a lot of shame and Lauren's father tells her out right never to tell anyone about it. In that respect, one can view the protagonist as a PWD (person with disability) and Butler does a rather good job (again, to my privileged, able-bodied thinking) of showing how Lauren works with her hyper-empathy and over comes the obstacles that it places in her path and even learning to become open about it and come out to trusted friends.
However, that depends on whether you think that having a fictional disability/disorder counts. And even if you do, I deduct three point because there is ablism going on nevertheless.
Not counting Lauren as a PWD, there are none and there is an uncomfortable sort of background noise of ablism in the novel that comes with a lot of dystopian/apocalyptic stories wherein it seems like PWD, especially if that disability is physical, are automatically thought to die off because of their disabilities and disappear, leaving the fit and able-bodied to inherit the Earth in a sort of survival-of-the-fittest way - which is something I wish SF literature would address.
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While perhaps not a recognized ADA disability, high empathy can be pretty disabling and make it very difficult to deal with situations designed by and for "normal" people, just like with any disability. And it's only a matter of time before the pharmaceutical industry comes up with a specific drug to medicate for it, right? Then it becomes a "disease" or "disability" like all traits that diverge from the mean, despite the fact that they are clearly part of the spectrum of normalcy.
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I hadn't ever heard of HSP's before, and I'll have to do more reading up on it. Thanks for bringing that link to my attention.