(Possible spoilers)
I first heard of Octavia Butler when I attended Cal State L.A. We watched a video where a teacher led a discussion of one of her books, Parable of the Sower, in a high school English class. I also learned that Octavia Butler attended Cal State L.A. many years ago. From the discussion, the book sounded intriguing. I have always been a fan of science fiction and fantasy but I had never heard of an African American female science fiction writer. Sower seemed to take place in the near future and have a young black woman as protagonist. The future was bleak but there was some hope.
I read Parable of the Sower two years ago and enjoyed it. It is about one main character, Lauren Oya Olamina, whose neighborhood is destroyed by the class struggle and chaos. She travels north walking on the California highways gathering together a group of old and new friends. She has hyperempathy causing her to feel the pleasure and pain experienced by other people she observes. It is caused by a intelligence drug that her mother took. On the road she meets other “sharers”. She also begins writing about a new religion she plans to start called Earthseed. There isn’t much detail about it, mostly just verses appearing at the beginning of each chapter. The book starts in a negative world but ends on a positive note. It’s told in the form of Olamina’s journals.
The Parable of the Talents is the sequel to Sower and begins five years after the end of the first book. Like Sower the title is based on a parable from the Gospel, this time referring to the one where a master gives one servant five talents, another three, and a third just one. The first two invest their talents while the third just buries his. I never completely understood that parable but I can kind of see how it applies to the book. Talents is a much more complex story than Sower. It isn’t just told through Olamina’s journals but also those of her daughter reading them and other characters. The book covers a longer time span and has more characters. It covers the larger events occurring in the U.S. and the world, along with the characters’ stories, more extensively than Parable of the Sower.
Butler’s portrayal of the future seems chillingly realistic given what’s been going on lately. When I read Sower in 2007 I thought the story’s breakdown of civilization was pessimistic at best. But when reading Talents in 2009, a period of upheaval know as “The Apocalypse” or “The Pox” beginning in 2015 and lasting until 2030 doesn’t sound so farfetched. Much of Sower took place in 2023-2027 and most of Talents takes place in 2032-2035. Interestingly, Olamina was born in 2009. Later in the book she refers to a 37-year-old as “middle aged”. Also interesting is that another character, Bankole, believes that the Pox really began early than 2015, possibly as early as before the turn of the millennium.
Parable of the Talents mentions several places that are familiar to me. In Sower, Olamina escaped from her destroyed neighborhood of Robledo (fictional name), a suburb of Los Angeles. With all the upheaval in California and the contiguous United States, Alaska becomes a more popular destination than ever. The migration there becomes so great than it secedes from the U.S. and allies itself with Canada. This isn’t so farfetched since there is currently an Alaska Independent Party (AIP). I believe former governor Sarah Palin’s husband was briefly a member of that party. In Talents, the U.S. fights Alaska and Canada in the disastrous Al-Can War. Olamina’s daughter spends her childhood and youth in Seattle that is damaged by missile attacks in the Al-Can War. While planning a trip to Portland, Oregon, Olamina talks to a man from Salem, Oregon about the road ahead.
In Butler’s Parable world the future of education looks very bleak. During the 2020’s, “many public school systems around the country gave up the ghost and closed their doors. Even the pretense of having an educated populace was ending. Politicians shook their heads and said sadly that education was a failed experiment.” (Butler p. 330) By the 2030’s, more than half of the population cannot read at all. Olamina has hope for the future of education in her ability and willingness to teach. At her short-lived Earthseed community she has each child work on one individual project per year as part of their education. Doing so causes most kids to notice that two unrelated projects influence one another in unexpected ways. “This helps the kids learn how the world works, how all sorts of things interact and influence one another. The kids begin to teach themselves and one another. They begin to learn how to learn.” (Butler, p. 136)
Olamina also finds hope for the future in her new religion, Earthseed. The concepts and ideas of Earthseed are more fleshed out in Parable of the Talents. Its main precept is “God is Change”, not some benign being but cold, unfeeling change. People can shape God in positive or negative ways. It seems intriguing. In the book people join because it allows them to be part of something bigger than themselves. It gives them a purpose. Earthseed’s destiny is to “take root among the stars.” In all the chaos of the Pox, all research into interstellar space travel is canceled. Earthseed is a way to revive this dream since, according to Olamina, “preparing for interstellar travel and then sending out ships filled with colonists is bound to be a job so long, thankless, expensive, and difficult that I suspect only a religion can do it.” (p. 323)
Parable of the Talents is so much more than a science fiction novel. Yes, it’s about the future and there are some new technologies such as “dreamask” virtual reality simulations, electronic collars used to keep slaves and prisoners in line, and some now familiar things such as the Internet or “nets” as they’re called in the book. But this vision of the future is really only the setting. It’s a story about pain, loss, and ultimately, hope. It’s about love, friendship, and trust. But the overriding theme is family and all its complications, especially when affected by loss and forced separation. The points of view of Olamina and her daughter are very different. Communication through journal writing is the structure of the story. Olamina describes how things get so difficult that she doesn’t know how to deal with it. But somehow, writing about it always helps. And then there’s the purpose that everyone wants. Olamina writes, “If you want a thing--truly want it, want it so badly that you need it as you need air to breathe, then unless you die, you will have it. Why not? It has you.” (Butler, p. 363)
I first heard of Octavia Butler when I attended Cal State L.A. We watched a video where a teacher led a discussion of one of her books, Parable of the Sower, in a high school English class. I also learned that Octavia Butler attended Cal State L.A. many years ago. From the discussion, the book sounded intriguing. I have always been a fan of science fiction and fantasy but I had never heard of an African American female science fiction writer. Sower seemed to take place in the near future and have a young black woman as protagonist. The future was bleak but there was some hope.
I read Parable of the Sower two years ago and enjoyed it. It is about one main character, Lauren Oya Olamina, whose neighborhood is destroyed by the class struggle and chaos. She travels north walking on the California highways gathering together a group of old and new friends. She has hyperempathy causing her to feel the pleasure and pain experienced by other people she observes. It is caused by a intelligence drug that her mother took. On the road she meets other “sharers”. She also begins writing about a new religion she plans to start called Earthseed. There isn’t much detail about it, mostly just verses appearing at the beginning of each chapter. The book starts in a negative world but ends on a positive note. It’s told in the form of Olamina’s journals.
The Parable of the Talents is the sequel to Sower and begins five years after the end of the first book. Like Sower the title is based on a parable from the Gospel, this time referring to the one where a master gives one servant five talents, another three, and a third just one. The first two invest their talents while the third just buries his. I never completely understood that parable but I can kind of see how it applies to the book. Talents is a much more complex story than Sower. It isn’t just told through Olamina’s journals but also those of her daughter reading them and other characters. The book covers a longer time span and has more characters. It covers the larger events occurring in the U.S. and the world, along with the characters’ stories, more extensively than Parable of the Sower.
Butler’s portrayal of the future seems chillingly realistic given what’s been going on lately. When I read Sower in 2007 I thought the story’s breakdown of civilization was pessimistic at best. But when reading Talents in 2009, a period of upheaval know as “The Apocalypse” or “The Pox” beginning in 2015 and lasting until 2030 doesn’t sound so farfetched. Much of Sower took place in 2023-2027 and most of Talents takes place in 2032-2035. Interestingly, Olamina was born in 2009. Later in the book she refers to a 37-year-old as “middle aged”. Also interesting is that another character, Bankole, believes that the Pox really began early than 2015, possibly as early as before the turn of the millennium.
Parable of the Talents mentions several places that are familiar to me. In Sower, Olamina escaped from her destroyed neighborhood of Robledo (fictional name), a suburb of Los Angeles. With all the upheaval in California and the contiguous United States, Alaska becomes a more popular destination than ever. The migration there becomes so great than it secedes from the U.S. and allies itself with Canada. This isn’t so farfetched since there is currently an Alaska Independent Party (AIP). I believe former governor Sarah Palin’s husband was briefly a member of that party. In Talents, the U.S. fights Alaska and Canada in the disastrous Al-Can War. Olamina’s daughter spends her childhood and youth in Seattle that is damaged by missile attacks in the Al-Can War. While planning a trip to Portland, Oregon, Olamina talks to a man from Salem, Oregon about the road ahead.
In Butler’s Parable world the future of education looks very bleak. During the 2020’s, “many public school systems around the country gave up the ghost and closed their doors. Even the pretense of having an educated populace was ending. Politicians shook their heads and said sadly that education was a failed experiment.” (Butler p. 330) By the 2030’s, more than half of the population cannot read at all. Olamina has hope for the future of education in her ability and willingness to teach. At her short-lived Earthseed community she has each child work on one individual project per year as part of their education. Doing so causes most kids to notice that two unrelated projects influence one another in unexpected ways. “This helps the kids learn how the world works, how all sorts of things interact and influence one another. The kids begin to teach themselves and one another. They begin to learn how to learn.” (Butler, p. 136)
Olamina also finds hope for the future in her new religion, Earthseed. The concepts and ideas of Earthseed are more fleshed out in Parable of the Talents. Its main precept is “God is Change”, not some benign being but cold, unfeeling change. People can shape God in positive or negative ways. It seems intriguing. In the book people join because it allows them to be part of something bigger than themselves. It gives them a purpose. Earthseed’s destiny is to “take root among the stars.” In all the chaos of the Pox, all research into interstellar space travel is canceled. Earthseed is a way to revive this dream since, according to Olamina, “preparing for interstellar travel and then sending out ships filled with colonists is bound to be a job so long, thankless, expensive, and difficult that I suspect only a religion can do it.” (p. 323)
Parable of the Talents is so much more than a science fiction novel. Yes, it’s about the future and there are some new technologies such as “dreamask” virtual reality simulations, electronic collars used to keep slaves and prisoners in line, and some now familiar things such as the Internet or “nets” as they’re called in the book. But this vision of the future is really only the setting. It’s a story about pain, loss, and ultimately, hope. It’s about love, friendship, and trust. But the overriding theme is family and all its complications, especially when affected by loss and forced separation. The points of view of Olamina and her daughter are very different. Communication through journal writing is the structure of the story. Olamina describes how things get so difficult that she doesn’t know how to deal with it. But somehow, writing about it always helps. And then there’s the purpose that everyone wants. Olamina writes, “If you want a thing--truly want it, want it so badly that you need it as you need air to breathe, then unless you die, you will have it. Why not? It has you.” (Butler, p. 363)
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