A Novel
A cautionary tale and coming-of-age story in a dystopia that’s eerily realistic.
You can only read Parable of the Sower if you are highly disturbed by how relevant Butler's world-building is to the United States. One of the reasons for this is that the novel begins in 2024. Butler's story is set in California, just outside of Los Angeles. A walled community. The world is depicted as frightening, hungry, and desperate. A dozen neighbors work hard to survive within the community's walls by collaborating. Among them is Lauren Olamina, a fifteen-year-old Black girl who does everything she can to warn residents that their community will not be indefinitely protected from the outside world.
When the village eventually falls, Lauren is forced to leave her home and travel north with other refugees in search of labor that pays well and does not convert them into slaves.
This is a coming-of-age story, an investigation of people's character in times of adversity, and a philosophy on the world's most potent force: transformation. Butler demonstrates that slavery isn't as far removed from our current world as we would like to believe and that the most vulnerable among us will be the first to fall prey if and when times are tough.
In this synopsis, we'll briefly summarize the critical story points in this acclaimed post-apocalyptic novel, concluding with a brief analysis of some key themes.
So, let us begin.
1. Times are harsh.
The year is 2024, the month is July, and the community's last wall-screen television has just gone out. Lauren and some of the hamlet's other youthful residents are leaving the walled town to ride their bikes to a nearby church. They are accompanied by Lauren's father, the community's pastor. Despite the difficulties, the town's residents have pooled their resources to fill the church baptistry so that the next generation might be christened.
Lauren is being baptized out of respect for her father, not because of her faith. She no longer believes in his Christian God or any of the other major religions. She's been reflecting on a new prospective God centered on the concept of change and developing her own theories around this new God. She may even be creating her religion, although she has yet to determine what that involves.
The group must pedal past the impoverished people who reside beyond its boundaries to get to the church. These are homeless individuals. People are desperate. Among them are numerous victims. Naked ladies and children. Lauren has hyperempathy, a rare trait caused by her mother's drug use while pregnant. Lauren's hyperempathy allows her to experience the emotional and physical agony of people and animals around her. Lauren is forced to kill a wild dog that is menacing her group while on a shooting practice outing. She feels its suffering and sees it die, just as if she were dying, but she does not die alongside it.
Lauren's community is safe and supportive, but times are still tricky. Starvation is not far away for any of them. Raiders periodically make their way over the fences, and individuals are slain when they venture outside the fortifications.
Lauren understands what no one else does: life as we know it is just transient. Everyone seemed pleased with their agony, hoping the next president would restore things to normal. Lauren, on the other hand, is aware of impending doom.
ANALYSIS
When we meet Lauren's community members, we quickly notice a generational difference between those who remember the past and those who just know the present. This thought will emerge as we understand that Lauren's perspective on the future differs from, and is likely more functional than, that of the adults around her.
Violence in the Parable of the Sower is harsh. Outside the walls, individuals are raped, abused, and killed. There is no apparent law enforcement or outright condemnation of the behavior. These are just some of the current atrocities committed by people against one another. It is a fact.
Lauren often discusses transformation. She discusses God in the same context. She's developing her guiding philosophy: that the only God is Change, with a capital C. That with a God-like shift, you will either experience change for yourself or be annihilated. Finally, you get to select between those two endings.
Lauren begins to write down verses that reflect this philosophy. She eventually accepts that she is founding a new religion, Earthseed. The Earthseed religion is based on the belief that God is changing, that humans can shape God, and that people's destiny is found among the stars.
2. The prodigal son
Lauren's in trouble. She had expressed her worries about the community's grim future to a friend, but it was not received well. Lauren's buddy was scared and told on her, so her father sat her down and talked to her.
As a teenager, she believes she is the only one who understands what is happening and that the community is rejecting its impending annihilation. However, after speaking with her father, she discovers he also understands. But he reminds her that educating people is better than fearing them. That is why he takes young people out for shooting lessons and teaches them how to make "earthquake packs," even though he is preparing them for escape rather than natural disasters.
The chat helps Lauren realize why her father makes the decisions he does. She admires him but understands that she will have to leave him one day. He still holds onto the hope of a society she believes will never exist again.
Lauren's brother Keith also wants to leave the town for different reasons. At 13, he's youthful and restless, ready to prove his manhood by sneaking out and exploring what is beyond the gates. On his first excursion out, he goes for five days and returns bruised, bleeding, and just wearing his underwear.
Their father lectured him and made him apologize in church the following day. Keith had taken the key to the community gate, which was later stolen, putting the entire town at risk. Keith apologizes but hasn't learned his lesson and leaves again.
Keith spends a few months living outside the walls. He frequently returns to see his mother, Lauren's stepmother, Cory, and to present gifts to the two siblings he adores. Lauren inquires if he makes his money from prostitution or drugs. He says he makes money by teaching his pals to read. However, he eventually admits that he murdered a wealthy man on the road and stole everything from him.
Shortly later, the authorities contact Lauren's father and stepmother to identify Keith's body. He had been slowly and painstakingly tortured to death, most likely by narcotics dealers he had stolen from.
ANALYSIS
Unlike her father, Lauren has no link to the hope symbolized by insurance and a paid-off property. Her focus is on the stars and Japan and other countries that continue to invest in space flight. The United States is withdrawing from space exploration, signaling to Lauren that she lives in a country with little possibility of survival.
We're also seeing the development of a prophet. Lauren is consistently penning her Earthseed verses. They are simple, straightforward, and tell the truth. She believes they also serve as the foundation for a philosophy that has the potential to galvanize a following and propel humanity beyond space.
Keith served as a cautionary tale, answering whether it is possible to adapt to the world as it currently stands. The answer is no - only when you sell your soul. Not without injuring others. Lauren understands that humanity must adapt and that progress cannot occur if individuals cling to the past.
3. A breach
Lauren begins to wonder if her only options are to stay with her family in a rapidly deteriorating, increasingly hazardous walled-in society or to break out on her own and travel north. They've heard that there are jobs and decent living conditions up there.
Lauren's father, who also teaches at a nearby college, disappears one day while at work. Lauren contributes to her family's well-being, but the town is deteriorating without her father's leadership. Lauren's prophecy is fulfilled a few months after Daniel goes missing: one night, a group of raiders rams a truck through the community gate.
Thieves, killers, and desperate, malnourished individuals will stream in as soon as the gap opens. Every house is on fire. People are pulled from their homes, raped, killed, and robbed.
Lauren runs, following her stepmother and little brothers, but loses sight of them. She grabs a gun off a corpse and flees through the gate. She comes onto a burned-out garage and finds shelter for the night.
The following morning, she returns to try to reunite with her stepmother and brothers. She discovers that they are dead and that her community has been burned down. It is now routinely ransacked by gangs of scavengers. Lauren, filthy, bloodied, and fatigued, becomes a scavenger in her own home, packing a few articles of clothing and a packet of emergency money hidden under a tree.
Lauren is appalled by what she sees. Friends and neighbors lie dead on the ground, with their pockets looted. Perhaps this neighborhood appeared wealthy to others beyond the wall, but it was not. What did these beasts gain by burning everything down?
Lauren hears someone calling her name. She is joined by Harry, a young man, and Zhara, a woman who formerly resided in the neighborhood. The three return to the burned-out garage to heal and share their knowledge. After some rest, they pack their belongings and begin their journey north, stopping at a highly protected shopping mall to acquire supplies.
ANALYSIS
While this work of fiction depicts an eerily plausible near future, it also tells a story of growing up and human progress. A child cannot grow up in the shadow of their parents. The human species cannot grow up in the shadow of its home planet.
Lauren understands that God is changing. She refers to preparation and planning as "godshaping" because it is a method of influencing change in one's favor, or at least attempting to. She understands that resisting change is to perish. Unfortunately, she is forced to leave town before making her own decision.
To this point, the novel has dealt with themes of gender and racial inequality, but now that Lauren has been forced to leave her hometown, she must address racial concerns hard on. Harry is white, whereas Lauren and Zhara are black. Lauren has decided to travel as a male in the hopes of lowering the possibility of violence against her and Zhara, as well as against them and Harry for looking to be a "mixed" trio.
4. On the road
An attack occurs during the night on Harry's watch. Lauren is startled awake when she feels the weight of a dead body falls on her. When she gets up, she notices Harry in a losing battle with another man. Lauren pulls up a heavy rock and hits the man in the back of the head.
Lauren's hyperempathy causes her to pass out as she senses the suffering she has caused. When she awakens, she notices Harry and Zhara watching over her with worry, and she realizes she must inform them about her hyperempathy, or "sharing," as she puts it. But first, she must deal with the man, who is unconscious but not dead.
She feels the back of his head and realizes his wound is if not deadly, at least life-changing. If they walk away from him, he will most certainly suffer significantly before death. Lauren would be affected by her sharing. Furthermore, if he survives, he will most likely seek them out.
Lauren believes she has no choice except to end his life for all these reasons. When Harry refuses to give her the gun, she uses her knife to slit the man's throat. Three survivors
Search his body and that of the other deceased for resources, discovering some money and a few other stuff. Then Lauren sits down and informs them about her condition. They chat for a bit, and Harry decides to continue as a group, but he wants to read some of Lauren's diary entries to better understand who she is.
Lauren, for the first time, reveals her Earthseed verses.
Over the next few days on the journey, the group saves a young family from scavengers. The family, consisting of a father, mother, and three-month-old child, joins the group. The father had been little more than a slave serving a white family. The mother had been their maid. When the lord of the home began tormenting the mother, they fled.
The path also delivers a middle-aged man carrying a cart with saddlebags containing his goods. His name is Bankole, and he and Lauren have an instant bond. Additionally, the group saves two young women from the debris left by a recent earthquake. Their final group addition is a three-year-old child whose mother was inadvertently shot and killed.
Now that they are going in a larger group, they have more individuals to keep an eye out for and use weapons. However, they are particularly vulnerable to little infants, whose cries readily reveal them in the wrong situation.
Lauren explains her Earthseed vision to these people and gains her first converts and disciples.
ANALYSIS
What would you do to survive? Lauren's experiences serve to both ask and answer this question. Harry represents the part of us that clings to civilization and refuses to plunge into animalistic survival. On the other hand, Lauren demonstrates that you can survive without losing your humanity by welcoming the family.
This section goes into greater detail on the Earthseed doctrine. We discover why Lauren prefers talking about God as capital-C Change rather than discussing change in general. She says people remember God but forget ideas, so it's best to name them. She also discusses God as a neutral agent. It neither loves nor hates you. It has a nature, which is change, and that nature is best paired with rather than opposed.
This part also delves into questions of slavery. Travis and Natividad, the young couple with the infant, lived in conditions similar to those of slaves in the nineteenth century. The idea that masters abuse their slaves is discussed. We are asked to investigate whether these actions are related to the environment in which we live. The more desperate and hungry we are, the more prone we are to resort to tribal behavior, regard one another as adversaries and become the worst versions of ourselves.
5. An ending and a beginning.
Lauren learns more about the people she's welcomed into her group as the trek north progresses and eventually adopts a couple of them.
One night, while they are lying low to escape road violence, a mother and daughter sneak into their group and fall asleep. When Lauren awakens and sees them, she immediately evaluates the situation. After some deliberation, they decide to let them remain. Shortly after, they encounter a father and daughter who also join the gang. These newbies also share.
As they open up to new people, they gain trust in each other. Lauren informs Bankole about her beliefs and how she shares. In turn, Bankole admits that he isn't simply traveling north; he's going to his own 300-acre plot in northern California. His sister and her family currently live there.
Bankole invites Lauren to marry him and live with him there. She informs him that she wants to build a village and that if he agrees to share his land for that purpose, she will marry him. He agrees.
When they reach Bankole's property, instead of a house, they discover a burned patch and the skulls of what they can only presume are his sister and her family.
Despite this, they discover that they have formed a solid community whose members have come to rely on one another. They've got several children in need of care. With their limited resources, they may establish and protect a settlement on the land here.
They bury an acorn for each of their loved ones, hoping that one day, a grove of trees would bloom in their honor. Then, they set out to build shelter and cultivate seeds.
ANALYSIS
Reading the book as a coming-of-age story, we eventually see Lauren as a lady. She has fallen in love with a man considerably older than her, but it is a sensible decision. He is kind, a doctor, owns the land, and has a positive outlook for their future together. While she is still shaping her opinions on Earthseed, she has finally planted the seed for what will one day be a thriving community.
Her decision to join forces with Bankole is intriguing, given that she had spent most of the novel attempting to break free from the past. She gets upset with those who are stuck in the past. She believes that mankind's destiny lies among the stars.
However, Lauren's more mature version seemed to comprehend that a trip to the stars would still be grounded in earthly reality. She is creating balance for herself by connecting with someone who has ties to the past, and she is balancing her revolution with people's terrestrial needs for food, housing, stability, and community.
The story closes with a beginning rather than an ending. And it concludes with a sense of realistic hope. They understand that their community will never be completely safe, but they have a fair expectation that they will be able to survive and possibly prosper in this new environment.
Final Summary
Change is the most potent force on Earth. Our only hope is to shape it when necessary and bend with it. Lauren's journey north and into adulthood demonstrates the evolution of her understanding of this concept.
Initially, she focuses on survival skills. When circumstances compel her to leave home before she is ready, she travels with those she knows. Her primary priority is survival. However, as she observes and learns about life on the road, she realizes the humanity that exists there and the value of community building. Throughout their journey north, she and her gang gradually evolve, learning to work together even when they disagree and prioritizing the care of the vulnerable.
Lauren develops an odd affection and affinity with these strangers, to the point where she can plant the seeds of her new religion among them. The community they build is far from secure, but it is a source of hope.