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| Octavia Butler |
Butler described Parable
of the Sower as one of her more “serious works,” and she intended it to be
a “cautionary tale.” It serves as social commentary of “what
we’re coming to if we’re not careful.” What could happen, for example, should
the world continue to ignore the dangers of climate change. Butler, however,
did not consider her works as prophecy, preferring instead to consider them as “cautionary
tales” (Francis 2010: 168, 172). In a biblical sense, however, they could be
viewed as prophetic, since biblical prophets proclaim a present critique of
contemporary society and announce consequences that will occur in the
relatively near future if society does not change its patterns of behavior. Prophets
thus demand a present response that could prevent or ameliorate those
often-imminent dire consequences. Likewise, Butler also wanted to address
additional problems currently happening in the United States (and elsewhere) by
warning about the direction in which humanity was headed, a society in which
institutions might exist (e.g., police or fire departments) but were no longer
functioning. Butler extrapolates from what she saw as current trends in
society, the increasing divide between rich and poor, the changes in the earth’s
climate, the fear of crime, and all of the centrifugal forces that were “tearing
. . . society apart” and examines the resulting issues of social power and its
effects. Butler noted (in 1994) that she was greatly concerned about the fact
that there were “so many terrible things that are going on that no one is
paying attention to because they aren’t quite that bad yet.” The major problem
is the world-wide issue of climate change—so much so that Butler notes that “ecology,
especially global warming, is almost a character” (Francis 2010: 91; Butler
later states that global warming is indeed a character, 184), but it also
includes specifically the modern examples of slavery where people were being
held against their will, something that she “pulled out of the newspapers”
about what was occurring in places like Southern California or some rural
places in the South. Another related example was people being forced to work at
what she called “throw-away labor,” where U.S. companies were moving jobs out
of the United States and into places where labor was extremely cheap, environmental
and safety rules were extremely lax, and living conditions of workers were “horrible,”
such as in the Maquiladora Plants in Mexico (Francis 2010: 44, 54-55, 60, 69).
For those of you familiar with parable scholarship, some of what Butler says about her Parable of the Sower approaches the perspective of William Herzog and others on what parables
are and do:
The focus of the parables was not
on a vision of the glory of the reign of God, but on the gory details of how
oppression served the interests of a ruling class . . . . [T]hey explored how human beings could
respond to break the spiral of violence and cycle of poverty created by
exploitation and oppression. The parable
was a form of social analysis every bit as much as it was a form of theological
reflection” William R. Herzog II, Parables as Subversive Speech).
Ultimately, the Parable
of the Sower, like most of Octavia Butler’s stories, is about the human
condition, the struggle of human beings to be or do something. Lauren’s story,
for example, is a coming of age story—she undergoes a significant test that she
must overcome—but it also involves a quest: Lauren’s quest and the quest of the
community gathering around her is to be the seed that is sown upon the good soil
and brings forth fruit. Lauren’s ultimate dream begins to take shape as she
makes her journey to the north; she wants to bring people together into a
community to form Earthseed, a
community with purpose and meaning. Like all
of her novels, Parable of the Sower’s ending
is a hopeful one, and it follows, more-or-less, the biblical parable for which
it is named. Lauren, Zahra, Harry, Bankole, and the others who join them have
lost almost everything, but they find a way to be the seeds who are planted in
fruitful soil.
In 2000, Butler reflected on her use of the biblical parable
in her novel. Butler was raised Baptist but left the faith and came to despise
religion. Later in her life, however, even though she never became religious, she began to appreciate religion. Being raised Baptist, for example,
instilled a conscience in her very early in her life, and she regretted the
fact that people without such consciences had so much power in society. So she
decided that it would actually be better for there to be more religion, not less, in the sense that people should have
consciences engaged by participation in "good" (e.g., non-fundamentalist) religion and to struggle every day, like Butler’s mother, to live according to
the religion they believe in.
Butler believes that religion can be needed, and she states
that the religion Lauren/Olamina “discovered” would change over time to become more “comforting”
(e.g., life after death). As Butler notes, religion needs to be comforting for
those who are oppressed or suffering:
It’s those people who have so
little, and who suffer so much, who need at least for religion to comfort them.
Nothing else is. Once you grow past Mommy and Daddy coming running when you
hurt, you’re really on your own. You’re alone, and there’s no one to help you
(Francis 2010: 187).
Butler then concludes:
Religion really is a part of human
nature. We never grow out of that need to call “Mama!” and have somebody come
running to make it OK. And once we’re old, “God help me!” serves the same
function. The sower in the biblical parable of the sower is despairing. The
sower goes out to sow his seed, and the birds eat some of it, some falls on
rocks and doesn’t germinate, some falls in very shallow soil and dies soon
after germination. But a little bit of it falls on good ground, and it
reproduces a hundredfold. That’s why I used it as the title—I did see some significance to it!
I will begin a summary and analysis of Butler's Parable of the Talents in the next post.
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