Parable of the Sower (Summary)

Set in the year 2024 in southern California, Butler envisions a dystopian future for America. Civil infrastructure has all but collapsed. State lines in the Northwest, a new haven of sorts, are now treated as national borders. Many cities behave as city-states. Neighborhoods that once were economically well off are now secure only because they are gated. Many of these ails envisioned by Butler are indicative of current trends today; thus making the novel more palatable as opposed to alienating like many science fiction fantasies.

The protagonist, Lauren Olamina, a young African-American teenager, keeps a diary like account of the world she lives in. Fashioned as a hyper-empath by Butler, being able to feel the pain and pleasure of any living thing, Lauren has an unique outlook in the uncertain world she lives living is a futuristic dystopian version of America. The walls of Lauren’s world literally come crashing when scavengers and gangs bombard the neighborhood enclave in which she lives with a truck. The community is burned down, people are shot for no reason, young girls are raped and the houses are looted as the seventeen-year-old Lauren escapes.

Dawn (Summary)

Octavia Butler’s Dawn is the first book of the xenogenesis series. Lilith, the protagonist, is selected to lead the way in repopulating the Earth after the nuclear war. She is capture by aliens called the Oankali. All of the healthy humans who were still living before the nuclear winter set in were captured. They are not as benevolent as one would hope aliens who intend to repopulate the Earth to be. They intend on sending people down to start a new agriculture society. They will trade with them. But its genetic material they will trade with.

Like Parable of the Sower, Butler focuses on the actions of Lilith and her thoughts in a way that would belie the extraordinary situation she is in. Although many of the humans are difficult to identify with due to their seemly inherent nature, the aliens will offer die hard science fiction fans lost of enjoyment.

Teaching Parable of the Sower

A novel like this would be best for 11th and 12th graders either in book clubs or individually. Students would maintain a journal in which they took Butler’s parables and related them to what happened in that section of the book. They would also be given background information, mostly news articles, of the growing chasm between the rich and literary criticisms of slave narratives. There is a particular commentator that fleshes out how, why, and to what end slave narratives went to invoke a sense of empathy for their largely White audience.

This would be a great novel to end a unit analyzing the role of slave narratives in America. Students should read Incidents of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs and, although not actually a slave narrative, The Confessions of Nat Turner by Thomas Ruffin Gray. Some supplemental material would be Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property, a film by Charles Burnett and biographies of Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth. Incidents of a Slave girl would work well with Parable of the Sower because Butler, like Jacobs, emphasizes the suffering of girls on the verge of woman hood during slavery and slave-like conditions. The Confessions of Nat Turner by Gray along with Burnett’s film and the biography of Sojourner Truth would allow some interesting analysis to occur pertaining freedom and religious “restructuring” in Parable of the Sower. And finally the biography of Harriet Tubman would offer a lot of dialogue about woman taking up the appearance of men and traveling north while stewarding runaways.

Concerns About Novel

Although Parable of the Sower is great novel in its own right there are a number of challenges in teaching it. Although not excessive, there is explicit use of language. The is large amount of violence in the form of torture, rape, and death. Cannibalism is depicted although appearing somewhat amoral. There is moderate to moderately strong sexual content. There is also language that can come across as being cult-like. Despite all these issues I would still recommend and teach this novel. It allows teachers to easily draw those sometimes difficult connections of great literature of the past to relevancy to the present and critical to avert a dystopian future.

BIOGRAPHY

Lilith's Brood (2000)
Parable of the Talents (1998)
Bloodchild and Other Stories (1995)
Mind of My Mind (1994)
Parable of the Sower (1993)
Imago (1989)
Adulthood Rites (1988)
Dawn (1987)
Clay's Ark (1984)
Wild Seed (1980)
Kindred (1979)
Survivor (1978)
Mind of My Mind (1977)
Patternmaster (1976)

AWARDS

Winner:
2000: lifetime achievement award in writing from the PEN American Center
1999: Nebula Award for Best Novel - Parable of the Talents
1995: MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant
1985: Hugo Award for Best Novelette - Bloodchild
1985: Locus Award for Best Novelette - "Bloodchild"
1985: Science Fiction Chronicle Award for Best Novelette - "Bloodchild"
1984: Nebula Award for Best Novelette - Bloodchild
1984: Hugo Award for Best Short Story - Speech Sounds
1980: Creative Arts Award, L.A. YWCA

Nominated:
1994: Nebula Award for Best Novel - Parable of the Sower
1987: Nebula Award for Best Novelette - The Evening and the Morning and the Night
1967: Fifth Place, Writer's Digest Short Story Contest