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.