This is the reading guide that Amy put together for the first Counternarratives Book Club, for Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. The discussion begins tonight, March 23, at 5pm. (Want to join via Zoom? Here’s the link.)
Points to Consider
As you read, consider the following larger themes and moments in the novel:
- The relationship of Lauren’s religion, Earthseed, to the dystopian setting. How does Earthseed interact with other aspects of Lauren’s worldview? What is the significance of the title? (The biblical parable is printed in the Reader’s Guide in the 2023 edition, or it is easy to find online.) What do you think of LeVar Burton’s assertion that Earthseed is “useless to those who might embrace it, unless the philosophical ideas are seeded in and bound by a culture of service to others?”
- The conversations between Lauren and Joanne, and then Lauren and her father, about Lauren’s predictions about what will come to pass, and what needs to happen to prepare for the future. Consider the conflicts around denial versus paranoia, and scaring people versus educating them.
- Consider gender roles in the novel. In many ways, Lauren is expected to fulfill stereotypically feminine roles in the care of her younger brothers, but in other ways, her father affords her certain privileges due to her age, that he denies to her younger brothers. Consider also the notions of masculinity explored in the characters of Keith and Richard Moss.
Prompts
Please also consider the following two more substantive prompts. You might even take the time to write or journal about one or both of these prompts:
One. Rising food prices and sea levels, extreme income inequality, measles outbreaks, wildfires in LA, a new president bent on slashing federal programs: the 2024-2025 (and beyond) America of Octavia Butler’s 1993 novel bears an eerie resemblance to our own. In a 1999 interview printed in the 30th Anniversary edition, she says, “The idea in Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents is…to look at where we are now, what we are doing now, and to consider where some of our current behaviors and unattended problems might take us.”
There are also striking differences. We do not live in neighborhoods with fortress-like walls and risk being killed when we are outside those walls, men are not increasingly adding more than one wife to their household, and we still commonly eat bread made with flour, rye, oats, and corn. There’s still plenty of light pollution. Put simply, the U.S. economy and rule of law hasn’t deteriorated to nearly the extent that it has in Lauren’s America.
Take an inventory of your own hopes and fears around these similarities and differences. Then: where do you see possibility? What kind of action and imaginative force is required of you, now and going forward?
Two. In Lauren, we see a push and pull between serving her community and her own survival instincts, and between the idealism of Earthseed and her pragmatic understanding of reality (and the need for guns and a go bag). And, because of her mother’s perinatal drug use, Lauren has such intense hyperempathy that she wonders if she’d die if she shot another person. She sees this as a liability, to put it lightly. Even her concern for little Amy Dunn is shot through with a cold pragmatism: “I’ve been taking care of little kids since I was one, and I’m tired of it. I think, though, that if someone doesn’t help Amy now, someday she’ll do something a lot worse than burning down her family’s garage.”
How does Lauren reckon with this paradox? Where do you see similar or other irreconcilable tensions within yourself? How do you reckon with those?