Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

• Born: June 22, 1947
• Birthplace: Pasadena, California
• Died: February 24, 2006
• Place of death: Seattle, Washington

First published: 1993

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Dystopian

Time of plot: July 2024 to October 2027

Locale: California

Principal Characters

Lauren Olamina, a young black woman

Reverend Olamina, her father, a pastor and town leader

Zahra Moss, a young woman who travels with her

Harry Balter, a young man who travels with her

Taylor Franklin Bankole, an older man in his late fifties, whom she meets on the road

The Story

The story begins in the dystopian future of 2024 in Robledo, California, in a gated community near Los Angeles, where a group is venturing outside for a baptism at a nearby church. Outside the walls of their neighborhood, the group sees people who are hurting, abused, and starving, while inside the walls of their community, there is relative safety. Among the group is fifteen-year-old Lauren Olamina, whose father is the pastor and leader of the Robledo community. Lauren, however, has begun to develop the theology of her own religion, which she calls Earthseed, based on the tenuous world where she lives. The main tenet of her religion is that God is change.

Amy Dunn, Lauren’s three-year-old neighbor, is killed by a random gunshot from the outside. This prompts Lauren to create emergency escape plans and a survival pack if outside invaders should attack their community. Joanne Garfield, her best friend, relays her plans to Reverend Olamina, and her father severely scolds Lauren and tells her to teach people rather than scare them. Meanwhile, Reverend Olamina sets up a neighborhood watch to catch thieves from the outside who try to steal their supplies, and he and his wife, Cory, debate whether to use lethal force against the thieves.

Lauren’s friend Bianca Montoya and Bianca’s boyfriend, Jorge Iturbe, become pregnant and begin planning their wedding. Lauren, thinking of her boyfriend Curtis Talcott, is baffled that anyone could consider marriage or bringing children into this violent world. Lauren has a rare disorder called hyperempathy syndrome, which causes her to feel the physical pain of people nearby, so she is especially sensitive to putting herself in the way of danger or of others’ pain.

The situation outside Lauren’s community worsens when Keith, Lauren’s younger brother, joins a gang from the outside. He ultimately is mutilated and murdered. Moreover, robberies and arson in the area are on the rise, and the price of water surpasses that of gasoline. Soon after Keith’s death, Reverend Olamina does not return home from a trip outside and is never heard from again.

Joanne’s family, the Garfields, plan to leave Robledo for Olivar, a coastal company town that is looking for workers. An international firm called KFS controls the water supplies, power, and agricultural output of Olivar and is offering room and board to workers. However, a number of people suspect that Olivar is a farm conglomerate that enslaves its workers through debt. Curtis proposes marriage and escape, but Lauren wants to remain in Robledo until her family is better adjusted following the presumed death of her father.

Fueled by drugs, a group of pyromaniac-addicts attacks the Robledo community, and everyone flees. Lauren loses Cory and her half brothers in the confusion. When she returns to the town, all is ruined and burned, and she discovers that her family has been killed.

Lauren finds and teams up with her neighbors Zahra Moss and Harry Balter, who also survived the attack on Robledo. They decide to travel together northward to Canada. They begin following the highway toward Oregon. When they are attacked while camping out one night, Lauren kills the attacker but is nearly disabled as she feels his pain. Thus, she is forced to tell Harry and Zahra about her hyperempathy. She also shares with them, from her journal, the first lines of Earthseed, that God is change. That same night, Lauren wakes to Zahra and Harry making love on their watch. Lauren later rebukes him for not taking his watch duties seriously.

On the freeway, Lauren sees thieves who are attacking a couple, Travis and Gloria Douglas, and their baby, Dominic. She drives the attackers off and then invites this family to join their gang. On their journey, the group talks and argues about Earthseed. Lauren wants to transform this growing group into an Earthseed community.

When they pass another scorched community, a well-dressed, handsome older man named Taylor Franklin Bankole joins their group. They also rescue two prostitute sisters, Allie and Jill Gilchrist, from the rubble of a destroyed building, and these two women join their group as well.

The group hears radio messages and learns that the Bay Area is in a state of chaos. This convinces the group not to rest but to keep going along another route. When they reach the San Luis Reservoir, Bankole finds a recently orphaned child, whom they decide to include in their group.

They set up camp around the San Luis Reservoir, and Lauren tells Bankole about Earthseed, but he is skeptical of her religious beliefs. They consummate their relationship, after which Bankole is shocked to discover that Lauren is eighteen years old, but she insists that she wants to be with him.

They continue their trek northward and encounter a growing trend of cannibalism. Bankole asks Lauren to come with him to his land in Clear Lake, where his sister and her family live on three hundred acres of remote and well-hidden farmland. Lauren then shares with him about her hyperempathy, and they agree to marry when they arrive.

On Jill’s watch, a woman named Emery Solis and her nine-year-old daughter, Tori, sneak through their defenses and beg to be let go when they are discovered in their camp. To their surprise, the group feeds them and ultimately agrees to take them in. Soon after, Tori finds two new companions for the group: Grayson Mora and his daughter, Doe, who is ten.

When Emery takes the girls away from the group to urinate, a big man attacks them. Their cries alert Lauren’s group, all of whom come running but so do the man’s companions. Lauren shoots the attacker, knocking herself out as she experiences his pain. When more members of the other gang dies, Lauren feels as if she has died and been revived several times. When the dust settles, they discover Jill Gilchrist died while escaping the fight with Tori. Everyone else is unhurt, but Lauren has a deep flesh wound. Lauren discovers that Emery and Grayson and their daughters are also hyperempathic and talks about the experience with them.

The gang moves on toward Clear Lake, but when they arrive, they discover that Bankole’s land is nothing but scorched earth and ashes. They find five skulls, which they suspect belong to Bankole’s sister, her husband, and their three children. After a debate, the group decides to stay. As group, they have a funeral for all those they have lost, planting acorns for their loved ones.

Bibliography

Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Talents. New York: Seven Stories, 1998. Print.

Butler, Octavia E. Fledging. New York: Seven Stories, 2005. Print.

Canavan, Gerry. "‘There’s Nothing New under the Sun, but There Are New Suns’: Recovering Octavia E. Butler’s Lost Parables." Los Angeles Review of Books. Los Angeles Review of Books, 9 June 2014. Web. 30 June 2014.

Francis, Consuela. Conversations with Octavia Butler. Oxford: U of Mississippi P, 2009. Print.

Holden, Rebecca, and Nisi Shawl. Science Fiction, Feminism, African American Voices, and Octavia E. Butler. Seattle: Aqueduct, 2013. Print.