Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower Compared to Real Life

Parable of the Sower is a very well-written science

fiction novel by Octavia Butler. The setting is California

in the year 2025. The world is no longer prosperous and

has turned into a very poor place. There are countless

people homeless, jobs are scarce and hard to come by, and

very few communities of homes. The few communities that

are still occupied have huge walls with barbed wire and

laser wire surrounding them. There are robberies, murders,

and rapes just about every day. People walk the streets

naked and bloody because their clothes were stolen.

Some people live in the hills like animals. They

kill anything that comes along, human or not, for food and

their territory. Everyone who has a chance to live must

carry a gun so no one harm or try to do anything to them.

In this society the police don't help because they

are now very expensive and cost a lot of money just to come

onto a scene. Most people can't afford to pay them so they

handle whatever situation should arise themselves. It

seems that people have nothing so they have lost sight of

their morals and turned into scavengers, however people

still residing in communities still find the time to attend

church on Sundays.

The main character of Parable of the Sower is Lauren

Olamina. She seems very smart and pretty close to a person

of our times, other than the fact that she experiences

twice the feeling of what she sees. This means that when

Lauren goes on a bike ride and sees all the sick and

injured people roaming around, she feels what they feel and

she hurts because she's sad to see those people.

Lauren also feels twice what animals feel. At one

point in Parable of the Sower Lauren's father had to kill a

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... If the Parable of the Sower's reality was ours, we

couldn't look into the past for answers because our world

has never seen anything like that.

The Parable of the Sower was a very entertaining

novel. I found myself getting attached to Lauren Olamina.

Her views and attitude are similar to how I would act if I

were in her shoes. I can't say I would be as patient as

she is, but for the most part, I related to her. I looked

forward to see what she would do next. I haven't anything

negative to say about this book, and I would definitely

recommend it to anyone who is open to read a fun book.

WORKS CITED

Butler, Octavia E. "Parable of the Sower." A Four Walls

Eight Windows First Edition, New York, 1993.

LeGuin, Ursula K. "Dancing at the Edge of the World,"

Science Fiction and the Future, 1985. Oregon Museum of

Science and Industry.