Change, Change, Change

 “Parable of the Sower”by Octavia Butler, 1993

This is a dystopian novel of speculative fiction set in California that posits the need for a new materialist religion - 'Earthseed' - as the answer to the collapse of society. The book starts in a modest 'gated' community in a cul-de-sac near Los Angeles, surrounded by poverty, homelessness, crime, drugs, unemployment, hunger, rape and violence. Outside feral dogs roam, bodies rot, theft is a way of life, arson is frequent, gasoline rare and water expensive as a drought has been going on for years. The residents of the cul-de-sac have to band together to defend themselves from murderous gangs and opportunistic thieves on the other side of their wall. They raise vegetables and fruit and have some chickens and rabbits to supplement their small wages. Many people live in each house in the neighborhood – Latinos, African-Americans, European Americans. The criminals and scavengers outside see them as 'rich' and invading their little area as some kind of class-war, even though they are nowhere near the actual rich sheltering in wealthy enclaves with hired protection, helicopters and money. They are a besieged proletarian group that has not yet become criminalized.

We first meet the lead character Lauren as a bright, dark-skinned kid of 15 in the year 2024. She has a physical problem called hyperempathy, which forces her to feel others' pain. Her father is a Baptist preacher and the leader of the neighborhood, married to a Latino woman with 3 younger sons. The neighbors practice marksmanship as a group in the hills around the neighborhood in bicycle forays into the dangerous outside world. Lauren understands their situation is untenable in the long run, as the 'old days' won't be coming back. She prepares a run-pack full of items useful in surviving outside the neighborhood, from water to sun block to maps to a gun. She also begins to write verses which become part of “The Book of the Living” which forms the basis of her ideology called Earthseed. It posits that “God is Change.” The 'out there' part to most everyone she explains it to - her 'converts' - is that the final goal is to leave planet Earth and live 'among the stars.' She's a 'sower' of this 'seed' even at 18. So there is a hint of the irrational and escapist Heaven's Gate cult here.

Lauren sense of the future is correct and several years later their compound is overrun by arsonists, murderers and thieves. Her whole family dies and she sets off with two other neighborhood survivors to walk north to Oregon, Washington or Canada. It becomes a far more detailed, factual and less Biblical version of Cormac McCarthy's “The Road.” They walk to the ocean on a freeway from LA, then up the 101 along the coast and over to the I-5 through Sacramento, then back to the coast. They want to avoid the chaos in the Bay Area which after an earthquake has become a violent hotbed. Thousands of other refugees are also on the road walking north. Oddly no one is on a bicycle... which might be because it would be a target for theft. Almost no one is in a vehicle either. The group helps people and picks up friendly stragglers, children and couples who Lauren hopes will be part of a rural Earthseed commune somewhere in the North. They have cash, guns, knives, dried and picked food, sleeping packs, water jugs, a tiny radio and changes of clothes, especially shoes. All of them work to avoid trouble and protect each other, standing night watch, buying items along the way, avoiding police, violence and thugs, or killing them if need be. Lauren evaluates the quality of each new arrival to see if they are helpful or a dangerous hindrance. In a way the story feeds into the survivalist movement … though having a 'go bag' and planning for power failures, disaster or escapes is quite practical even now.

Along the way, some of the multi-ethnic party who join have escaped from prostitution or debt slavery. One woman's children were taken away from her. In one case they hear that a man bought multiple wives. They see hungry scavengers feasting on body parts. Every store has heavily armed guards. Drugged crazies take a pill that induces pyromania, leading to many fires. Criminal gangs waylay travelers, trucks and anything else. The party strips bodies to get necessities as a practical form of survival. Some who join them might be ex-slaves, so Lauren guesses their journey is a new underground railroad. There are stories of slave factories full of injuries, poisonous water, bad air and debt servitude along the Canadian border – endorsed by the U.S. government 'to provide jobs.' The group's feet are sore, they are afraid so they smartly camp away from everyone else.

Nothing to look forward to

Problems In Paradise

The ideological problem with this book is clear. While being heavily factual about the advent of barbarism in the U.S., it avoids a fully-materialist answer. Why 'God' is now the name for change, nature or practical survival seems more like a hangover from Butler's own 'strict' Baptist roots in Pasadena, California rather than any rational response. She writes about praying, but praying does nothing. Her 'God is Change' is pure transposition.  As dialectics and materialism understand, 'matter in motion' is the nature of the whole universe, human society included. Change is the nature of everything in existence. There is no need to bring in some magical name for it or escape to some other planet as a solution - by the way an impossible alternative. Change is intrinsic to reality. Ultimately there are no explicit politics in the book, only the need for decent people to stick together and help each other in some way, shape or form against the forces of wealth or crime. So privatized company towns are to be avoided, as are police and and crime-ridden cities.

The book is an excellent and prescient view of climate change, inequality and social breakdown. Yet it's guiding ideology – which of course gained the most attention from mainstream reviewers – is factual and also fanciful and escapist. After all, this is titled a 'parable.' Perhaps that is the faulty ideological compromise that prefigured the social collapse we see here. Irrational religion is a product of inability to grasp facts or pursue correct actions. It prefigures social collapse, which is why some turn to cults, panics, conspiracy theories, religion, God, fascism or ethno-nationalism when things get dire, not to mention drugs, alcohol or suicide.  The other side of this ideology is the organizational side - as if this dystopia would have no organized opposition outside of some neighbors or road friends.  This is a profoundly isolating, pessimistic, anti-historical and a-political point of view.  

At any rate a riveting story as we follow Lauren and her followers trying to survive this nightmare in their trek north.

Note: This book is a Part 1 – the next is “The Parable of the Talents” which won't be reviewed.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms: “dystopia.”

And I bought it at May Day Books' excellent fiction section!

Red Frog / August 31, 2024