Multiethnic Literatures in the U.S.

In Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler makes several points about the role of religion and change in society. Butler calls for an active religion. In her novel, she writes about the creation of a religion that motivates people to do more than just pray to God for change. Through Lauren’s character and the new religion “Earthseed,” Butler seems to convey an underlying message that people need to put their futures into their own hands. People need to have active roles in society in order for society to improve. Butler also appears to make a statement that, in order to move away from the religious belief that God alone will save a community, all traditional religious beliefs should be reinvented and should adapt to a society’s current way of life. This is seen through the fact that when Lauren’s father, a community leader and minister, disappears, Lauren is forced to completely rebuild her life and religion.

In the novel, Lauren’s family is Baptist and Lauren doesn’t have the same religious beliefs as her family. She repeats that “God is change” in several places throughout the novel. Lauren believes that religion should adapt to suit what is needed in a current society. Especially in the devastating times that Lauren and her family live through, Lauren believes that religion must adapt to life and that life cannot adapt to religion without seeing regression in a society. She believes that her family’s religious beliefs have not been sufficient enough to help anyone in the Robledo. Therefore, Lauren attempts to form a religion that encourages people to actively create the changes that they wish to see in the world.

Lauren believes that the ideals of religion should support human action. In chapter 7 Butler writes, “They have no ability at all to travel great distances under their own power, and yet, they do travel. Even they don’t have to just sit in one place and wait to be wiped out.” This is what Lauren says after she names her religion after plant seeds. In these lines, Butler is criticizing the way in which people may be hesitant to react to problems in the community because they believe that just praying to God will help solve the community’s problems. Like Lauren, Butler feels that if people want to change society, they cannot just “sit in one place and wait to be wiped out.” People must actively do something to make the world change for the better even if it seems as though there is no hope.

In the novel, Lauren’s father disappears and, after this happens, Lauren’s world quickly changes. The community security appears to have weakened greatly and Robledo is hit with more robberies and arson than before. Lauren eventually loses her community, her home, and her family in a large fire caused by the drug addicted Pyros. This causes Lauren to rebuild her life and religion from scratch. It appears that Butler is saying that, in order to stop chaos and crime, people must start over. They must use what they know and change. Perhaps Butler believes that it takes extraordinarily unfortunate events to make human beings take action in a passive world. She believes that human beings do not initiate change until it is nearly too late. It is also obvious that Butler thinks religions need to make people realize that change is essential to the world’s well-being.

Finally, as far as religion is concerned, it appears that Bulter feels that its role in today’s society is near obsolete. With the disappearance of Lauren’s father, who is most likely a symbol of the insufficiencies of today’s religions, Lauren is able to work more on her Earthseed religion. It is at this point in the novel, that Lauren also begins to try and make a better life for herself by travelling north, where the economy is better and resources are in larger abundance. This is also a point of great change for Lauren as a whole. She is now one of the poor and homeless people that she once feared. She begins to see the world from a different perspective and this new way of life appears to encourage Lauren’s creation of a new religion. One message that Butler emphasizes greatly in the novel is that it is important to see when change is necessary and, when change is necessary, people need to actively and effectively pursue this change.

When talking about Parable of the Sower words like poverty, crime, and disparity come to mind. However I think a more important term that might be overlooked is fire. It’s a simple character in nature however Butler uses it to shape her scenes and, more importantly, Lauren. Fire is a part of Laurens life, past and present. Even before she was born, her mother’s need to take the drug Paraceto (the most significant ingredient in the pyro drug) became the source for her ability to hyperempathize with the pain and pleasure of others. As she grew up the fire surrounded her home and family, terrorizing those who avoided going outside at all costs. Now, as we have found ourselves in the middle of the novel, the fire has challenged Lauren to shed her old life and venture out into the jungle of the real world.
Fire, by itself, is an interesting concept. When discussing the dawn of man we may say that was marked by the discovery of fire. The source of our planet’s power and life is the sun, a big ball of flame. In mythology the phoenix is a bird that dies by way of flame and then is reborn from its ashes. Lauren actually uses the phoenix as part of her earthseed when she says “In order to rise from its own ashes a phoenix first must burn.” (153). In a lot of ways Lauren is just like this phoenix. She is a being who is beautiful and strong and yet her life as she knows it is about to come to an end. By way of fire (both arson and gunfire), her entire family is killed. Her home is burned and most of her friends are missing or dead. Fire has dessimated her former life, and from those ashes she is reborn. Although always mature she is now far beyond her years in both wisdom and bravery.
As with the never ending discussion of duality, the fire is both good and bad. While it allows Lauren to gain a new sense of being that is helpful for her survival, it comes at quite a cost. In this future world, there are those who see fire as a way to gain control. Butler acknowledges this by saying that “People are setting fires because they’re frustrated, angry hopeless. They have no power to improve their lives but they have the power to make others even more miserable. And the only way to prove to yourself that you have power is to use it” (143). In essence fire is being used as a tool. It is a tool of dominance, pain, and even pleasure for those who choose to take the drug pyro.
Along with Lauren’s growth we see development in Earthseed. With each experience there comes a new piece of wisdom that adds to the complexity of her vision. Interestingly enough, if we take Earthseed and divide the word, we have two very common nouns, earth and seed. Seeds are planted in the earth and one of the more important parts of agriculture is the annual burning of the fields that allows for the removal of dead crop and weeds (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_burn#Agricultural_use). So as destructive as fire seems to be in her life, it is still an integral concept in her future.

Author: Octavia ButlerTitle:

Parable of the sower

Pages 1-166 

The book Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler is a very depressing book.  The book takes place in a town in southern California called Robledo in the year 2024.  At this time the economy is very bad.  Lauren and her family are forced to live in a walled community with 11 other families.  This is because outside the walls are no longer safe for people to live.  The communities outside the walls are infested with robbers, drug addicts, and killer dogs.  Each character in the book has its own internal struggle.

Laurens internal struggles are whether or not to tell her father she does not believe in his religion.  He is a Baptists minister who is a firm believer in God’s work and words.  She goes along with his religion to keep him happy.  An example of this is when she gets baptized and is initiated into the church.  Lauren does not know how to tell her dad about her own thought or for that matter anyone else.  She has started a notebook of her own religion call Earthseed.  She started this book because she needed an outlet for her ideas and hopes one day she can teach people about it.  She knows that her small community will reject her ideas, so for know they are kept hidden away.

She also struggles with the idea about wanting to leave the community and head north.  She knows it’s very dangerous and deadly outside the walls of the community but she feels there is something better out there.  She also feels that if she can get outside the walls she will be able to start to teach her new religion.  She also thinks that maybe somewhere beyond the walls that other people are already living be her religion and wants to join them and learn.  She is held back by her family and boyfriend.  At first she cannot leave her family because of her father.  This is because he would worry too much about her.  After he died she worried about her little brothers and how her stepmother will be able to afford them.  She also doesn’t want to leave her boyfriend.  It is her first love.  She would prefer him to come with her so she wouldn’t be alone but knows he will not leave his family.  She soon finds out that he has also has thought about leaving the walled community.  They plan to leave together as soon as she can save up money for her brothers and get married to her boyfriend.  

Her final struggle is with being honest.  She has a condition called hyerempathy.  This condition makes her feel pain and joy of the people around her.  Her family knows about her conditions but the other people in her community do not.  She has once tried to express feeling with her best friend Joanne about her new religion and about what the future will bring.  This experience was bad because Joanne told her parents and Lauren got in trouble.  Since then Joanne and Lauren have not been the same.  She now has to confess to her boyfriend about her condition.  This is the only thing holding her from marring him.  She does not know how to tell him or what his reaction will be to it.  She has had a bad experience before and does not want that to happen again.

I predict many more struggles that Lauren will have to overcome.  Each struggle will get harder as the book goes on.

Octavia Butler’s, Parable of the Sower, reads like a post-apocalyptic event.  It is terrifying to think that death and chaos is what we and our future generations get to look forward to.  Water is so vital to our health.  No one really complained when it rained for four straight days, especially when they have not seen rain in almost seven years.  It was like a free gift from God.  If gas prices keep going up or we just run out of oil, we won’t be able to use the vehicles we own.  Like in the story, it will be useless to us and just rust.  If we don’t help minimize the rate of global warming, an emergence of severe weather change will occur.  It is ironic how we advocate gun control nowadays, but in 2024, every household has at least two guns and the children are taught how to handle them at such a young age.  What does this tell us about change?  Are we changing with society and nature or are society and nature changing us?
In California, one world exists inside the 11-household walled Robledo community, and the other is everything and everyone beyond the wall.  Food, water, and clothing are so scarce that the poor, naked, and half-dead would do anything to get their hands on it.  Everyone would like to feel that they are safe in their own walled community, but it’s a false hope.  The wall only provides so much protection against who is being kept out.  The adults have hope that things will go back to how they used to be, but is that wishful thinking?  Lauren can be mistaken for a dreamer, but she is the most realistic one.  Blank stares are her father and her best friend, Joanne’s initial reaction to her thoughts about being equipped and organized just in case things get even worse.  Is she being pessimistic for thinking the worse out of situations?  Her grab-and-run pack prepares her for any given situation.  It doesn’t hurt to always be prepared and to be aware of everything.
According to the dictionary, a sower has two different definitions.  The first is to plant seeds; the second is to cause a feeling or idea to arise or become widespread.  Earthseed comes to mind.  Earthseed is all that spreads to new earths.  Only we are Earthseed.  Lauren can be seen as the planter of “seeds” who helps knowledge grow within others.  Lauren and her father can be compared in a way that they both have their own beliefs about their God.  Because he’s a minister, he preaches faith and hope and tries to help as many people as he can.  Being an intelligent man, he not only teaches at the university, but he also organizes target practices and group watches.  Her father advises her that people do not like to be told what to do.  Therefore, by teaching and sharing her beliefs to her community, her work is being accomplished subtly.  Teaching is one of the greatest acts of optimism.  With Lauren’s hyperempathy, what will happen to her when she turns 18 and goes “outside” for good?  Just the rides to the canyon for target practice make her uneasy and sick to her stomach.  Killing the dog in the canyon almost made her pass out.  When her father beats Keith, she passes out cold.  Will Lauren’s hyperempathy get in her way of her freedom?  Is her hyperempathy significant to the story?  We will have to keep reading in order to find out.   

Passage:

Maybe I’ll be more like Alicia Leal, the astronaut. Like her, I believe in something that I think my dying, denying, backward-looking people need. I don’t have all of it yet. I don’t know how to pass on what I do have. I’ve got to learn to do that. It scares me how many things I’ve got to learn… Everyone knows that change is inevitable. From the second law of thermodynamics to Darwinian evolution, from Buddhism’s insistence that nothing is permanent… But I don’t believe we’re dealing with all that that means. We haven’t even begun to deal with it. (25-26)

The first question that came into my mind when I was reading this passage was is Lauren a prophet? When she talks about helping her people and getting a message across to them I instantly think about a messenger from God. Especially when she talks about something she is desperately trying to “pass on”. I got the feeling that Lauren is dying to become a leader and to help the suffering people around her. With her concept of a different God and a new type of religion this concept is not that farfetched.

Later on in the passage she becomes more pessimistic and doesn’t even know how she’s going to accomplish helping the world. In fact Lauren mentions that she doesn’t even know what she is talking about. She becomes confused and questions whether any of this chaos is real. It’s like even though she wants to do all these great things, she still doesn’t forget that she is just one human being. Then she talks about her message of change.

The end of the passage talks about this change and society’s attitude towards change. Lauren doesn’t seem to understand the reason for denying change or worse knowing that it’s inevitable yet, still reluctant to actually go with the change. She questions the world around her and wonders why the people don’t see her God that represents change, when it is so obvious.

The end of this passage also got me to think about “Tropic of Orange” and how the author tries to stress that we can not keep living secluded tucked away lives and ignore what’s happening all around us and the people around us. Both the author of Tropic of Orange and Lauren try to understand and question how people can live such “normal lives” when there is so much more going on in the world. How people can deny change.

Parable of the Sower depicts a California 2024 after a breakdown in civil society and in law and order. Overall, we see a division of three groups. The rich have retreated to walled estates in the hills. In the city, middle class neighborhoods have banded together to construct walls to keep out the thieves and arsonists. And outside the walls are the almost dead struggling to survive.

In this community Lauren struggles with her belief that these walls are false safeties that will not keep the community safe forever. There are those who believe that God will be just and merciful and save the Earth but Lauren no longer believes in that God. This creates a generational gap where the older people look back to the good old days and hope they will return. Except for Lauren’s father, they are mostly passive.  Lauren does not accept the beliefs of her elders, but tries to work out a system that becomes Earthseed. 

Lauren’s religion Earthseed is based on her belief that the one true nature of God is change and that people can change God and God is change. The dominant metaphor is that the seed she believes in is that present-day humans are the seeds for a new form of community life to spring up. Lauren also believes that humans are seeds in a much wider sense. It is their ultimate destiny to spread throughout the universe and live on new planets and new galaxies.

Lauren’s belief that the key to survival lies in change is fist opposed by the community that she lives in herself. It is a walled neighborhood, a virtual prison locked by gate and key that is constantly under attack. The only future available for those in the community is to marry, have kids, hope for a space to live in and just survive. Then there is the arrival of the KSF multinational corporation. This new alternative for many is to move to the company town of Olivar where they are offered safety. But this security comes at the cost of their freedom, since the company will control every aspect of their lives. It is as the book says, a type of slavery where the people who choose this path will be tied down to debt. It is merely exchanging one prison where there is at least the allusion of freedom where one is surrounded by grass and trees to a single concrete apartment.  

Keith attempted to find freedom by escaping the prison of the community and in his own way he succeeds. He comes back to his house bearing gifts and money each time and would be considered successful, though through immoral means. He was able to survive from his ability to read and write and in a way parallels Lauren. Both wish to escape and find something better for themselves but Keith’s way lead to his death. Lauren has the smarts and the survival skills and will probably, further into the story, be able to find a place to create her Earthseed.                                                                                                                                                                          

With this need to survive and be free, it brings me back to the first chapter with the image of Lauren dreaming of flying and the house is on fire. She becomes trapped in the fire but later she is in her memory of when she was seven and is talking to Cory about the stars. So in this dream Lauren goes through the fire to the stars. The dream shows there is a way through, and it will be her task to find it. And as she writes in her journal a year later, “the Destiny of Earthseed is to take root among the stars” (85), she is drawing out the message contained in her recurring dream.

Earthseed is a widely hopeful desire for a better world and one can’t blame Lauren for wanting more. Earth has become a world where water is a scare commodity, global warming has made rain rare, natural disasters run rampant in the South, diseases like measles is killing in Chicago, the rich have shut themselves away from those needing help, illiteracy has become the norm, and the homeless fill the streets. The walls and gates left of this world won’t be able to stand much longer and it would be foolish for people to sit around waiting for God to help them. They must take the initiative themselves and shape their own destiny based on their own efforts.

<!–[if !supportEmptyParas]–> <!–[endif]–>

<!–[if !supportEmptyParas]–> Theresa

                                                                                                Ashley Blondin

            Octavia E. Butler’s novel, Parable of the Sower, the main character, Lauren struggles to find where God is in her life or even if she believes in a God.  With the harsh economic and social conditions taking place Lauren, as well as many others, find God to be non-existent or not as present as before the conditions became almost unlivable.  Lauren’s father also plays a large role in her religious views, being a Baptist minister; her father has always pushed the children to share his religious views. While Lauren’s view on religion does not line up to the thoughts of her father, her thoughts of God are a reflection of the times.

            Economically and socially times were horrible.  People were killing each other for food, shelter, clothing, and anything else of value.  Sometimes people would have killed just for killing sake.  To Lauren there were two worlds, the one of her secured small neighborhood with walls and guard and the corrupt and murderous outside world.  In the beginning of the book Lauren’s neighborhood had little crime but as time went on people on the outside became poorer and broke into the neighborhood to steal anything of value.  Realizing how unsafe the world was becoming Lauren lost faith in her father’s religion.  She believes that you control   God by shaping God into what you feel is important.

            Since peoples’ priorities change that causes God to change.  “God is Change” Lauren says.  Lauren discovers that God does not have to always be the same.  God’s role changes in one person’s life as they grow.  God also changes as society changes.  What Octavia Butler might be trying to say through Lauren is that we change God to make us feel a certain level of security and faith. On page 76,  Lauren talks about how “God exists to be shaped.”  She goes into how that if you shape your God into a God that is merely there just for the bare minimum of survival then we are doomed to just barely survive.  However if we where to shape God in a way that our goals are higher, then it is easier to triumph over evil. 

            Lauren’s moldable god clashes with that of her father’s god.  Lauren’s father god is missing one large thing to Lauren, the ability to change.  Her father gets his religious views straight from the Bible.  His views have not changed much over time because the Bible does not change over time.  This bothered Lauren; she felt that the Baptist religion did not give her the freedom to grow.  She was changing and needed her religion to change with her growth.  For that reason, she developed Earthseed and her book The Books of the Living.   Her self-created religion allowed her to express her feelings and grow spiritually.  Her book also allowed her to have faith that life would get better and that one day she would be able to live in the outside world.  

            Binaries are prevalent throughout the novel, Tropic of Orange by Karen Yamashita. One of the most interesting binaries is set up within the character Manzanar. Yamashita uses this character to illustrate the binary of the wealthy white collar worker and the poor homeless. Manzanar’s character conveys the idea of the wealthy white collar worker who is very detached from society and on the opposite side, this character represents the shift in coming to a class consciousness when he becomes homeless and is a member if the lower class.

            Early in the novel, Yamashita lets the reader know of Manzanar’s past as a skilled surgeon. Knowing this past life aids in understanding the argument Yamashita makes about members of the wealthy, white collar class having no idea about what is really happening in society. On this topic, Yamashita writes, “… and perhaps they thought themselves disconnected from a sooty homeless man on an overpass” (35). While this “sooty man” is Manzanar, when he was a surgeon, it seems that he was just going through the motions of living. Even though he had a good family, a respectable job, and has saved lives, there was something missing. Yamashita alludes to this disconnection from the core of society as the problem. Manzanar was holding people’s lives in his very hands, yet he was not connected with them.

            Later in the novel, the reader is again given a closer look at Manzanar’s life story. This point serves as the shift in Manzanar; he makes the switch that will ultimately change his life and his thinking. Yamashita writes, “One day, he left a resident to sew up a patient, removed his mask, gloves, and gown” (56). This particular sentence serves to metaphorically illustrate the change that Manzanar has made. He physically removed the very things that have been keeping him protected against letting things in. He rids himself of the barriers to the outside world. This change symbolizes Manzanar coming to a consciousness about the world. After this, when his baton replaces his knife, he goes by “Manzanar” which is the name for the concentration camp that he was raised in. This act is also symbolic because it shows a desire to go back to his roots.

            With the close of the novel, Manzanar has made his shift from an observer in society to an actual participant. Instead of being separated by barriers of a mask and gloves, now Manzanar actually conducts with the world. He says that he is able to actually feel the vibrations of the cars on the road. There is nothing obstructing his view and he is now a part of what is happening outside in the world. With this symbolic transformation of a man who existed as an observer in the world to a person who is engaged with the world, Yamashita seems to be speaking to the classes of society. Using Manzanar as a tool to understand the strong divide between the classes helps the reader to better grasp this binary. Watching a character move from the very top of society go to the very bottom of society is a strong illustration that speaks to everyone in society who has been subjected to the class system. Yamashita opens the reader’s eyes to life on both ends of the spectrum, and to the consciousness that comes from understanding them.

Passage from Tropic of Orange, by Karen Tei Yamashita, page 197“Once again, Arcangle offered his services to pull the bus.  Slipping the steel cable through the axle and hooking his old skin through the steel talons.  And once again, the people scoffed at his efforts and gawked amazed as the bus inched slowly along the highway, harnessed to an old man’s leathery person, skin pulled taut across his boney chest and empty stomach, minute droplets of blood kissing the earth, dragging everything forward.  It was as the burden of gigantic wings, too heavy to fly.”I believe this passage represents the idea about how the past has shaped the present and how the present will shape the future.  Steel:The steel represent the era during World War I when immigrants from Mexico moved to steel producing areas like Los Angeles in search of work.  Immigrant workers were desperate for work and money.  Since immigrants were unskilled laborers they were given little pay for grueling work.  This has shaped the present and future for laborers immigrating from Mexico because US companies know that unskilled laborers can be exploited for work.Disbelief by on-lookers of Arcangle’s ability to pull the bus:  The disbelief by on-lookers of Arcangle’s ability to move the bus represents the difficulty of crossing the border into the United States.  This is because many illegal immigrants try to cross the border and if caught are sent back.  The increase of illegal immigrants crossing the border has increased the present and future need for improved security and monitoring at the border.     Holes in his chest and the blood dripping from them and kissing the earth:The holes in his chest represent a void in his life, culture, identity, science of belonging, or something else.  The blood dripping from the holes might be a prediction of the future.  It could predict life or death (http://www.kchanson.com/ARTICLES/blood.html).  It could predict the outcome of the fight he soon will be in.  Is this fight the void he must fill?  Will it be the end of his life and the beginning of a new (Sol, Rafael, and bobby reuniting).  The blood also can mean purity.  Purity can be a representation of order in society.  “These purity codes provide the society with meaning, orientation, and maps of behavior and belonging” (http://www.kchanson.com/ARTICLES/blood.html).  

Tropic of Orange by Karen Tei Yamashita is a book that is based in dualities. From the first few lines where Rafaela is discussing life versus death, light versus dark and closed versus open spaces, the bipolar nature of this book is hard to ignore. At first glance, these binary comparisons can make the story seem contradictory and confusing especially if one doesn’t recognize the point being made. Although the book is riddled with comparisons, I really want to focus on the duality of hope.

On one hand, Yamashita presents this sense of hopelessness as seen in Arcangel’s trip north, to Los Angeles. As he travels people tell him that he is not big enough or strong enough to make it in the harsh reality of his destination. Even as he repeatedly proves himself to have the will to persevere in the face of adversity, there are still people along the way who tell him that he has no future if he continues on his journey. This sense of the American Dream and the ability to make something out of nothing, is shot down and dismissed as though it is some sort of fairy tale. It’s a really depressing moment in the book because we have all of these characters who are struggling in some part of their lives and yet the one character who shows the most resilience is essentially told that he will never be good enough for anything that he could see in America.

On the other side of the spectrum there is this idea of finding hope in what seems to be a very unfortunate situation. Take, for instance, the homeless population of LA and the freeway fire. Here we have people who are without a semi-permanent place to live and who are just wandering from one area to the next hoping to improve their quality of life, however low it may start out to be. Then, we also have the fire, blocking in a section of cars that their owners believe must be left for ruin. It is in this hell of flame and abandoned property that we find unexpected life. The homeless move into the cars and start up their own neighborhood complete with “street” names and gardens, which are of particular importance in this discussion. By creating these gardens full of fresh fruits and vegetables, Yamashita is conveying the ability of life overcoming the death of another object to create something new, something that represents hope. This hope is what could be described as that “silver lining” or “light at the end of the tunnel” for situations that are less than favorable. I believe it is Yamashita’s way of reminding her readers to set aside pessimism and look for the greener grass.

One might wonder why Yamashita chose to portray both sides of this topic and I believe it is because she wants us to recognize that one phenomenon cannot exist without the other. Without the ability to be hopeless then there is no need for hope at all – a confusing concept to say the least.