Multiethnic Literatures in the U.S.

In the first chapter of Parable of the Talents, by Ocatvia E. Butler, Lauren has a conversation with one the surviving members of the Dovetree family, Aubrey. They talk about the attack on the Dovetree’s house, killings, and the destruction. Aubrey started talking about the description of the attackers and the way they acted.

“…attackers were men, but they wore belted black tunics – black dresses, she called them – which hung to their thighs.”
“They all wore big white crosses on their chests – crosses like in church.”

These two phrases sound all too familiar. They sound like a description of cloths that Ku Klux Klan wear, however, it is not. The current Ku Klux Klan is white robes with a variation of red or black cross on the chest or back area. The people who Aubrey talks about were black tunics with red crosses. This illustrates to me that the whole country, nation, is back to where we were when the Ku Klux Klan could walk the streets and literally kill people who they thought were not fit in their society. However, this might be not be the case since these people wear black tunics, which might show that it is similar to what has happened in our history, it is not the same, but very closely related. I once heard someone say something similar to, “For every country to move forward, it needs a revolution once in a while.” Revolutions happen when something drastic happens where people do no like what is being done (in a simple way). “Desperate times call for drastic measures.” When there is a revolution the nation is pretty much is set to the beginning. New rulers need to be put in place, new laws have to created, and new ways of living have to be established. In Parable of the Talents, this isn’t the case. Even thou they don’t call the people who attacked Dovetrees Ku Klux Klan, they are. We are back at the begging and things are going to go bad again. This is another circle of life which repeats itself, different time same concept.

“Jarret insists on being a throwback to some earlier, ‘simpler’ time. Now does not suit him. Religious tolerance does not suit him. The current state of the country does not suit him. He wants to take us all back to some magical time when everyone believed in the same god, worshipped him in the same way, and understood that their safety in the universe depended on completing the same religious rituals and stomping anyone who was different. There was never such a time in this country.”

There was a time when all this was considered the right thing to do, however, it was never established as a law in a society we live in today. Taking this phrase and looking at the present state of the United States religion, there is no way US will ever be “taken back to that magic time of one religion.” US is one the religiously diverse nations and that cannot be taken away from a nation like the United States of America.

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