*In Octavia E. Butler’s science-fiction classic “Parable of the Sower,” we see America’s dark future through the eyes of a 15 year-old black girl Lauren. Climate change, corporate greed and inequality in wealth have ripped society apart. Clean water is an expensive commodity and public education is being defunded.
Similar to the rise of our current president, a candidate named Christopher Donner emerges and promises to bring back jobs. His opponent, a religious zealot named Andrew Jarret, promises to “make America great again.” It’s all very prophetic for a book written in 1993.
Butler’s bone-chillingly prescient vision of the future has become partially true. Her understanding of the rhetoric of division shows how much foresight she had about America and the world. Butler wrote the future present in her two books in the “Parable” series by extrapolating the news in the 90s and closely studying American history. She knew what was possible if corporations, mass incarcerations, big drug companies and gun violence were left unchecked.
Butler saw history as a cyclical phenomenon where what we call the future is actually the past amplified. Butler’s understanding of history made her painfully aware that all societal progress could be reversed. Bankole, one of the characters that Lauren encounters in the book tells her “This country has slipped back two hundred years.” It sounds eerily similar to the exasperated statements we make to each other in recent times. Despite the prophetic nature of her work, Octavia E. Butler considered “Parable” as a cautionary tale. Sadly, we didn’t pay heed to the caution within the stories.
To face the horrors of the future Butler imagined a young, black heroine who formulates a new belief Earthseed and becomes the hope for humankind’s future. Lauren’s journey after losing her parents to tragedy and her fight for survival prepares her to lead a community that might be civilization’s last chance. This itself is of great importance; not only did Butler predict the revise of divisive politics, she also saw that the future was female.
One of Lauren’s Earthseed mantras “God is change” carries with it the courage to embrace the uncertain future rather than fearing it. Only rising above fear of change will we be able to write our own destinies. When seen through the lens of the current political climate, it means that we need to adapt and actively fight for our future rather than give up to this new, divided America. It just might transform the country for the better.
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