“Cli-Fi” Convergence

Octavia Butler places the reader into a dystopian world that was caused by economic and environmental crises, unlike our world. Butler builds this world around the reader as a hopeless yet strangely possible future using vivid descriptions of the people and the society that the main character Lauren Olamina inhabits. Lauren in this story experiences the worst parts of society to a much greater extent as her condition of hyperempathy causes her to feel the emotional and physical pain of the people around her. Octavia Butler explores themes of religion through the early chapters of the book Lauren someone experiences all the emotions of the people around her to such an extent that she can not go through a ride to church without feeling a great deal of pain and suffering. Lauren fed up with Christianity decides to forsake her old religion of christianity in favor of her belief system “Earthseed”.

To take a step back from the plot of the novel many of the themes experienced by the reader and the main protagonist of Lauren are issues that many people today are dealing with and having to manage. The world of Parable of the Sower is mainly about a world that was created by humans to be on its last legs with the main glimmer of hope being the new religion of “Earthseed”. However, the ideas of slow violence presented by Rob Nixion are finally fully realized in this world. The violence of climate change and the economic problems lead to a world of suffering for all that inhabit it. This can be seen through when our main character Lauren states “A lot of the houses were trashed-burned, vandalized, infested with drunks or druggies or squatted in by homeless families with their filthy, gaunt, half-naked children.” With the world that the people in this world once knew completely devoured by the earth itself, people are left with no other option but to succumb to their circumstances. The inhabitants of this planet no longer have the will or the means to fight for their existence in the world in which they live. Another point that affects readers is the period that the story takes place, between 2024-2025. While this book was written during the 1990s readers today are taken back a little but by the period, the world is slowly looking more and more like the one described in the novel. Personally, one line that sticks out to me is seen on page 62 where Lauren states “ignoring fire in the living room because we’re all in the kitchen, and besides, house fires are too scary to talk about” This line people to the current state that the world is in today. Many of the global leaders for years have avoided talking about the effects of climate change and the possibilities for damage to the planet that humans are having. This is because “House fires are too scary to talk about”