In Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, we start off with the year 2024 printed in big bold letters before we actually move into the first chapter on the next page, where we see that this story is being told in a diary-format, as it keeps full and specific dates every few bunches of paragraphs. As the reader, before fully reading into it, I wouldn’t have thought that this was a story of what it actually was. After reading about 4 chapters, I can safely say that I was pulled into this cruel and awful world that Butler created, hoping for the main character, Lauren, to be able to survive. Then again, since this book is 25 chapters long I assume she does.

Remembering what year this book came out in (1993), and the fact that it takes place in 2024-2025 (as far as I was able to read) frightened me a little, especially considering the downward slope our society is spiraling through. The topics and situations in this book are relatable. Too much to where I feel slightly uncomfortable and start thinking things such as “Could this happen to us someday?” And the answer is probably yes. Humans are built to destroy themselves, and we’re pretty good at it— destroying ourselves and everything around us. So a future like the one Lauren lives in doesn’t seem unrealistic, except the only difference is that I don’t think our government or whatever group of people would be so kind enough to put up walls around our neighborhoods… at least without being shown some real bank, first.

In Parable of the Sower, there was once actually a normal life for people. However, due to some factors like new drugs and the government’s space exploration program, many budgets have been cut and the people have been left out to dry. There are some who are lucky to live in homes within their safe, walled communities, while others are not so lucky— they may live in houses but they’ll be randomly burned down, or they will be on the street. Even with all of this chaos going on, people must still pay bills. They have their utility bills and other house bills, and even if they wanted to call someone like the fire department, they would have to pay a service fee. “Of course, no one called the fire department. No one would take on fire service fees just to save an unoccupied garage. Most of our households couldn’t afford another big bill, anyway. The water wasted on putting out the fire was going to be hard enough to pay for.” (Butler, 30) I feel like service fees are the expected future, as we can even see it now with a lot of things. Like when cashiers at Starbucks turn the tablet to you asking for a tip, as if they didn’t just charge you $5 for a cup of coffee. Or when I was enrolling for this semester, and they had the nerve to change a $100 service fee on top of an almost $4,000 tuition. Yay. Anyways, on top of the utility bills and other fees, they need to buy food, clothes, water (which is now just as expensive as GAS in this story), and other necessities to survive, and if they can’t they go out on the street. In desperation and survival, people will do anything, and we can really see that in this story. People trying to live have to be caged behind walls equipped with barbed and Lazor wire so bad people don’t get in to rob them, hurt them, or even kill them, for example. And even going outside of the walls, those things will absolutely happen if you don’t travel armed and with a large group. You couldn’t even go outside the walls with clean clothes, because you become a target. “You’re supposed to be dirty now. If you’re clean, you make a target of yourself. People think you’re showing off, trying to be better than they are.” (Butler, 20) People within the walls even keep at least two guns at home, just in case. Personally, I would be too weak to survive in a society like this.

One (amongst four) interesting thing that stood out to me in this story is how many children people have. I’ve seen cases in this story where there would be 12 kids to a family, or 18 people living in one house. It makes me think back to Haraway’s article “Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin”, specifically this one line that says “so, make kin, not babies!” And I feel like people in this story needed advice like that. In a society where money and supplies are scarce, why would someone ever want to have more than even one child? Some men in this story have multiple wives, so of course the abundance of little kiddos comes with it. Do they do it to show off? Yes, basically, the richer and middle class men do it to show they are real men. Like Peter Moss’s father, Richard Moss, who “claims that God wants men to be patriarchs, rulers and protectors of women, and fathers of as many children as possible.” (Butler, 33) More mouths to feed and backs to clothe means more resources used up. It’s no wonder this world is falling apart in this story… In a world like this, it would definitely be a smarter decision to form “kin” with the community, rather than make more kin. From what I said before about why this world is like this in this story, overpopulation could definitely and absolutely be a factor into this. Too many new and developing people and not enough resources; not enough space for them, and at that point for the people who are already here. And in our time, we’re facing an overpopulation problem as well. We’re apparently bound for 11 billion people at around 2100, which is crazy to think about. So if inflation, rise in crime, addictions, random money-draining programs, and stubborn governments somehow won’t be the end of our society, overpopulation probably will.

Another thing that I found interesting has to do with Lauren’s father and the people in her wall community. They are very religious. I mean, to the point where they would be willing to risk themselves, their families, and their wallets to be able to go to church, and to become baptized. I don’t mean anything bad by this, in fact, I mean good things besides the fact I find this utterly fascinating. It’s admirable that people in this story still have God to look to and a faith to keep. 

The third thing I found interesting was space. Well, how in this story the government and the rich people wanted to move to Mars because there is no hope for Earth. Obviously, the regular, common people wouldn’t be allowed to board that ship, only the people who could afford it— the same people who turned the Earth into the nightmare it is. They’ll move to a new place to use and drain before they have nowhere else to go. 

The fourth and final thing is Lauren’s hyperempathy. I think that’s a really interesting trait to give to a character that lives in a dog-eat-dog, kill or be killed world. She feels the pain of others literally and, although she acquired this through upsetting means, it’s a very powerful thing in her life, but not in a positive way. Her hyperempathy is difficult to control, and she is strongly affected by it to where she thought she would die if she had to kill something or someone. However, when she put the beautiful dog out of it’s misery, she proved her theory wrong. “I had felt it die, and yet I had not died. I had felt its pain as though it were a human being. I had felt its life flare and go out, and I was still alive.” (Butler, 40)

Pow.

The authors Nixon, Lemenager, and Ghosh discuss the ways in which people are not able to grasp the concept of slow violence of climate change such that we are able to identify the problem and create a solution. The author Nixon describes slow violence as a “violence that occurs slowly and out of sight” (Nixon 2356). He explains that this violence is spread out across a period of time. When a violence like this occurs, it is hard for people as well as the media to report and pay attention to it since it happens over a long period of time. People begin to lose interest in this violence. Nixon explains this by juxtaposing violence and slow violence. He brings up what summers had proposed which was an act of slow violence and explained that had he went to Africa with weapons and cause destruction then people would see this as conventional violence and be attentive. An example of conventional violence would be the holocaust which was a mass genocide against Jewish people that still is talked about today. There are museums, books, pictures, and artifacts that tell the story of what occurred during that time. An example of slow violence that Nixon provides is the “jellyfish babies” that were still being born onto Marshall Islands even after what occurred.

The Novels play a special role in helping us think more critically and create a deeper understanding of climate change by evoking more feelings and emotions compared to a conventional news article.  Lemenager gives the example of Barbra Kingsolver’s cli-fi about the monarch butterflies as the main characters (Lemenager 18).  When you present an issue like climate change through a novel people develop strong emotions such as empathy, love, and understanding towards those characters. This similarly relates to watching a movie, tv show, or another novel. Some people grow attachments towards the character and when something terrible happens to the said character the audience may get sad and even show emotions through tears. When you discuss climate change through a novel that is able to touch the audience emotionally people can then hopefully begin to look outside of the novel and at real life and realize the same thing is happening in the world we live in today and make the necessary changes within their own lives. As the author you are able to send the message to the audience through universal emotions such as love, sadness, and empathy.

Novels play a special role in the discourse around climate change, as they not only illustrate how we as a society currently perceive its role and effects in our life but they as well are the space in which we explore our own reactions to it, both emotional and real. Nixon uses the term slow violence, which he defines as a form of violence that while equally as life threatening as events like 9/11, happens over a period of time. He argues that because this form of violence does not catch the eye of media today with its short attention span and sensationalist tendencies we as a culture do not recognize its harm or call it the right amount of attention. It seems then that he argues it is the role of media, in its many forms including literature, to represent these issues outside of social media. Ghosh tackles the issues of representation around climate change in literature by condemning the way that climate change is only addressed or known within sci-if. It seems that by only discussing such a topic within sci-if or fantasy we acknowledge that climate change is not realistic nor something that could happen within our own world. The novel exists as a tool wherein we not only explore our current world but imagine a new one. This is the space that climate change needs as it continues to have an effect on our lives today.

I thought you might be interested in reading this interview with climate fiction superstar Kim Stanley Robinson, author of the “Mars Trilogy” and the “Science in the Capital” trilogy. Robinson throws some serious shade at Ghosh’s argument about the “outhouse” of science fiction v. the “mansion” of the “serious” or “literary” novel:

Kim Stanley Robinson: We Need Democratic Socialism

Utopian thinking gets a pretty bad name. But for author Kim Stanley Robinson, we should resist the idea we’re simply doomed to climate disaster – and insist that there is a world beyond capitalism.

We should be reading Robinson, but his books are very long, so they got cut from this syllabus!

                  The three authors, Nixon, Lemenager, and Ghosh thoroughly explained the problems of climate change. With the use of slow violence, Nixon explains how violence happens slowly, including the suffering of the planet all due to climate change. The negative effect of climate change slowly results in the planet deteriorating. Because climate change disrupts the natural, economic and social systems we depend on. Biological creatures are left with little to no habitat because of storms,rising oceans, etc. Nixon indicated how violence wrought by climate change, toxic drift, deforestation, oil spills, and the environmental aftermath of war takes place gradually and often invisibly. According to the book, Nixon stated that “Climate change, the thawing cryosphere, toxic drift, biomagnification,deforestation, the radioactive aftermaths of wars, acidifying oceans, and a host of other slowly unfolding environmental catastrophes present formidable representational obstacles that can hinder our efforts to mobilize and act decisively. The long dyings—the staggered and staggeringly discounted casualties, both human and ecological that result from war’s toxic aftermaths or climate change—are underrepresented in strategic planning as well as in human memory” ( Nixon, 4). This line stood out to me the most because he thoroughly explains how damaging climate change is and how this should be an eyeopener for people to take the steps on how to stop climate change. Global warming is just one aspect of climate change but what steps can be taken to stop it? Think about it. The rise in global temperatures due mainly to the increasing concentrations of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere can be stopped if people take steps like caring for the environment, avoiding pollution. The use of Novel gave us readers the chance to thoroughly analyze the damages of climate change, thanks to Nixon because we have developed emotional intelligence and empathy.                 

                 Ghosh also explained the negative impacts of climate change by the use of novels. It is a crisis of culture. In the book it stated that “ Would it follow, then, on the analogy of Kohn’s suggestion in relation to forests, that to think about this era of climate change will be to think in images, that it will require a departure from our accustomed logocentrism? Could that be the reason why television, film, and the visual arts have found it much easier to address climate change than literary fiction?(Ghosh, 18)”  It is easier for people to gain empathy when watching a film, seeing images, and watching the news because they get a visual concept in their minds of the horrific events rather than just reading. Although literary fiction helps because you develop emotional intelligence due to the catastrophes being mentioned, you will think more deeply about the topic. Imagine being told the world is ending? People will develop fear and try to do what they can to be safe.This is how novels have a special role in the way we become critical thinkers.