In Butler’s Novel Parable of the Sower Lauren is isolated from her community due to her condition of hyperempathy. How does her condition of hyperempathy emphasize the effects of the animal factory farming industry on the planet?
While reading Ben Learner’s novel “10:04” there was many points were I had to reread the part I just read due to his portrayal of time. He often refers back to when his best friend Alex was married to her ex-husband Jon. It is apparent that there is romantic tension between Alex and Ben. The novel begins with Alex and Ben preparing for Hurricane Irene, they are both worried of the destruction that this hurricane will bring. After going to Whole to receive the storm essentials they needed, they return back to Alex’s apartment .While they unpack their groceries, they open a cache of wine. Alex states to Ben to not get drunk and drink all of her water because he will he hungover the next day. They continue their normal routine of watching a movie from Alex’s projector, while she falls asleep. He “… tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear and then let my hand trail down her face and neck and brush across her breast and stomach in one slow motion I halfheartly attempted to convince my self it was incidental” (Pg 23). While Ben continues to blame him being intoxicate for his romantic desires towards Alex, it is apparent that is not the case. However, Ben can not seem to forget how Alex’s ex-husband and his action towards both of them. While Jon would get drunk he would go on about how heroic he is for being a labor lawyer and vent about his last marriage. While Jon is not longer in Alex’s life, it seems like Ben feels like he can not get through to Alex in a romantic way. Especially due to Alex’s remarks about being in her mid-thirties, single, and her biological time clock is ticking. Since she wants a child, so her mother with a late stage of cancer can she her grandchild. Her solution to this problem is artificially inseminating herself with Ben’s sperm. It seems to make Ben uneasy due to his emotional connection to Alex.
In addition to Ben not being able to adjust to the present with his relationship with Alex, the idea of how temporary life is a overwhelming theme throughout the beginning of the novel. Ben was diagnosed with Marfan which is a genetic condition that affects connective tissue. This condition can cause a tear in Ben’s aorta resulting in a rupture. The potential effects of his condition seems to never escape Ben’s mind, making him feel like he could die at any moment. Ben is hyperaware of ambulance noises around him and deaths of people in his inner circle. When Bernard, a mentor for Ben broke his vertebrae and received this information over email. Ben was in disbelief that this person he looks up to as a hero, was in fact just a human like him and his life is as fragile as his.
As we can see the novel, “10:04” Ben uses the past and present to develop the beginning of the novel. The novel does a great job of making the reader feel like they are part of Ben’s inner dialogue.
When I started reading “Parable of the Sower” I found it eerie that the plot takes place in 2024. Butler created this dystopian society, that does not seem so far removed from reality. With only three months left in the 2023 calendar year, it seems like every week there is another news headline about the alarming effects of climate change. From the forest fires in California, which seemed so far removed from my life. California is normally a drier climate and has been suffering from droughts for years. The Canadian forest fires started back in March and reached high intensity in June. Honestly, the weight of the situation did not register with me until there was a thick yellow smog that covered Manhattan. As someone who has called New York home for the last 20 years, this smog made the city seem foreign to me and caused quite a panic within. The idea of the earth’s climate rapidly changing is not foreign to me. Growing up there has always been an emphasis in my public education about the importance of recycling and carpooling to reduce gas usage. However, the effects of human technological advances seem irreversible. When I think about the state of the earth I have a moment of existential panic. However, reading this novel gives me a sense of relief. The fact that I am not alone when it comes to the fears I have about the future of the planet. Someone else can see the rapid decline. My fears and sense of urgency to make changes are not delusional. On the contrary, are supported.
As mentioned prior, I have lived on Long Island for my whole life. One thing I can relate to in the novel is the common usage of guns. Within the last decade, I have seen normalized ordinary folks vocalizing their need to have a firearm. In “Parable of the Sower”, Lauren does not vocalize her distaste for how her father owned two guns. But by analyzing her language around the topic you can see how she feels that it is unnecessary. On page 38 she states, “Dad has never said where he got the submachine gun. It’s illegal of course, so I don’t blame him. It must have cost a hell of a lot”. With Lauren’s condition of being a hyperempath, she would not want her father to use these guns to harm anyone. Possibly she feels the money could have been allocated towards food or savings. While I can compare this to my reality, how the Long Island community has shifted. Growing up the idea of having a firearm was taboo, and if you needed one for your profession you would make it known that it was locked away. There was more of an emphasis on protecting youth from suicide or accidental murder. Currently, more and more people feel the need to carry, despite of whether their firearm is illegal or not. I continue to question what has changed in the last few years. Is it that people finally felt so algin with a politician in the Trump era? Or is it the increase of school shootings with minimal change in helping the youth with their mental health? Whatever the case may be, subconsciously my community feels endangered. Without huge inference from politicians, they feel having a serious weapon is the solution.
As I began reading the novel, “The Hungry Tide” the landscape of India seemed very foreign to me. I wanted to do some of my own research to better understand India’s landscape between the rural areas and the cities. India is one of the most populated places in the world with a population of 1.8 billion people. Some of its most populated cities are Mumbai, Bangalore, and Dehli. With the population being so high it began to make me think about how the impact of climate change will affect these areas the hardest. As resources become less available it will be hard to accommodate everyone in these densely populated areas.
India is known for its monsoon seasons, for those who are unfamiliar with monsoon season it occurs due to the temperature changes resulting in strong wind changes. There are two different types wet monsoon seasons and dry monsoon seasons. The summer brings on a wet monsoon season producing rain from the warm humid air this lasts from June until September. In areas like India, this season is extremely intense due to the Himalayas preventing dry air into the humid region. From December until February, the winds move south in the Intertropical Convergence Zone bringing dry weather.
These seasons are crucial to agricultural output in India, these seasons are fairly consistent. However, with climate change, there are future climate simulations predicting 5-10% change in rainfall. This percentage is a significant amount and would greatly impact the production of crops due to droughts or flooding. With the overall temperature of the planet rising it will produce more moisture in the air. Particularly the moisture from the air from the Indian Ocean would create greater amounts of rainfall during the summer months. However, the people that live in India are familiar with flooding and droughts. These seasons it bring intense weather changes. However, scientists are predicting that global warming will only intensify these seasonal changes.
In addition to climate change causing intense flooding, the practices used for deforestation and urbanization are changing the land out of the land. Removing biodiversity around rivers, like the Hooghly River increases erosion in these areas. This increase in erosion is polluting the water supply. Disturbing the ecosystem of these bodies of water affects the aquatic life, the pH of the water, and the humans that are using it. This river is located close to the Bay of Bengal, which consists of salt water. The saltwater from the Bay of Bengal changes the natural characteristics of riverbed materials and sediment. Due to the increase in urbanization of the land, more flooding will occur. Causing intrusions from other bodies of water like the Bay of Bengal increasing the rate of change in the current river’s ecosystem.
By doing my own research I am able to better understand this novel. Additionally, it gave me insight into how climate change will affect people globally. Prior to my research, I was only familiar with the effects of global warming to the environment around me.
Sources
https://www.rmets.org/metmatters/indian-monsoon-changing-climate
https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/storms/monsoons
After reading Amitav Ghosh’s The Great Derangement, I was able to gain a greater understanding of how fictional novels can help us understand the climate crisis occurring right now. Throughout his piece, a common theme was how fictional stories are not as fictional as we think. The state of our earth’s climate is unpredictable and changing at a rapid rate. Within the last 50 years, weather events have occurred in areas of the world that their environment can not withstand. One example is Hurricane Sandy in 2012, “never before had a hurricane veered sharply westward in the mid-Atlantic” (page 14). The power of this hurricane was something the East Coast had never dealt with before. This hurricane had deified “…statistical weather-predictions models”, the intensity of this hurricane shocked the community and left many people unequipped (page 13). When looking at statistical weather predictions Hurricane Sandy was extremely out of the ordinary, however, its’ trajectory and intensity were predicted accurately by the law of physics. Due to its rarity, people in these areas could not possibly fathom a hurricane coming and destroying current life on the East Coast. Ghosh continues to give similar examples of bizarre weather events like an earthquake in L’Aquila, Italy, Hurricane Catrina in Brazil, and Cyclone in North Delhi. His conclusion is despite the shock of these weather events, nothing is out of the ordinary when carbon emissions are alternating the current state of our earth. Humans are not as invincible as we may like to think, our actions interfere with the natural course of the earth. Instead of brushing off fiction as some magical tale that could never happen, these ideas were created in the contemporary era and possibly could have some validity. Possibly these authors write these fictional pieces to try to grapple with the idea of how unpredictable life can be with the effects of global warming. These stories contain more truth than one might want to believe. Once I completed Ghosh’s piece I gained a new perspective on climate change, that collectively we are living in a state of delusion. Not enforcing laws to combat the climate crisis because the irreversible effects seem so removed from current life. However, if we step back it is apparent how we are experiencing repercussions now. Possibly in this age where technology is evolving so rapidly, where content is being given to us left and right at a rate the human brain can not completely comprehend. These big flashy headlines about wildfires or droughts seem concerning but not out of the ordinary because of their common recurrence.
