How does Octavia Butler challenge traditional gender roles, based on our understanding of gender dynamics and power structures in typical dystopian settings, in her novel Parable of the Sower?

The Novel 10:04 By Ben Learner is eccentric but it is completely intriguing compared to the past two novels we read in class. I want to point out how this novel focuses on time , and time is the most valuable thing in life since people have said it cannot be created or destroyed nor does it have a beginning or end. It is constant and the only constant thing in life is change. Ben Lerner brought up time a couple times in the first chapter , which I’m guessing he wants us to understand its prevalence. This novel is more realistic compared to the past two and bringing up his condition made the narrator more resilient as he brought up is chronic heart illness that could be very dangerous because of the high mortality rate heart problems lead to. I would like to tie this to time because he doesn’t necessarily know how much time he has left but is very focused on writing his own Novel and publishing it which shows his dedication. To add on, he used Back to the future as a reference which could be tied with time. According to page 23, it States that ” Standing there that afternoon with Alex, I was reminded of the photograph Marty carries in Back to the Future , crucial movie of my youth: as Marty’s time- traveling disrupts the prehistory of his family, he and his siblings begin to fade from the snapshot. Only here it’s a presence, not an absence , that eats away at her hand: she’s being pulled into the future” meaning that the future is bound to happened but it felt as if it was rushed. Alex was an important person in the book and they had a significant relationship . I always thought he was curious and thought about his role as a father in the future, when he spoke about how Alex proposed impregnating herself with his own sperm but not engaging in sexual activities but through intrauterine insemination (12). This could also lead to many thinking about what are the possibilities which we could all tie to the future. Maybe he will be a great father? or maybe it will be impossible if his condition kills him before he even has the chance to become one. Although it is not the primarily important part of this novel it is good to get an understanding of how it all ties into time. The past, future, and present.

The first two chapters of the book 10:04 were intriguing and challenging to read. The author, Ben Lerner, plays with the concept of time throughout the story. In the first section of the book, Lerner describes how the book itself came to fruition and shares a bit about his own life. We are also able to conclude that the book is autofiction. Similar to autobiography, the author is writing fiction about himself. We see methodology pointing to metafiction and modernism. One of the first instances I noticed the manipulation of time is when Lerner, a 33-year-old man, has to visit a pediatrician to diagnose his condition, Marfan, diagnosed in early childhood. Here, Lerner portrays himself as a future entity in a past reality. As if he has traveled back in time to his childhood but still as an adult.

While reading this book, I couldn’t help but wonder about the author’s choice of writing fiction revolving around the concept of time’s flexibility. It seems that the author drew inspiration from both the movie “Back to the Future” and the painting of Joan of Arc. In the painting, Joan’s hand is fading away as she reaches out to the angels, and the author points out that the presence of the future is causing her hand to fade. She is being pulled into the future (9). Similar to the time-traveling in “Back to the Future”, where the character fades away due to the absence of the future. The book delves into the intricacies of time and how it can be manipulated in fiction, and overall, it provides an intriguing exploration of this concept.

Additionally, it seems the author was inspired by the movie “The Clock” which he watched with his best friend. In the book, he refers to the movie as a clock, where thousands of scenes from movies, and a few from TV, are edited together to show a twenty-four-hour montage in real time. Each scene includes a shot of a timepiece or a reference to time in the dialogue, and time is synchronized both within and outside of the film (52). Through this movie, he discovered how people see time in general, which prompted him to write a fiction experimenting with that generality. He wanted to show that time is not just day, afternoon, and night but also the past, present, and future. He argues that even though the time in the movie and outside the movie are synchronized, “they were nevertheless minutes from different worlds”(54). The movie explores how different culture’s view and conceptualize time, discussing how these views influence social norms, traditions, and lifestyles. Additionally, it also dives into how globalization and technological advancements have affected the way people perceive and experience time.

In our class, we delved deeper into Nixon’s viewpoint on the complex relationship between the passage of time and the concept of slow violence. Nixon argued that slow violence is often difficult to recognize and acknowledge because it unfolds gradually over an extended period. This gradual unfolding of violence leads to a sense of normalcy, which makes it challenging to identify and respond to the situation urgently. Furthermore, Nixon emphasized the impact of globalization and technological advancements on the perception of slow violence. The globalized world has made it difficult to track and monitor the effects of slow violence across different regions and communities. Advancements in technology and social media have led to shorter attention spans, hindering our ability to comprehend slow violence severity.

Religion has been a central part of the human experience for nearly all. Religion, for centuries, has been used to explain the world around us by all major civilizations. Humans by nature have always felt the need to explain the world around them, and this applies to the natural and the unnatural. The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh describes and builds his world around the Sundarbans in the Bay of Bengal. Ghosh’s use of his characters and religion, and in particular the use of gods such as Dokkhin Rai and Bon Bibi, helps the audience grow to understand the forests that our main characters are researching. The characters use religion and the stories that derive from the gods they are about to gain a deeper understanding of the world around them and its rules.

The novel’s ending hits its climax with a natural disaster of a cyclone hitting the forest they are researching. Time and time again Piya gets caught off guard by the Sundarbans but she, along with Fokir, notices the storm before it comes but it is much to their dismay as there is not much that they can do against the storm but weather it. Fokir has always been very connected to nature and his belief in the gods that rain over the Sundarbans has been his greatest strength when it comes to others in the story such as Kanai or Piya. Fokir in the face of this storm puts his life and Piya’s on his belief that the tree he ties both of them to with save them while the other characters going through this storm are hiding in a shelter. One of the greatest visuals from the novel is seen when a statue of the protection goddess Bon Bibi is taken away by the storm showing the readers that not even the gods are able to protect Fokir and Piya from the cyclone overtaking them. Piya is left as the only survivor, Fokir is killed by the storm after a heavy object strikes him. He sacrificed himself to save Piya. Fokir’s death in the story tells the readers that not even the gods that these characters pray to can save them. Bon Bibi’s failure to save Fokir, someone who worshiped this god, shows the readers that even the gods aren’t able to save them from the danger that they are faced with.

The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh explores the themes of religion and nature and how they intertwine to explain the world they live in. The climax of this novel comes out of nowhere but it represents the themes of nature being unpredictable even to the characters of the story. While being very abrupt Ghosh was more than capable of bringing together the characters of the story and the aspects of religion and nature together into the ending. Religion plays a central role in the narrative of the story and is used to explain the nature of the Sundarbans. Religion is used in this novel to explain the Sundarbans and the dangers around them but even then it is impossible to explain at times.

When I began reading 10:04 by Ben Lerner I found it incredibly hard to concentrate or to take in what I was actually reading but as I continued to read further, I realized that is the point. The most important part of the book is for it to feel real which is why we get hit with small interactions, such as buying groceries, feeling high, wanting to have kids, or being attracted to somebody. There are certain moments where I am able to really notice that this book is about climate change. For example, on page 19 the main character feels incredibly uncomfortable with where he is so much so that this is where the idea of feeling high comes from. “What I meant was that the approaching storm was estranging, the routine of shopping, just enough to make me viscerally aware of both the miracle and insanity of the mundane economy.” Here we are able to experience the very start of a new change. It is something that we all felt back during Covid, everybody felt so weird going to supermarkets or being in the street. It’s as if the body knows that there is something strange in the world.

This feeling of fear and uncomfortability is simply weird and a sensation that our bodies and minds are not really used to period if we look at parable of the sewer, we are thrown into the life of a girl who has already been feeling all of these emotions and is past the strange stage and deals with it in her daily life. I believe that this could be a reason, as to why parable of the sower was not taken as seriously as 10:04 could be taken. 10:04 is based on a very recent time in New York City, and we are able to connect with the places and experiences that the characters go through. The only difference is that something is starting to happen within the book slowly. This allows the reader to feel the same fears from the very beginning to the very end, not only do we experience this in the book, but it makes us fear what can happen tomorrow in our world.

There is a level of importance to how realistic you make a book. All of that allows you to get your message across to the readers and inflict the emotions you want to produce. Parable of the Sower lacks this, since it throws us into a regular day and a completely different “world”.