Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower Compared to Real Life

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Parable of the Sower is a very well-written science fiction novel by Octavia Butler. The setting is California in the year 2025. The world is no longer prosperous and has turned into a very poor place. There are countless people homeless, jobs are scarce and hard to come by, and very few communities of homes. The few communities that are still occupied have huge walls with barbed wire and laser wire surrounding them. There are robberies, murders, and rapes just about every day. People walk the streets naked and bloody because their clothes were stolen. Some people live in the hills like animals. They kill anything that comes along, human or not, for food and their territory. Everyone who has a chance to live must carry a gun so no one harm or try to do anything to them. In this society the police don't help because they are now very expensive and cost a lot of money just to come onto a scene. Most people can't afford to pay them so they handle whatever situation should arise themselves. It seems that people have nothing so they have lost sight of their morals and turned into scavengers, however people still residing in communities still find the time to attend church on Sundays. The main character of Parable of the Sower is Lauren Olamina. She seems very smart and pretty close to a person of our times, other than the fact that she experiences twice the feeling of what she sees. This means that when Lauren goes on a bike ride and sees all the sick and injured people roaming around, she feels what they feel and she hurts because she's sad to see those people. Lauren also feels twice what animals feel. At one point in Parable of the Sower Lauren's father had to kill a ... ... middle of paper ... ... If the Parable of the Sower's reality was ours, we couldn't look into the past for answers because our world has never seen anything like that. The Parable of the Sower was a very entertaining novel. I found myself getting attached to Lauren Olamina. Her views and attitude are similar to how I would act if I were in her shoes. I can't say I would be as patient as she is, but for the most part, I related to her. I looked forward to see what she would do next. I haven't anything negative to say about this book, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who is open to read a fun book. WORKS CITED Butler, Octavia E. "Parable of the Sower." A Four Walls Eight Windows First Edition, New York, 1993. LeGuin, Ursula K. "Dancing at the Edge of the World," Science Fiction and the Future, 1985. Oregon Museum of Science and Industry.

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