Parable Of The Sower By Octavia E. Butler

Mina Grace

Professor Paison

Assignment #3

July 03, 2015

Parable Of the Sower, Octavia E. Butler

Octavia E. Butler, a very skilled and intelligent writer, wrote a futuristic dystopian novel about the future and what it holds for us. The book was written in the 1980’s till the 1990’s. Octavia E. Butler took actual negative acts that occurred in those years such as drug use, prostitution, and many others and predicted the severeness of what will occur in the future. In this novel, we are introduced to the main character named Lauren. Lauren is a fifteen-year-old girl that lives in Robledo, which is located in California. The year the novel starts is in July 2014. Throughout the novel, it is shown to the reader many devastating things

Although I disagree with many points that were stated by the author in the novel, I agree with some view points that she stated in the novel. Octavia E. Butler showed how water and food would be scarce and food foraging will probably be the only way to gather food. In addition, she also describes the drug addicts who take the pyro drug. I agree that in the future there might be drugs such as the pyro that makes people want to set things on fire. I believe that this will happen because people take drugs such as cocaine nowadays and create many deviant and violent acts. I believe that there are certain acts like the scarcity of necessities, drug abuse, environmental changes, big businesses taking over, and the looting of houses will be present in the future. Other deviant acts like killing people and dogs eating humans, are very unlikely to occur in the future. Prejudice and racism was also shown in the novel when in the middle of the novel we are introduced that Lauren is African American and that racism and prejudice was an issue in 2024 till 2026. Racism, prejudice, and everything that was discussed in the novel concern me after reading this novel. It raises the concern that is it possible to avoid this fate? I believe that the world at the moment is not going into a good direction. If we continue wasting water, pollute our environment, continue drug abuse, and the deviant acts increase, we are heading towards the pessimistic view of Octavia Butler. If we can start making our world a better place from now and starting caring and thinking about how our future will be, we will not go towards the direction that Octavia Butler believes will head to. Therefore, in order for us to decrease all the deviant acts that occur during the time periods that was discussed in the novel, we must start to try to decrease all the negative acts that occur in our society. In conclusion, we