Whoever has ears, let them hear (Ch. 10-14 (I think...))

 Lauren had to leave her community if she wanted to survive the fires, but she also would've had to leave if she wanted to successfully spread her Earthseed religion. The Parable of the Sower (in the Bible) goes something like this: there's a farmer who's spreading seed on the ground, and some of the seed lands on rocks, some on weeds, and some in good soil. The seeds on the rocks don't grow, and the seeds near the weeds are choked out, but the seeds in the good soil grow into strong plants. The moral of the story is that people are like soil, and they need to be receptive of the teachings (seeds) of the farmer (Jesus). However, we can also turn that parable around: the farmer needs to sow seeds on good soil if they're going to take root. The community was like the rocky soil in the parable - they wouldn't have been receptive to Lauren's religion, because they were resistant to change, and resistant to the idea that everything in society was falling apart. To sow her Earthseed, Lauren needed to leave the community and find the good soil: people who have seen society unraveling, and recognize the need for change. She hasn't found those people yet, but maybe she will! Or maybe she'll die first, we'll see I guess... 

Everyone's dead! (Chapters 9-13)

 Well that changed quickly. It took about four months for the community to slide from (the illusion of) security to the mess it's in now, with a large number of inhabitants dead or left homeless, and thieves ransacking the place. At the end of chapter 13, Wardell Parish complains that "everybody's dead," and though he's talking about his family, his statement reflects the state of affairs in the community and also the country. Parable doesn't seem as prescient as 1984 did - sure, it's entirely possible that technology companies are constantly watching us like Big Brother, but at least people aren't just randomly shooting others in the streets so often that nobody bats an eye anymore. I'm still wondering, though, how did this happen? Butler hasn't really given us any explanation about why society disintegrated to anarchy. I honestly can't imagine what sort of apocalyptic event could lead to this, yet still leave the government intact. I suppose that we outperformed Butler's society, because the book starts in 2024 and whatever happened to unravel society probably took more than three years, but I'd still like to know why Lauren's world is such a mess that, in four months, everybody dies. 

Past Morality (Ch. 5-8)

 After the thieves come into Laura's community, her father begins a neighborhood watch. Corey is uncomfortable with the idea - she doesn't want anybody to be shot, even thieves, and argues that "thou shalt not kill" means that the watch is sinful because they may have to kill invaders. Laura's father responds to this by citing a bible verse that discusses fighting to protect your homes and families. I thought this scene was somewhat strange - isn't their society a little beyond morally justifying your actions? I think the world of Sower, as far as we can tell, is so anarchic that there's a kill-or-be-killed feeling that permeates the book. Since the dawn of living things, trees or wolves or people all have had to fight others for scarce resources, and the more powerful one wins the right to survive. It's a testament to human society (and I suppose to other society-forming animals as well) that this isn't ok anymore, and that we've been able to create moral codes to live by, but in Parable of the Sower I think that Laura's society has fallen apart to the point where it's so dangerous that they have to return to the eat-or-be-eaten lifestyles of every other animal, moral codes or no. 

Back to the Future??

Parable of the Sower is set 30 years after it was first written in the 1990s, and sometime in those thirty years something happened in the US that changed society from what we know today to a society where the economy has fallen apart and people have to arm themselves to protect against looting and violence. This is strange, but the one parallel that I can draw to this is Back to the Future part 2. 

*spoilers, sorry* 

Because of what Marty and Biff do in the 1950s, once Marty returns to his home 30 years later in the '80s, he finds his society has completely fallen apart after Biff became the most powerful person in the country. Because of Biff's mismanagement, Hill Valley is full of violence and crime. The only way to make money is through Biff's casino, and Marty's old neighborhood is boarded up, his school is burned down, and his principal carries an automatic weapon. 

This is a lot like what we see in Sower - I have no deep thoughts on this, because we aren't far into the book yet so we don't know exactly what happened to Lauren's town and country, but I thought that it was a fun parallel. Maybe Butler expected some sort of powerful Biff-like character to take power and run the country to the ground? Or maybe some cataclysmic event ground the economy to a stop and chaos descended on the country? I found an article that says that Butler wrote her dystopian books as a warning about what could happen "if this goes on." What "this" is, though, is for now unclear.