Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

 

  I needed to take a break from reality on the night of November 6, 2024, so right after dinner I immersed myself in Octavia Butler’s book. But life has a way of playing tricks on me. When I reached page 25, I was shocked to read that the main character, Lauren, had written a journal entry dated on Wednesday November 6, 2024. Yes, you’ve read that correctly. It was the same day of the week, date and year. I had trouble believing the coincidence of such a synchronicity.

  According to the journal entry, Mr. Donner had won the presidential election and he would dismantle environmental regulations and worker protection laws…

   I can’t believe I am writing this but… dystopias are not meant to be used as playbooks. They can be offered to relay the fruits of the author’s foresight to people who are confused and can’t evaluate the consequences of foolish actions and decisions.

  A dystopia takes us to a place where we do not want to go. Parable of the Sower dares to do that.

  What happens when people choose vulgarity and hatred over empathy and common sense?

  What happens when a climate crisis is blatantly ignored and not addressed?

  What happens when the truth does not matter anymore?

  To know the answers to these questions, you can read Parable of the Sower. Octavia Butler delves into the context well. It is like going back to the Middle Ages, but with a climate crisis on top of it. It is unsettling and disturbing. Read it and pass it on to those who still believe in the power of books. It is a story of survival amid dark life circumstances. It is riveting, fascinating and very unpleasant. I am still reading it…

  I can’t believe she published this book in 1993. Octavia Butler was a genius. I can’t figure out why this book is not as widely read as Farenheit 451. Perhaps it is because the author is a woman of color and not a white man.

 The setting is so vivid and terrifying: you can see with clarity how far misogyny, hatred and racism can go; in this reality, people do not even have the privilege of whining about high gasoline prices anymore, because they don’t have enough clean water to drink and keep themselves clean.

  Octavia Butler won several awards, and you can read about her life and accomplishments here:

https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/octavia-estelle-butler

 https://grist.org/culture/octavia-butlers-1993-parable-of-the-sower-predicted-climate-reality/

   I will end the post with the starting quote of her book:

“Prodigy is, at its essence, adaptability and persistent, positive obsession. Without persistence, what remains is an enthusiasm of the moment. Without adaptability, what remains may be channeled into destructive fanaticism. Without positive obsession, there is nothing at all.”

 

 

  Addendum to the post:

 I finally completed the read. It is a remarkable story that belongs to the speculative fiction genre. This novel provides the fertile soil to have fruitful discussions on several topics and issues that assail our modern societies. If you belong to a book club, I hope you will consider sharing it. I will continue thinking about it and reflecting on it. 

 It is interesting to point out that when the novel was first released in 1993, critics refused to accept it as speculative fiction. They believed it was a book of science fiction.

  The novel is now accepted as speculative fiction; it has become a best-seller.

 

 

"1984" by George Orwell

"Of course the people do not want war... But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them that they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism. " German Field Marshall

 A reader of this blog took the time to e-mail me the post I deleted by accident. Thank you , Claire. I appreciate your time and cooperation.

 Today I’m publishing my post on “1984” again, with a few “upgrades”.

  If there is something about the plot and/or characters that offends somebody, please bear with it. George Orwell is now dead so you can’t bully the author. Excuse my sense of humor here. I know, I know. Women are not expected to have this kind of sense of humor (unless they use it to pester a woman who opposes the bully in power).

 Thankfully, I’m married to a man who loves my sense of humor.

 Do people get annoyed by the use of pen-names? Hopefully not because George Orwell is a pen-name. Ladies and gentlemen: live and let live.

Here’s my essay on “1984” by George Orwell.

 ‘1984’ is a dystopian novel about a country called Oceania. (The name Oceania probably alludes to the isolationist nature of its people).  Oceania  is constantly at war, but its citizens do not know why it is at war. They do support it, though, because anybody who is not a supporter is considered a traitor.

  Hatred and rage fuel the support of this endless war. 

 Anyone who dares to oppose the dictator’s ideas or think differently is vilified and will disappear. Those who work for the party are instructed to manipulate the truth as needed.  In fact, nobody is expected to  care about the truth because their lives would be at stake if they did. Freedom is considered to be blind obedience to the leader. 
 Physical movements and facial expressions are closely monitored by screens in people’s homes, political prisoners are treated worse than criminals and love does not exist; hatred and fear condition everybody’s behavior. Blind obedience to Big Brother is what matters.

 Torture and starvation await anybody who dares to challenge the system in any way.  Another strategy of the ruling Party is to destroy words. “We’re cutting the language down to the bone. Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?” “There will be no thought as we understand it now. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”

  Winston is a thirty-nine year-old man who works for the Ministry of Truth. He helps to change the historical facts but, in reality, he is a free thinking person who would like to sabotage Big Brother’s dictatorship. He falls in love with a woman, and they both challenge the system by loving each other and having secret encounters that they must plan in advance.

 When Winston becomes a political prisoner a member of the inner Party confesses to him, “Our civilization is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy - everything. Already we have destroyed the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution. We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. ..”

   “There will be no loyalty, except loyalty toward the party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science”.

“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power”. “We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power”.

 The truth is distorted to meet the leader’s interests; conformity becomes the rule.

 The society in which the authoritarian regime thrives is designed carefully to disregard critical thinking and to believe blindly in their leader. His authority is not to be questioned, and those who dare do it are punished and labeled as enemies. George Orwell portrays the dynamics of this society with striking details.

 The features that make Big Brother powerful are the following:

-Fanaticism

-Scapegoating

-Exacerbated nationalism

-Mindless slogans and repeated lies

-The destruction of language

-Use of songs and ceremonies to venerate the leader

  The past becomes mutable for the government can manipulate history by rewriting the historical facts and changing the data to keep the dictator in power.  This is done because the omnipotence of the dictator can only be preserved through lies and irrationality. 

  In Oceania the proletarians - also called “the proles”- are the majority of the population. The Party claimed to have liberated “the proles”, but, in reality, the dictator does not care about them.

“So long as they continued to work and breed, their other activities were without importance.”

“All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working hours or shorter rations”.

   Contradictions are at the heart of the regime. In ‘1984’ the Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture, and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. 

    The question that lingers in my mind is whether these totalitarian leaders succeed because of the ignorance and/ or apathy of the masses or the conformism of the intellectuals. I think it is a combination of both. As Albert Einstein said, “Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.”

Still I rise

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may tread me in the dirt

But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells

Pumping in my living room?

Just like moons and suns

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hope springing high,

Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops

Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don’t you take it awful hard

Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines

Digging in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I’ve got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.

Maya Angelou

"The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood

I’ve already described some of the outstanding qualities of Margaret Atwood’s oeuvre: ingenious satire and social insight along with well developed characters and plots.

 In "The Handmaid’s Tale" the United States of America is taken over by fundamentalist Christians. Under the new regime women are not allowed to read, work or think. They are only expected to obey  the rules that powerful men create. Women are forced to reproduce. The dissidents are severely punished.

  As part of this regime there is an underworld in which rich privileged men use women as a source of entertainment. When a woman is raped they say that she deserves it; it is God's plan.  Margaret Atwood wrote this book in the 1980s, yet it appears to be of relevance today.

   

  White women in America earn 75 % of what white men make; African American women make 63 %, even with the same level of education and experience; Latina women only make 54% of what white males earn. These figures show clearly that gender and ethnic discrimination go hand in hand.

 We all deserve the same respect, dignity and consideration. (And, by the way, if you don't like to hear a woman yelling, then don't excuse a man for doing so, even if he is white and American).

 If you want to understand how unconscious and conscious biases determine the way women are judged and treated differently I recommend the well researched book by Iris Bohnet: “What Works: gender equality by design.” In addition to exploring  the complexity and consequences of these biases through concrete examples, she proposes solutions to this important issue.

"The Japanese Lover" by Isabel Allende

There are many love stories in this novel by Isabel Allende, but it was not the title that attracted me to it. The hook was the first chapter. It narrates the story of Irina, a young woman from Moldova who is hired to work at Lark House, an imaginary nursing home located in California.

  Irina bonds with the residents of Lark House because she is kind, sensitive and caring. After an unexpected turn of events, Irina is also hired to work a few hours a week for Alma, one of the residents.

  Both Irina and Alma harbor secrets that hold the suspense of the novel till the end.

 Even though they had different backgrounds, Alma and Irina had something in common: they’d both migrated to America under difficult circumstances.  Alma had moved to the United States from Poland at age seven when her Jewish parents, terrified by the rise of Nazism, sent her to live with her uncle and aunt in America. During her childhood she met Ichimei, a family friend with whom she fell in love.

   The story is narrated from an omniscient point of view. The present and past moments of their lives alternate and the writer paints the intimate landscapes of the characters’ thoughts and emotions. We also get to know the Japanese lover through the letters that he wrote to Alma.

 This novel encouraged me to learn more about American history. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese government in 1941 President Roosevelt declared war on Japan. On the West Coast of the United States of America thousands of American citizens of Japanese background were detained and sent to concentration camps for no other reason than their race. Their bank accounts and possessions were confiscated by the government.

“The Japanese had to quickly sell off whatever they owned at knockdown prices, and to close their businesses. They soon discovered that their bank accounts had been frozen; they were ruined.”

“By August, more than a hundred and twenty thousand men, women and children would be evacuated, old people snatched from hospitals, babies from orphanages, and mental patients from asylums. They would be interned in ten concentration camps in isolated areas of the interior, while cities would be left with phantom neighborhoods full of empty homes and desolate streets, where abandoned pets and the confused spirit of the ancestors who had arrived in America with the immigrants wandered aimlessly.”

 I think this is a relevant reminder of how hate speeches fueled by fanaticism, racism and economic hardship do have consequences. Nevertheless, those consequences were presented under the veil of censorship.

“It was a temporary solution and would be carried out in a humane fashion. This was the official line, but meanwhile the hate speech spread. ‘A snake is always a snake, wherever it lays its eggs. A Japanese-American born of Japanese parents, brought up in a Japanese tradition, living in an atmosphere transplanted from Japan, inevitably and with only rare exceptions grows up as Japanese and not American. They are all enemies.’ It was enough to have a great-grandfather born in Japan to be seen as a snake.”

  Another important subject that this novel touches is that of sex trafficking and forced prostitution. This cruel horrifying “business” is one of the most profitable in the world, and it makes me wonder why it has not been eradicated yet. Is it because there are many “customers” out there who are willing to pay for sex slaves? Is it because society is too busy slut-shaming victims instead of helping them?

    This novel is about love, friendship and trust, and what I enjoyed the most about it is that the author merged the political and social aspects of it with the personal lives of the characters. The end is bittersweet, a reflection on the timelessness and endurance of love.