Laurens character is very different,diffrent for all our other novels never read and up to this point in Parable of the Sower , different from everyone we’ve been introduced too. She has this ability, its not super natural but its not natural either, its very mystical. having the ability to feel what others feel on a physical level, in the time that she lives in is like a crutch. A crutch has the ability to aid you, but it can definetly slows you down. that kind of describes Lauren, her ability can allow her to see the better parts of people but in times of deadly conflict, 9 out of 10 times, she’s balled up uselessly in pain.

Lauren now lives in a kill or be killed world, but she fears killing anything because she gets the feeling of death herself. This is the first of her many challenges. In the chapter four of the book, Lauren over comes her fears and shoots a dog that tried to attack the group, taking it out of its misery. As  stated before, her ability its like a crutch, it can be an aid or a weakness. Here her hyper-empathy allows her to the feel the suffering of the dog, leading to empathy. This empathy causes her to over come her fears, and willingly experence death.”I had felt it die, and yet i had not died.i had felt its pain as though it were a human being.i had felt its life flare and go out, and i was still alive.”(46). At this point lauren is beginning to realize how strong she is , realizing her ability wont lead to death. This first experience of death gives her what she needs to develop as a character who is willing to protect herself and her people at all cost.

growing up to a priest lauren has lived much of her life learning about the bible, she constantly thinks of the  terrible suffering that goes on in her world, leading her to think of the   book of Job, the portion of the Bible that deals with the terrible suffering of a man named Job. “In the book of Job, God says he made everything and he knows everything so no one has any right to question what he does with any of it. Okay. That works. That Old Testament God doesn’t violate the way things are now. But that God sounds a lot like Zeus – a super-powerful man, playing with his toys the way my youngest brothers play with toy soldiers. If they’re yours, you make the rules. Who cares what the toys think. Wipe out a toy’s family, then give it a brand new family.”(16). Lauren unlike Job is against allowing suffering to go on, she wants to change the world she lives in, making it a better place.

She writes in a diary, opening her mind to the harsh realities of life. And in the process of writing her day to day life experiences, she comes to realize she is creating something more, but she isn’t quite sure what it is.”But this thing ,This idea? Philosophy? New religion?, won’t let me alone, won’t let me forget it, won’t let me go. Maybe…. Maybe it’s like my sharing: One more weirdness; one more crazy, deep-rooted delusion that I’m stuck with. I am stuck with it. And in time, I’ll have to do something about it. In spite of what my father will say or do to me, in spite of the poisonous rottenness outside the way where I might be exiled, I’ll have to do something about it. That reality scares me to death.”(26). She acknowledges the new ” religion” she’s starting will be opposed greatly by her father, yet she continues. Her ambitions surrounding her new philosophy go beyond keeping them personal, it is no longer enough, she wants to share it. Which could lead to something great for the good people still lest in the world.

Finally, a book that I can’t stop reading in this class. The Parable of the Sower has endless conflicts which include Lauren and her family, the families within the cul-de-sac, the outside environment beyond the cul-de-sac and list goes on. There also so many characters in the story that I can barely remember all their names and the sad part is, the minute you start to get attach to one of the characters it’s a huge possibility they will be killed off in the following chapters. The one thing I notice from Octavia Butler writing style, she gave Lauren Hyper Empathy condition and was able to connect the reader empathy for particular character with just a few paragraphs before painfully taken them away from you. I believe she wanted the reader to feel Lauren pain.

One of the different issues that I found interesting is when Keith decided to adventure beyond the cul-de-sac wall for the second time, and Reverend Olamina (Lauren Dad) was looking all over the world for him, but Cory believes he was not trying hard enough for her. “Dad tried to go to her, but she backed away, still shouting: “If it were your precious Lauren out there alone, you would have found her by now! You don’t care about Keith.” (96). I knew Cory showed a lot a favoritism to Keith but never expected it to be this bad to express this much anger. In this seen I believe Cory real feeling for Lauren was revealed to the family which started the instability within the household.

The amount of character to remember is painful, but Amy Dunn grew on me pretty quick after she almost burns down her family garage. She was the little sister Lauren never had, and daughter Tracy Dunn never wanted. As small as the community it was a young child was slipping through the cracks because of her mother and family members but Lauren saved her life for a brief moment. “I saw Tracy take Amy into the house and shut the door. Yet somehow Amy wound up outside again, wound up near the front gate, just opposite the Garfield/Balter/Dory house. Jay Garfield found her there when he came out to investigate what he thought was another bundle that someone had thrown over the gate. People toss us things sometimes– gifts of envy and hate: A maggoty, dead animal, a bag of shit, even an occasional severed human limb or a dead child.” (49). This is where this book got real for me. This happens a few time a year in reality and like the fact that Octavia Butler tries to make this close to real life as possible.

In the book “Parable of the Sower” by Octavia Butler, it revolves around the main character named Lauren who has a type of empathy for others. In the story the community is separated and the people living outside the walls are under harsh conditions. Like for example there are dead bodies around the streets and water costs a lot of money, even more than gasoline. The setting of the story takes place in California.

Throughout this book, in the beginning it had themes that tied to religious beliefs that dealt with believing in God and the different meanings of what God is according to people. According to the book it says: “Some say God is a spirit, a force, an ultimate reality. Ask seven people what all of that means and you’ll get seven different answers.”(Butler,15). In this quote it is saying that the people have different perceptions of what God could be and a reason for that can probably be because of the fact that the setting takes place in a time where the groups of people are separated and they live differently as well. Like in the city there is the area where the streets are filled with corpse around and other violent or disturbing images and then the gated area where the main character leaves from to get baptized and because of this it shows that the situations that is happening in California would mean that the people would view religion differently and also have different meanings of what God can be to them because of the events surrounding them as well.

The main character Lauren possess a hyper empathy in which she can feel the pain of others. When she observes others are hurt or bleeding, she would experience pain similar to that and that is what makes her feel the pain of others. Even though she possess an ability like that she does have a lot of dislike for the neighborhood because of all of the bad things that go on in it and the violence that takes place. She also wants to create her own set of beliefs and be able to spread that knowledge to people to create a better life. According to the book it says: “The particular God-is-Change belief system that seems right to me will be called Earthseed.”(77). In this quote it describes how Lauren wants to name the religion she decides to try to establish one day Earthseed because she feels that would be appropriate for her as it matches with her beliefs and understandings. It shows that she has found her own meaning of what God is to her and it also shows that she believes in something that would apply and match with the empathy she feels for others and would be a good thing as well.

One other theme that can be part of the story could be hopelessness because even though the main character feels that she can find a way, the circumstances so far in the story looks to be that way because of all the tragic events that take place. According to the book it says: “Doesn’t it even bother you that you took someone’s life-you killed a man?” (110). In this quote it is a conversation between Lauren and Keith in which they discuss how Keith is living life outside the walls. This situation shows that there is hopelessness because Keith have in to his own selfish desires and became the thing that Lauren dislikes which was to be like the evil people from the neighborhoods outside the walls. When Keith had killed that kind man who was going to Alaska, it shows that there was no kindness for others despite the fact that he was friendly to him and actually talked but since he had money it also shows that the people survive best by taking from others regardless of what type of interactions they have.

This book is interesting so far because there are various themes and the way the story goes and how the characters develops is also quite interesting to look at as well.

Reading Parable of the Sower, it seems like the writer is a spiritual person looking or finding her own God.  With the start of each new chapter, there are a couple of sentences describing God in one way or another.  At page 24 and 25, it reveals that these excerpts seems to be by the writer trying to describe how they believe God is truly like.  She says that “God is Change”, and then goes on to explain what this excerpt means(page 25).  Based on this, she seems to be trying to find how God might be like that would fit for her setting and situation.  The writer, despite being a daughter of a priest, does not believe, or at least fully believe, that the God she believe in and the God her father believes in are not the same God.  Though, this is most likely because of  the setting and state of life she currently lives in.

The setting in the world seems to take place in a ruined world where a disaster has struck.  Evidence of this ranges from buildings such as houses and churches having walls to protect the people inside from thieves, gangs, or rapist, or just protecting the building itself from being set on fire and destroyed.  The writer even describes her home, 20 miles from Los Angeles, as a place with “maggots”(page 9).  Also, as she, her family, and a few other children and adults go outside their walls protecting their homes to go to church, they “go out in a bunch, and go armed.”(page 8)  The need to do something like this in order to leave their protective walls in the first place tells that the setting of this book is dangerous to the point needing to hold a gun or weapon of some sort just to leave your house.  Even then, it’s not much safer to stay at home as people can come in, rob the residents, vandalise the house, possibly rape anyone inside, and burn the house down.  This happened especially to Mrs. Sims.

Mrs Sims is an old woman who lives by herself and is very religious, given that in the book, she “talked about everyone who wasn’t as holy as she thought she was”(page 21).  This quote shows that she has a “holier than thou” kind a personality that makes her look down on others.  She was also very arrogant and talks about others behind their backs, which is also exemplified by the quote.  Her attitude even drove her son’s family to not live with her due to her and her son’s wife hating each other(page 21-22).  This really says a lot about her unpleasant side of her personality since houses that are not burned down or broken into are rare, which makes her attitude not worth living with her.  Despite this, when tragedy struck her, once where after several people in the church tried to help her, and again when her son’s family died in a house fire set by an unknown arsonist.  These two actions causes Mrs. Sims to commit suicide, which then the writer starts questioning her actions since she points out that Mrs. Sims is very religious and believes that the act of suicide will make that person burn in Hell(page 23).  Despite the trauma Mrs. Sims went through, her actions made the writer question Mrs. Sims faith since the the writer herself is soul searching about God and since Mrs. Sims acted to sure of her faith, starts to wonder if it’s even possible to even follow it after going through to much.