For anyone interested, I’ve added some links to some of the works Canavan referenced in his essay:

Margaret Atwood-Time capsule found on the dead planet

Richard McGuire – Here

May update if I track down anymore.

To follow up on our utopian reforms from this morning, this recent article in the NY Times surveys the rise of apps designed to combat food waste, including Too Good To Go:

Lots of Food Gets Tossed. These Apps Let You Buy It, Cheap. (Published 2022)

Several companies say they are tackling food waste by connecting people with unsold food from restaurants and grocery stores.

Mmmmmm….

Written by Octavia E. Butler in 1993, “Parable of the Sower” details the life of a girl named Lauren Olamina, through the pov of her and the diary entries she makes. It is set in a dystopian (then) future of 2024. The world in which Lauren is living is kinda bleak to be frank: viewing from a zoomed-out view, the United States, the country she lives in is in shambles: climate change as well as hinted at catastrophes have left people in pretty destitute conditions; clean water which was formerly taken as a given, as well as 24/7 access to appliances, cheap food, and abundance of entertainment have withered to practically nothing. Most of society, roughly 90% is either in a state of semi-middle/low class jobs, barely making enough to break even. They live in walled communities/neighborhoods, inhabiting semi-dilapidated houses. Only the very rich, “the top wuhn purrcent” (in the words of Bernie Sanders), have the life before the catastrophe, but with the added twist of having servant quarters on their big landed estates (all of this makes me think of Medieval Age Europe, with indentured servitude and feudalism; perhaps this was intentional by Butler on human society and her outlook on its future).

Within the beginning of her diary entries, Lauren talks about the condition that others say she allegedly suffers from: hyperempathy. Hyperempathy in the way Lauren describes it is the ability to always be conscious and in tune w/your emotions, especially on the lookout for negative emotions. An example where Lauren does this subconsciously is remarking to herself on the condition of the poor she sees as she rides back w/her family from church : “as I rode back, I tried not to look around at them, but I couldn’t help seeing – collecting – some of their general misery. I can take a lot of pain without falling apart. I’ve had to learn to do that, but it was hard today when just about everyone I saw made me feel worse and worse” [pg 11]. What makes this a bit shameful for Lauren, mostly shameful for her Dad in particular, is its supposed connection with her mother, who was a drug addict. Lauren’s dad is a preacher, and the fact that he first wife abused drugs would be bad for his image as a leader within their community, because if more people find out (other than his family), it could erode the authority he already has b/c they would be like “why did a preacher marry a drug addict, a man who preaches the Scripture doing something so uncharacteristic of order?” I personally think the crux of the issue is that Lauren’s dad in particular doesn’t really like her hyperempathy because it is so visible. When things affect her she shows it: “I must have seemed jumpy. I glanced around like a bird… he’s good at reading me. Sometimes people say I look grim or angry” [13]. I think what Lauren’s dad fears is that her daughter will be preyed on because of her emotions, to be easily misled perhaps when people show certain emotions (like sadness or pain), because they could use that and take advantage of her. Also in the world she lives in, it’s very hard emotionally. Disaster seems around every corner and people generally feel no hope. I feel like her dad wants her to try to mitigate these effects and harden herself up a bit because the future seems so uncertain in terms of better times and so certain in terms of overall cruddiness. 

The world Lauren lives in is set in California in the year 2024. They live in a neighborhood community that is surrounded by a wall of bricks and gated fences on the outside. Lauren is part of the aforementioned 90%, living in a house w/her stepmom Cora Olamina, her dad Mr. Olamina, and her four half-brothers, Keith, Marcus, Bennet, and Gregory. Her family is somewhat better off than the rest of the community however: her Dad works at a nearby college, her stepmom is a school teacher, with Lauren helping her with teaching kindergarteners. A theme I find common throughout reading all of this was a sense of tribalism. There are two forms of it: once on a micro scale, then another on a macro scale. Everyone feels a sense of belonging and wanting to care for their immediate families, then on a macro scale everyone feels a sense of belonging to their communities of taking care for one another despite differences; i.e. the incident where Ms. Simms gets robbed and raped, the people of the community give her food and furntiure to help replace what she lost; some even give cash. Even in hard times, people will feel a sense of kinship to others, regardless of blood, as long as they have an idea of who they are and know them enough.

One of the main themes Lauren mentions is ‘God is Change’– that change is inevitable. This is something we see within the changes in Lauren’s beliefs, change in knowledge, change in chaos, change in trauma/ loss, change in social relationships, change in economics– change of all kinds. Although this novel covers different topics, the topics that stood out to me were religion– intergenerational change, and a dystopian mirror future. Religion because Lauren differs from her father’s beliefs– she stopped believing in his God and created her own which she later named in chapter six ‘Earthseed,’ and this is something relatable to me, the skeptic ability of God. The dystopian mirror future also caught my attention because of the way the story was told– the timeframe/ date, the way it was written– like a diary/ journal, it felt relatable because this is something that can happen. 

“I’m learning to fly, to levitate myself. No one is teaching me.” (pg. 4) 

Coming back to this quote after reading chapters 1-7 is intriguing– this is an example of intergenerational change. Lauren is teaching herself, she is learning about her God, one that brings her comfort and peace, a God that she has created– she is finding what she believes in. I pictured this quote as Lauren flying indicating she is now free, her soul is free, that she has now control of her own destiny– control of her future.

“We can get ready. That’s what we got to do now. Get ready for what’s going to happen, get ready to survive it, get ready to make a life afterward.” (pg. 55)

Lauren is disturbed and can not believe the world she lives in, what is going on– she wants change! We saw this when Lauren spoke with Joanne who misinterpreted the conversation. Joanne understands this as she wants to run away but Lauren just wants to prepare for the future, she wants a plan for if stuff goes wrong. 

“But, Dad, that’s like… like ignoring a fire in the living room because we’re all in the kitchen, and, besides, house fires are too scary to talk about.” (pg. 63)

This quote showed Lauren’s change in chaos– things were becoming worse and she was not oblivious of it. By this point, we know Lauren has lost various neighbors– including a 3-year-old– this made a change in trauma– this is the youngest age thus far that Lauren has experienced a loss. As we read deeper into the novel we become aware that Lauren loses her brother. This also shows a change in trauma/ loss– losses from neighbors to now family. 

“The destiny of Earthseed is to take root among the stars.” (chapter 7) Lauren acknowledges by this point that the world she lives in is no longer for humanity– it is not safe. We see her beg her father to travel north but he feels secure– he can feed his family, he has a job, etc, but Lauren is not content– this is not the future she envisions.

In the Great Derangement, Amitav Ghosh presents issues that arise for authors when trying to capture the climate crisis in their writing; he expresses how it becomes difficult for readers to understand the danger that the world is currently in when a great amount of today’s scientific fiction incorporates unrealistic concepts like aliens and interdimensional travel. While this issue is real, it poses no barrier for Octavia Butler, who very realistically captured what the world could transition into because of our role in the climate crisis in “Parable of the Sower.” Through her characterization and world building, she develops a dangerous setting in which everything that is happening is a real-world possibility and not inconceivable for the average reader.

“Parable of the Sower” is told through the protagonist, Lauren’s, journal entries, which add a sense of realism to the story. Lauren is a teenage hyper-empath who already struggles enough given her mental disability; she is learning through her experiences without any guidance, writing that she trusts in her ability to grow, though still afraid (Butler, 4). Because Lauren is hyper-empathetic, she feels others’ pain as well as her own, which is very distressing in 2024 California, which is full of violence and other dangers because of the climate crisis. These Journal entries create a closeness between Lauren and the reader; the more we learn about Lauren, the realer she becomes, and through her journal entries we see the changing world through a dynamic character’s eyes rather than a narrator’s description of the setting.

The state of the world as described in Lauren’s journal entries is one that is realistically worse than the state of the world currently; we already see issues like shortages, violence, and fear within communities today, and in Butler’s depiction of 2024 California, these problems become bigger. In a world where fresh water is a luxury that not many could afford (Butler, 13), or calling upon emergency services like the fire department are a fee that majority are not willing to pay (Butler, 32), there are, imaginably, many people in pain, so imagine Lauren, the hyper-empath’s suffering. Not even Lauren’s family who was middle class could afford these “luxuries,” but were still targeted for being anything but poor; Lauren writes that “if you’re clean, you make a target of yourself. People think you’re showing off, trying to be better than they are.” (Butler, 18) Going outside was “dangerous and crazy” according to Lauren’s dad (Butler 7), which is how many people feel in certain neighborhoods in the real world. When the state of the world is up in the air, certain settings become dangerous due to how people respond to turmoil; Butler shows us how our dangerous reality can quickly transition to worse if we do not start acting against climate change.