Book #9 "Parable of the Sower" By Octavia E. Butler: "This thing (this idea? Philosophy? New religion?) won't let me alone, won't let me forget it, won't let me go. 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 wall where I might be exiled, I'll have to do something about it. That reality scares me to death." (page 28)
I want to start by saying that sometimes my friend Brett, the one who lent me this book, really can mess up sometimes but I got to tell you I was not disappointed when it came to this book.
Octavia Butler published this book in 1993 however it is suppose to be about a futuristic would that, for lack of a better term, has just gone to hell. The book starts in the year 2024; pause here a min and realize that that is only 10 years away. CRAZINESS! However, and I might be wrong (knock on wood), but I truly do not believer that our world in ten years will end up being as bad as in Butler's imagination dreamed it up to be.
In this futuristic world we follow the life of Lauren Olamina. Within the 3ish years the book covers we go through just about everything with her. She's is, and then again at the same time is not, the typical teenager; wanting to get away from home, dealing with boys, trying to figure out how to survive in this crazy world outside of their gated neighborhood. Oh yea, and trying to come up with her own religion type thing called 'Earthseed'.
She ends up getting away from home but not quite how she anticipated she would. She is forced to start living on the road while leaving everything familiar behind. She starts making her way north in hopes of finding better living conditions. As she goes she picks up more and more people along the way. And together they face many challenges; such as other people trying to make their way north, thieves, fires, and the crazies who start them.
Two things to know about deal old Lauren: #1) she is known as a 'sharer' meaning that if she sees anyone in any kind of physical pain she will start hurting right along with them immediately. A bad condition to have while your walking along the highway and people are in physical pain right and left. #2)throughout the whole book she is 'making up', she calls it discovering but lets be honest and call it what it really is, a new religion type thing that she calls 'Earthseed'. I could go into depth about it but to be honest it really isn't that different then pretty much most of the religions there are today; just instead of worshiping God she calls God 'change'. She thinks God is change. Don't know how better to sum it up without going into a ton of detail, sorry.
The one and only thing that really drove me crazy was that halfway through the book Butler all of a sudden tossed in a really old man that Lauren all of a sudden, like extremely out of nowhere, starts having all these sexual feelings for. And he is old enough to be her dad...EW! I really felt like someone said to Butler, 'oh, hey yea your book is like super depressing so you should totally toss in this completely random love story to hopefully distract everyone from all the tragic stuff that is going to happen in the book.' It was just really stupid cause there really wasn't a place for it and it really felt like she just forced in into the story and then made stuff work around it. Oh, and did I mention the book is written Journal style so that made all this even more awkward cause Lauren went into a lot of detail sometimes.
All this being said, and as I said earlier, while I don't think the world will be quite as messed up as it was in the book, I do however believe that if the world were to spiral down I would find the whole 'Parable of the Sower' situation much more likely to come about then say that of 'Hunger Games'. So props on being believable I guess.
I could probably (whoa font change and it won't let me change it back...STRANG) keep going but I will spare you my ramblings. Finally making into the double digits with book #10 "Entwined by Heather Dixon. Never mind the fact that I should be on book #17 by now. :P
That's all for now,
Michaela Jane
PAGE COUNT: 3823
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