How does “Parable of the Sower” construct a utopian society out of a dystopian time without the need of a sovereign?

Phillips, Jerry . “The Intuition of the Future: Utopia and Catastrophe in Octavia Butler’s “Parable of the Sower.” JSTOR.org, summer 2002, www.jstor.org/stable/1346188. 

• Phillips argued that the novel should be centering on the central problem of the present and how to find pathways to utopia when all the pathways are being blocked by dystopias of fascism and Stalinism that have collapsed utopia into catastrophe.

Nilges, Mathias. ““We Need the Stars”: Change, Community, and the Absent Father in Octavia Butler’s “Parable of the Sower” and “Parable of the Talents.”” JSTOR.org, winter 2009, www.jstor.org/stable/27743152. 

• Nilges stated the way Butler treats the concept of change indicates a necessary time difference between postmodernism and post-Fordist culture. Butler doesn’t represent change as a solution but rather as a central problem in society and everyone expects everything to go back to normal. Traditional stabilities become non-existent. Butler represents Earthseed as a subject that needs to adapt to the adaptations and form a community around the main change. Butler’s parable allows us to discover the roots of politically and socially developed idealized re-filiation as a response to the dominance of the decentered subject in post-Fordism, exposing the desires of the self-conscious about the cultural creation of post-Fordism.

Agusti, C. (2005). The Relationship Between Community and Subjectivity in Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower. Extrapolation, 46(3), 351–359. https://doi.org/10.3828/extr.2005.46.3.7

• Agusti’s main focus is on how Butler dramatizes and overcomes the concept revolving around the exploitation of females that comes from the formation of capitalism through corporations. The article also centered on Olamina’s act against an oppressed system that is unjust and unfair to people of color and Butler being able to develop her utopian community approach towards gender and racial difference and creating an equal society. The novel’s objective is to map a subjective idea or sequence of viable strategies that originate within the consciousness of a Black female who can express a political voice and can actively have an effect on social change.

Zamalin, A. (2019). OCTAVIA BUTLER AND THE POLITICS OF UTOPIAN TRANSCENDENCE. In Black Utopia(pp. 123–136). Columbia University Press. https://doi.org/10.7312/zama18740-010

• Zamalin argued that Butler opposes the idea of neoliberal dreams in her novel since, from her perspective, economic freedom leads not to great individual choices but instead to higher risks of violence and insecurity. In which the government can create an eviscerated life where every resource becomes so scarce that it only leads people to react in barbaric ways. Butler uses the American dystopia fantasy for Lauren to transform this philosophical and ideological religious community that is opposed to the rules that were the norms and instead to implement new changes to grow as a community together, fabricating an alternative movement that seeks social justice and fairness equality that will grant them a higher chance of surviving a dark world meanwhile everyone inside the community has the liberty to express their ideas and their freedoms. Parable built the concept of “earthseed” as a revolutionary and philosophical durability capable of assembling a democratic future.

Stillman, Peter G. “Dystopian Critiques, Utopian Possibilities, and Human Purposes in Octavia Butler’s Parables.” JSTOR.org, 2003, www.jstor.org/stable/20718544.

• Stillman said Butler generates details of social fatalities that stand the results of corporations, practices, and personal experiences. Butler links dreams and nightmares through future dystopian fatalities that are inevitable as the result of current utopian systems that revolve in our everyday life, and the good things that currently come out of this “utopian” idea will later in the future turn into a dystopian nightmare. Butler’s imagery of dystopian possibilities presents warnings of the present existing problems and ideologies. The struggling points in the novel are the reflection of what Butler sees in her present time. The novelty provides considerable insights into American dystopia eviscerated by government or aggressive and intrusive religious fundamentals to the existence that there are still hopes of potential utopians. Butler proposes various utopian possibilities where human beings can act together in a sensuous unity to change themselves and their perspective of the world.

Clausen, Daniel D. “Cli-Fi Georgic and Grassroots Mutual Aid in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower.” Western American Literature, vol. 56 no. 3, 2021, p. 269-286. Project MUSE, https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/wal.2021.0040.

• Clausen argues that creating new stories can revolve around the concept of existing events, like history, and the knowledge one has in implementing those ideas into a whole new story, as Butler did in the parables. Clausen views the novel as an example of participating in a historical tradition of values that puts out an antiracist and an anarchist perspective.

How is the utopian process of creating a political order out of a dystopian society without the need of a ruler in “Parables of the Sower”?

Phillips, Jerry . “The Intuition of the Future: Utopia and Catastrophe in Octavia Butler’s “Parable of the Sower.” JSTOR.org, summer 2002, www.jstor.org/stable/1346188. 

Nilges, Mathias. ““We Need the Stars”: Change, Community, and the Absent Father in Octavia Butler’s “Parable of the Sower” and “Parable of the Talents.”” JSTOR.org, winter 2009, www.jstor.org/stable/27743152. 

Agusti, C. (2005). The Relationship Between Community and Subjectivity in Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower. Extrapolation, 46(3), 351–359. https://doi.org/10.3828/extr.2005.46.3.7

Zamalin, A. (2019). OCTAVIA BUTLER AND THE POLITICS OF UTOPIAN TRANSCENDENCE. In Black Utopia (pp. 123–136). Columbia University Press. https://doi.org/10.7312/zama18740-010

Stillman, Peter G. “Dystopian Critiques, Utopian Possibilities, and Human Purposes in Octavia Butler’s Parables.” JSTOR.org, 2003, www.jstor.org/stable/20718544.

In the second chapter of weather by Jenny Ofill there is much more information about the day-to-day life of Lizzie and the things she goes through and how it might trigger and activate this sensation of fear and worries of the future because she assists these shows with Slyvia which the main point is to talk about the future and what they can do and the worries it bring to these people thinking about the very unpredictable future and no one knows. She is in this situation where she is multi-tasking things based on the novel and how much it has brought problems into her personal life and her family. “My main bad decision is spending too much time traveling or being a fake shrink while ignoring the people I live with.” (87)  Lizzie expresses that her decision brought tension within her family because she spends more time traveling and putting on this facade about knowing what the people she has been dealing with go through in Slyvia’s shows and messaging them that only leads to her to worry about the climate crisis and that is another stressful thing she has deal while dealing other things.

“The guest today on the show is explaining that many scientists are in a state of barely suppressed panic about the latest data coming in. Their previous models were too conservative. Everything is happening much faster than expected.” (76) Slyvia shows are attended by people who are stressing and worrying too much about the future not just for themselves but for the upcoming generations and Lizzie she was offered to help Slyvia with responding to messages sent by people who may be delusional about the future and that’s what she has been endorsing which I think it probably got into her head to also start thinking about the future and questioning the unpredictable such as people in the real world some think beyond without having such evidence that can back up their claims and they are just unpredictable predictions because no one knows what the future holds for this world. “According to the current trajectory, New York City will begin to experience dramatic, life-altering temperatures by 2047.” (106) In this quote she was looking at her son Eli and then this random thought came which could relate to people in the real world because most out of nowhere start to think what might the future be like for their kids and how different it would be compared to right now. “The requirement is that they are disappearing faster than expected.” (85) In this part Sylvia states that nature is disappearing faster than what was expected and I think it’s nature because there is nothing else that she worries about but nature. “Lizzie’s become a crazy doomer.” (89) She later on speaks to her husband about climate departure and how they both have different opinions. For example in the real world, there are always two sides, and in this example, there could be one side in which a group believes that the world is going through a climate crisis based on the drastic change in temperature and other things while the other will deny and won’t believe because not everyone is on the same page and the ones who believe it is true could mean that they experience it and the other that denies it is because they haven’t experienced so they don’t know what it’s like to see a drastic change in the world. “According to the current trajectory, New York City will begin to experience dramatic, life-altering temperatures by 2047.” (106) In this quote she was looking at her son Eli and then this random thought came which could relate to people in the real world because most out of nowhere start to think what might the future be like for their kids and how different it would be compared to right now.

From my perspective from what I get from reading this novel, many individuals are unaware of their surroundings and the things nature goes through because they are busy with their day-to-day life and don’t have the time to start looking at their surroundings and notice the changes it is going through and why and whether it’s expected to get worse or not. But not to the extent that they have endorsed too much information that they develop this worry and fear of the future and what’s going to look like due to their overconsumption which will affect them psychologically.

How does the novel represent the process of creating a political order out of a broken society? (Parable of the Sower)

In the novel “Weather” written by Jenny Ofill, in the first chapter, we get the narrative from a first-person point of view about the everyday life of a librarian person (Lizzie) and what she goes through in her everyday life. Throughout the first chapter, we get sorts of information about the character and her family and her type of mindset, I would assume she is a pessimistic person based on her language and the way she articulates certain things, such as the conversation she had with Mr.Jimmy about the junkyard and she responded by saying that “I tell him one day those machines are going to come and crush all of us.” (pg.37) which from my understanding she seems to be in a bad mood. “You seem to identify down, not up. Why do you think that is?” (pg.15) This could indicate that this is the personality Lizzie has in this first chapter.

At some point in the novel Lizzie is at this conference with Sylvia who knew her and brought her to this conference that the whole thing is about the future and fearing what the future would potentially look like. “Somehow, I got seated halfway down the table from her. I’m trapped next to this young techno-optimist guy. He explains that current technology  will no longer seem strange when the generation who didn’t grow up with it finally ages out of the conversation.” (pg.38) The interesting thing about this dialogue is that I want to compare it to the real world because during the time the world was introduced to this new era of technology, there were many criticisms about it whether it was good or bad, and how it would impact the future. These were the people who didn’t grow up with technology and had conversations about it and it connects to reality because at some point people will normalize technology and implement it into their daily lives. In today’s world it’s the norm to see technology everywhere.

“His point is that eventually all those who are unnerved by what is falling away will be gone, and after that, there won’t be any more talk of what has been lost, only what has been gained.” (pg.38) In other words people who have this fear about the future because of the rise of technology and the potential outcome of it will be gone because they will be dead and the talks about technology whether it’s good or bad will be forgotten and the only things that are going to be talked is the outcomes that we gained from using technology. She sees it as something bad because if they are moving forward and forget what was behind then it will be something of the past and there is no going back to that time. I could think of it like she fears the future and rather stay in the past because she already experienced it and the future is unpredictable, no one knows what the future awaits, and whatever the outcome is positive or negative.