Parable of the Sower

“I can take a lot of pain without falling apart. I’ve had to learn to do that.”

Hyperempathy syndrome makes people feel the pain of others so intensely that it may debilitate them. Yet, as Lauren explains, “the sharing isn’t real” (21). It is a delusional disorder that manifests in people whose mothers took certain drugs during their pregnancies. Despite this, it feels real, and the condition is not something that can be removed—though individuals can better control it as they grow older. This quality is something that sharers must hide because it is desirable in enslaved people and can encourage those who don’t have it to use violence to “break” those who do. It has influenced the way Lauren relates to and looks at others. Many see it as a weakness, yet Travis’s beliefs represent the idea that only hyperempathy can explain teamwork because it is an artificial conscience.

“Mars is a rock—cold, empty, almost airless, dead. Yet it’s heaven in a way. We can see it in the night sky, a whole other world, but too nearby, too close within the reach of the people who’ve made such a hell of life on earth.”

Lauren expresses early on her longing for space travel. She believes “space could be [humanity’s] future” (30). Exploration and colonization, Lauren thinks, are the keys to survival for humanity. Yet in a world as dysfunctional as the one she lives in, space is simply not a priority. During the early parts of the book, she ruminates on a couple of political candidates, one of whom wants to abolish the space program. This candidate wins the election, but Lauren doesn’t think his plan for putting people back to work by suspending wage, environmental, and worker protection laws will be good for society. Lauren incorporates the promise of finding habitable new worlds into her Earthseed worldview, but it is a part of her philosophy that is harder to sell to others because of their difficult daily lives.

“It’s better to teach people than to scare them, Lauren. If you scare them and nothing happens, they lose their fear, and you lose some of your authority with them. It’s harder to scare them a second time, harder to teach them, harder to win back their trust.”

Lauren tells her best friend, Joanna, that she thinks things are only going to get worse in their community and that they’d better be ready to survive it. She scares Jo, who then tells her parents. The Garfields in turn reveal this to the Reverend. The Reverend orders Lauren to stop talking about it and offers advice on how to get people on her side, ready to survive, without scaring them. This is one way in which the Reverend Olamina models positive behavior for his daughter. This excerpt demonstrates how big an influence he is on her, both in positive and negative ways.

“Well, today, I found the name, found it while I was weeding the back garden and thinking about the way plants seed themselves, windborne, animalborne, waterborne, far from their parent plants. They have no ability at all to travel great distances under their own power, and yet, they do travel.”

In this chapter, Lauren names her philosophy. She explains that even plants don’t need to sit around waiting to get wiped out: “I am Earthseed. Anyone can be” (88). She believes that she and others like her will have to develop roots far from home to get away from the dying environment they’ve so far survived. In drawing upon this imagery, she also evokes the idea of natural growth—not just the renewal of the Earth, which has clearly become close to unlivable, but also of its people, who must also renew themselves. She thinks another world, a living planet, would be the solution for humans if they weren’t tethered to the Earth, living in “the shadow of their parent world” (93).

“I never liked my brother much. I hate him now for what he’s doing to the family—for what he’s doing to my father. I hate him. Damn, I hate him.”

Lauren’s family begins to unravel when her younger brother, Keith, starts escaping to the outside. The Reverend Olamina is furious because Keith puts them all at risk by taking the key to the community gates with him. When Keith gets beaten up for his clothes, he loses precious resources. Despite this, he continues to leave and return, and Keith’s absence then causes a rift between Lauren and her stepmother, Cory. Cory believes Lauren is the Reverend’s favorite and can’t forgive her stepdaughter for that. When the Reverend beats his son for his actions, the rift in the family only gets worse. Keith and Lauren don’t have an affectionate relationship and disagree on the character of their father. However, they do share some conversation, which helps her understand what’s going on outside. Keith seems to warm toward Lauren during this talk, as he promises to bring her, as well as Cory, presents. Attackers, likely drug dealers, kill him not long after.

“When no influence is strong enough

To unify people

They divide.

They struggle.

One against one,

Group against group,

For survival, position, power.

They remember old hates and generate new ones,

They create chaos and nurture it.

They kill and kill and kill,

Until they are exhausted and destroyed,

Until they are conquered by outside forces,

Or until one of them becomes

A leader

Most will follow,

Or a tyrant

Most fear.”

The truths that Lauren sets down in her notebooks later become her bible. She writes verses that could apply universally to any situation that tests human nature. However, in the structure of the novel, the verses also foreshadow what may come. This verse comes fairly early in the story when readers are not sure yet exactly who she might be referring to—her brother, Keith, who is setting out upon a corrupt path to power; her father, who has wisdom but can also be tyrannical in his actions, especially toward his children; or perhaps herself, as a future leader.

“A biological conscience is better than no conscience at all.”

After Keith’s death, Lauren doesn’t cry because “[she] hated Keith as much as [she] loved him” (122). She thinks he would have been a monster as an adult. Here, she reflects on how people can hurt one another so much, and for the first time, she thinks of her hyperempathy as a good thing: “I wish I could give it to people” (123).

“I used to wait for the explosion, the sudden crash, the sudden chaos that would destroy the neighborhood. Instead, things are unraveling, disintegrating it by bit.”

As Lauren continues to relate the ways in which her neighborhood is falling apart—thefts, murders, and the promise of Olivar—she says she understands she cannot fulfill her destiny at home. She has a plan to get out: “To begin Earthseed, I’ll have to go outside” (132). Yet the idea is frightening to a girl not yet 18, who sees the wrongness happening around her but isn’t quite sure what her prospects might be outside. As it turns out, however, she’s right the first time—an “explosion” of sorts is what ends Robledo, not long after the death of her brother and the disappearance of her father.

“Moral: The weak can overcome the strong if the weak persist. Persisting isn’t always safe, but it’s often necessary.”

Following Reverend Olamina’s disappearance, Lauren preaches a sermon at services one morning. She doesn’t just eulogize; she wants to leave her audience with advice. She talks about perseverance, using Luke 18 as her inspiration. She is saying here that despite her father being the glue that held the community together, they must go on without him and they must not fail, or else her nightmares will come true: “This is our place, no matter what” (143). Unfortunately, the community breaks up not long after.

“I am one of the street poor, now. Not as poor as some, but homeless, alone, full of books and ignorant of reality.” 

Robledo goes up in flames. People die around her, so Lauren gets her survival pack and runs. She knows her limitations and understands that she cannot trust anyone except for those she has known from her old neighborhood. She gets away as far as she can and then hides in the ruins of a house while she decides what to do. Lauren needs to know what happened to her family, but she’s afraid to meet up with the paints and the pyros who have destroyed her home. In this moment, she draws strength from writing and her verses: “I have to write. There’s nothing familiar left to me but the writing” (164). This admission tells readers that Earthseed is helping her keep going.

“Everyone who’s surviving out here knows things that I need to know.”

After the fire that destroys Robledo, Lauren meets up with the only other probable survivors of the carnage, Harry and Zahra. They agree to head north together and help one another survive. Lauren emphasizes her position, saying, “I mean to survive” (178), part of which includes watching and listening to others as well as stealing and killing if necessary. Harry is surprised by her attitude, but Zahra has had experience stealing things and thinks of the other two as babies. Lauren says Zahra can be one of her teachers, and in turn, Lauren teaches Zahra to read and write.

“We’re a pack, the three of us, and all those other people out there aren’t in it. If we’re a good pack, and we work together, we have a chance.”

As Lauren forms her new community, she emphasizes the danger of unthinkingly allowing others into the group. She worries that Harry will naïvely welcome strangers to the trio, and Lauren, as leader, feels responsible for what could happen to them. However, as their journey down the freeway continues, the group gradually expands and welcomes several new members. In this excerpt, Lauren speaks out of fear and self-preservation, her word choice of “pack” akin to the imagery of the wild dogs.

“Embrace diversity.

Unite—

Or be divided,

robbed,

ruled,

killed

By those who see you as prey.

Embrace diversity 

or be destroyed.”

As one of the verses that grace the chapter headings in this book, this one clearly sets down the tenets of Lauren’s new religion. Although Parable of the Sower never directly addresses diversity, the setting is diverse, and the people within it are diverse. The future is multiethnic, and its people have distinct ways of thinking and acting. Such differences can be strengths when living in a community since variety means different ideas, skills, and ways of protecting one another. In Lauren’s view, diversity is something people should value—and the acceptance of diversity is also a greater good.

“Change is ongoing. Everything changes in some way—size, position, composition, frequency, velocity, thinking, whatever. Every living thing, every bit of matter, all the energy in the universe changes in some way.” 

A new member of the group, Travis, asks Lauren about Earthseed and how she can believe in such a thing that she invented. She explains that she was looking for God and found Change. Harry likens God to the second law of thermodynamics. The first law says that energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transferred or changed through heat and work. The second law says that isolated systems evolve toward thermal equilibrium, or a state of maximum entropy (the amount of disorder or randomness in the system and the unavailability of energy for conversion into work). Heat transfer naturally goes from hot to cold, and it is natural for systems to become disordered. The result is less energy being available for work. Entropy changes in various parts of the system, but the total change equals zero. In a glass of water, for example, ice melts into water, which cools the water and eventually causes thermal equilibrium.

“There’s comfort in realizing that everyone and everything yields to God. There’s power in knowing that God can be focused, diverted, shaped by anyone at all.”

Lauren explains her view of God being Change. She writes that Earthseed deals with reality, not anything supernatural. It is about action, not worship, because having strength and intelligence means nothing if one is just waiting for God to fix things. She reasons that the answer is for people to shape God themselves.

“The questions little children ask drive you insane because they never stop. But they also make you think.”

Lauren tells her journal she would like to draw everyone into the group into Earthseed, including little Dominic. She would teach him about her religion, and in return, he would teach her. In referencing a common human experience—interacting with young children—she reminds everyone that her future, and the humans in this story, are not far removed from the present day.

“The destiny of Earthseed is to take root among the stars.”

As they travel, Lauren’s companions demand to know more about her philosophy. Harry is trying to understand the Lauren he thought he knew but who now seems like a stranger to him. The new members of their group want to find out more about the people they have taken up with. Lauren tells them that moving to living worlds beyond the solar system is the ultimate aim, and they think she’s unreasonable. However, they continue to ask questions, and she answers. Her Earthseed ideas are spreading. In this chapter, they take root.

“And taking care of other people can be a good cure for nightmares like yours and maybe hers.”

With this quote, Lauren is speaking to Jill about the fact that Allie and newly motherless Justin have formed a bond. When Jill remarks, “You sound as though you know,” Lauren replies, “I live in this world too.” She speaks of the idea as a universal truth—they all must care for each other to keep themselves tethered to the good parts of life.

“When most of my community and the rest of my family were wiped out, and I was alone, I still had Earthseed. What I am now, all that I am now is Earthseed.”

Lauren tries to explain to Bankole how important her philosophy is to her. He asks her straight out how serious she is about Earthseed, and this is how she responds. It is important to her that Bankole at least tolerates this part of her because it is so meaningful to her. It clearly represents hope—something to live for, something to strive for, and something to give her life purpose. For Lauren, Earthseed is an idea that’s so strong it can keep her going through a world that is falling apart around her.

“The world is full of painful stories. Sometimes it seems as though there aren’t any other kind and yet I found myself thinking how beautiful that glint of water was through the trees.”

Lauren reflects on how everyone has gone through so much, and she indulges in a rare moment to appreciate nature, which can be so lovely and so devastating at the same time. This quote implies that there is hope ahead: hope for her relationship with Bankole and hope for the future of her group and of Earthseed.

“‘This world would be a better place if people lived according to Earthseed,’ I said. ‘But then again, this world would be better if people lived according to the teachings of almost any religion.’”

Lauren acknowledges the utility of religion in fostering common laws, goals, and moral behavior. She is having a conversation with Bankole, who doesn’t seem quite sold on her vision of God, which he calls a “rival.” She wants him to help her in her quest to create an Earthseed community. He says that he’s willing, even though he’s not sure they care about the stars the way she does. He likes them and wants her, reasoning that there’s room on his land for everyone and that’s enough for him. Now, they have a tangible goal for their travels.

“It teased like a living, malevolent thing, intent on causing pain and terror. It drove us before it like dogs chasing a rabbit. Yet it didn’t eat us.”

The paints and pyros are faceless horrors, but they drive much of the violence and death in this novel—along with their weapon of choice, fire. Their last attempt targets Lauren and her group because she and the others killed some of their numbers in self-defense, yet it isn’t their way to target individual travelers. Instead, they set mass fires and put all the travelers on that road in danger. The group members survive the fire and make it to their destination.

“No one should travel alone in this world.”

Lauren argues with Bankole about whether he should get the police involved in his sister’s disappearance. She’s afraid for him, and he’s afraid that if he takes her into police presence and they discover she’s a sharer, she might lose her freedom or her life. Lauren thinks that if something happens to him, they might never know if he goes by himself. She shows that she understands the danger they are all in, but on a larger level, she knows that their little community is stronger than any individual, which is one reason she has created Earthseed.