The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler is an excellent addition to the dystopian genre. A friend recommended this book to me last week and I read it on their recommendation. I enjoyed the key ideas presented by the main character in the story but struggled with the dark tone at times and am still haunted from a few of the scenes in this book. I don’t personally read much dystopian fiction so take my thoughts with a grain of salt if you love this genre or are more used to the horrific events portrayed within.
Read ahead to find out the basic premise of the story, my description of the tone of this book, a few other stories’ that I think have a similar vibe, and my recommendation of The Fifth Season by N.K Jemisin as a similar story that I ultimately this is a better read for most people while maintaining similar themes.
I found book had interesting ideas but that the tone and lack of a compelling main character held it back for me. I love creative worldbuilding and great characters, both of which I found to be a bit lacking in The Parable of the Sower. If you can enjoy the ideas about change, hope and religion that Butler works into the story through the main character this book could be a standout, but for most readers I will recommend giving this one a pass.
Minor Spoilers Ahead (although nothing too specific)
What Should I Know About this Book?
The Parable of the Sower was written in 1993 and is a dystopian science fiction story set in the dystopian years within the 2020’s. The book shows a bleak future in which the United States and specifically the West Coast slowly descends into chaos as climate change, economic breakdown, and rampant crime tear society apart.
The story is told in the form of journal entries by Lauren Olamina, the young daughter of a pastor within a walled community on the outskirts of Los Angeles. As the world slowly falls apart around them, their community becomes one of the only safe areas remaining. You watch as the world around their community gets more and more dangerous and how the different members of the community handle the new reality of the world.
Throughout the story you watch Lauren develop her own religion named Earthseed. At its core Earthseed believes that God is Change, that humans shape and change God, and that humankind is destined to live among the stars. If you enjoy those ideas or watching the birth of a fictional religion, this book may be for you.
What is the tone like?
The Parable of the Sower puts the main character through some of the worst that world she is in has to offer. Butler never hides the brutal, uncaring, terrifying world that Lauren finds herself within. I still find myself recalling one specific scene from the story with cannibalistic children. The writing is beautiful and the pain clearly has meaning, but man can the book be dark at points.
As the main character herself says:
“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.”
Octavia Butler – Parable of the Sower
Will I like This Book?
Do you enjoy a harsh and dark dystopian fiction?
Are you interested in reading books written by and featuring people of color?
How exciting to you is a character developing a brand new religion and beginning to share their ideas?
How certain are you that the capitalist world around is us starting to crumble?
Is your favorite book 1984, or The Handsmaid Tale? (John Green recommends both as similar on the cover of the book so that’s a good sign?)
Favorite Quotation from the Book:
“The child in each of us
Knows paradise.
Paradise is home. Home as it was Or home as it should have been.
Paradise is one’s own place,
One’s own people,
One’s own world,
Knowing and known,
Perhaps even Loving and loved.
Yet every child
Is cast from paradise-
Into growth and new community,
Into vast, ongoing Change.”
Octavia Butler – Parable of the Sower
If I like This Book, What Should I Read?
What books have a similar philosophical vibe to them?
This book is clearly designed to create and explain a key ideology that the author holds to its readers through a fictional medium. In that way this book read to me more like one of Albert Camus’ existentialist classics like The Fall or The Stranger or Kafka’s Metamorphosis and The Trial but without the same level of, lets say strangeness that those books have. If you really enjoy any of the above or this book, check the others out!
What Book Should I Read Instead?
Thinking about The Parable of the Sower I found the world to be not nearly as imaginative as I tend to enjoy and the message a bit more in my face than I prefer. If you want a dystopian story that carries similar themes but with far more powerful worldbuilding, character work, and writing The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin has to be my recommendation to pick up instead.
The Fifth Season was the 2016 Hugo Award winner for Best Novel and it shows. The book and entire series are excellent additions to the post-apocalyptic fiction genre I would be surprised if the author N.K. Jemisin hadn’t read the work of Octavia Butler prior to writing her own.
So, Should I Read The Parable of the Sower?
The Parable of the Sower is an interesting dystopian novel that had a few scenes that will stick with me but that ultimately I would recommend passing up for a better, more modern option.
