I wish I could've loved this or been impacted by this novel as much as other people seem to have, but unfortunately it didn't. I think, personally, a large part of it was that I've been an atheist my entire life, and this story had a very strong religious undertone/overtone/tone? which I just... Couldn't connect to, for obvious reasons. The writing of Earthseed felt... Basic? I'm trying not to sound mean, genuinely, but just trying to put into words the emotions I was experiencing while reading these passages in the book. I think the overall connection to nature and the earth that Lauren expressed during the tumultuous times she lived in was strong. When the earth is burning around you, you want to fight even harder to save it. But the connection back to a God fell flat for me, I couldn't connect.

I hope that this connection (or disconnect, I should say) makes sense, because I've been sitting and parsing over my reactions to the Earthseed stuff for months and still haven't found a good way to explain it. It just didn't impact me. For me, nature should be respected and loved for just being nature, and living on the same planet as us, being our home and our cradle. God, I'm gonna sound awful saying this, but putting in God as a middle man felt... Weird? I don't know. I think I'm going to move on from this point.

So I read this book in February of 2024. Why does this matter? The book begins in February of 2024. Sadly, that month and year have come and passed, so no one after me can experience the visceral feeling of reading a book written in the 90s about the year, the month, the day you are currently living, and it being right. The Parable of the Sower is fiction, but it still hit me like a fucking brick wall.

When I was 15, I marched on my state capitol with thousands of other teenagers to defend strict gun regulation after one of hundreds-thousands-of school shootings occurred. To be that age, to fight to live, and it being your only option, and possibly the only one that will work, is a rare feeling that only so many in society have experienced. But at the same time, too many have experienced. The fact that change in our society is often on the onus of literal children is sickening, devastating, and has been true since damn near the founding of America. This feeling of desperation that many children experience-children who can't vote, pay taxes, run for offices, work in industries that are positions expected to make a real tangible change to society-is despicable and an intrinsic part of American society. Butler was able to grasp these feelings and real experiences and put them on display in fully horrid detail.

Another extremely common theme throughout the book that Butler excelled at was the human condition, or more aptly, how the human condition fundamentally deteriorates under pressure, stress, and desperation. To be desperate is, in my opinion, one of the worst things that can happen to a human being, or any living creature. They will act violently, without reproach, in the name of survival. There is no thinking, there is no consideration of morals, or boundaries, or what is even right. A desperate human is the most devastating human, and I think that's why these speculative fiction novels, especially Butler's, hit so goddamn hard for me. Desperation is a core theme, because who the fuck wouldn't be desperate under these conditions? We are least like ourselves, we are least like humans, when we are desperate.

The Parable of the Sower is a harrowing novel, and one that I hope becomes required reading in many schools. It was less a warning from Butler and more an observation and expectation. We all know that our society, American society, is fragile. There are but a few strings holding us as a nation together, and they've already been snapping. I only hope that what Butler foresaw in the near future will be not just evaded, but completely impossible. A woman can wish.