English Literature Religion in the Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler - Essay Example

English Literature: Religion in The parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler OUTLINE Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………………3 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………….4 Thesis statement…………………………………………………………………………………...4 Religion as viewed in the novel…………………………………………………………………...4 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………...8 Work cited…………………………………………………………………………………………9 Abstract All through the novel, Lauren tells the reader about the aspects of the new religion she had discovered, Earthseed. Lauren, a teenage African American girl who lived with her family in Robeldo, a community of Los Angeles, is the daughter to a Baptist minister who develops her own ideas about religion. Lauren also sees a potential benefit of American society’s decline as a possibility for humanity to develop a new sense of spirituality which, unlike Christianity, will stir action instead of overlooking the status quo acceptance. She, therefore, takes initiative and figures this new spirituality herself. Motivated by her need to act and accept change, she finds out a religion known as Earthseed, which is said to be a religion of action, and it works against the existence of a literal God who creates, shapes, and controls reality. Finally, the group reaches Bankole’s land where they settle and form the first Earthseed community. Here they start teaching and practicing the Earthseed values and trying to accomplish their destiny of taking root among the stars. Introduction In the novel, The Parable of the Sower, Lauren Olamina is the protagonist, an African American teenager. Lauren resides in Robeldo, which is almost twenty miles from Los Angeles. Robeldo has turned out to be a walled society partly protected from the extensive lawlessness and distressed poverty that is beyond the walls of the neighborhood. When the inhabitants are murdered by gang of arsonists and thieves, Lauren is one of the few who survive. She decides to take action with several friends in a risky search for a better life. Butler's worrying tale is written in the form of Lauren's journals, and this becomes an adventure story of an exploration of the negative trends in the American society that had become particularly palpable at the time the novel was written. Thesis statement In the Parable of the Sower, Butler’s criticism of religion emphasizes religion which, as I see it in the novel is the source of the social problems and this motivates one to talk about religion as viewed in the book. Religion as viewed in the novel In the novel, Lauren criticizes the American Christian tradition. Lauren, who is the daughter of a Baptist teacher, has lost faith in her father’s God, the God of Christianity. Her feelings are clear in the novel when she writes, “At least three years ago, my father’s God stopped being my God. His church stopped being my church” (Butler, page 7). According to Lauren, the Christian God is nonsensical regardless of the environmental and social problems. She, therefore, merges what she learnt from her biblical scripture as the truth due to her experiences of suffering, hatred, violence, and murder. Lauren’s way of thinking becomes understandable when she reflects on a storm that was raging in the Gulf of Mexico which claimed lives of hundreds of people. Lauren writes, “Is it God? Most of the dead are the street poor who have nowhere to go and who don’t hear the warnings until it’s too late for their feet to take them to safety. Where’s the safety for them anyway? Is it a sin against God to be poor? We’re almost poor ourselves….How will God my father’s God behave toward us when we’re poor (Butler, page 15)?” She inquires how the relations between poverty and suffering mirror her knowledge that it is the unfortunate who suffer most in her society. But she does not truly think there is a God in heaven that punishes the unfortunate. She considers the Christian God is just a justification for others’ poverty while others flourish. The blame for poverty and lots of suffering is put on God so that those in authority do not have to be accountable for it. Lauren continues with her criticism when she writes that the Book of Job “says more about my father’s God in particular and gods in general than anything else I’ve ever read” (Butler, page 16). Lauren summarizes the Book of Job as follows: “In the Book of Job, God says he made everything and he knows everything so no one has any right to question what he does with any of it. Okay. That works. That Old Testament God doesn’t violate the way things are now. But that God sounds a lot like Zeus, a super-powerful man, playing with his toys the way my youngest brothers play with toy soldiers. Bang, bang! Seven toys fall dead. If they’re yours, you make the rules. Who cares what the toys think. Wipe out a toy’s family, and then give it a brand new family. Toy children, like Job’s children, are interchangeable. Maybe God is a kind of big kid, playing with his toys. If he is, what difference does it make if seven hundred people get killed in a hurricane […]?” (Butler, page 16). From my perspective, Lauren’s questions about the relation between God and the Gulf storm are not just the raving of a puzzled teenage girl, but they mirror a reasonable mind at work. Lauren also finds that the teachings of her father’s Christianity and the truth of the world around her just do not fit together, and therefore she sees that if those ideas were right, how could God allow terrible things happen to innocent people? And if God does allow bad things to happen to innocent people, why should anyone believe in and worship that God. Lauren’s doubt in the Christianity springs from her inability to believe in the goodness of God, who can allow terrible things to happen to a good number of guiltless people. Yet she is not an exception of those disturbed by the submissiveness of the Christian community surrounding her, who instead of being decisive enough to make their lives better, hide waiting for expected destruction. Lauren herself is aggressive enough to deal with this as she recommends the people to act and do something about it. Lauren starts with Joanne, who is her best pal, by telling her, “We can get ready [….] for what’s going to happen, get ready to survive it, get ready to make a life afterward. Get focused on arranging to survive so that we can do more than just get batted around by crazy people, desperate people, thugs, and leaders who don’t know what they’re doing!” (Butler, page 55). However, her trial does not go as planned. Her pal gets scared by this, and the story reaches her father, who is disappointed by this and tells her, “These things frighten people. It’s best not to talk about them” (Butler, page 63). Even though her father knows she is right, he opts for peace and comfort within the community over the preparation her daughter requires. This provokes Lauren, though she does not surrender and prepares for the worst. The reason why Lauren views religion differently compared to her community members is because she did not know what American society was before, yet those in the community who could recall the wealth and comfort of the 1990s recall the past as “the good old days,” but she is not persuaded (Butler, page 8). Because of that, she writes about those times with cynicism and describes “good old days” as a time “when there were churches all over the place and too many lights and gasoline was for fueling cars and trucks instead of for torching things” (Butler, page 8).This makes it clear that she holds responsible the previous generations for the social problems that affect the society. Lauren also sees a potential benefit of American society’s decline as a possibility of humanity developing a new sense of spirituality which, unlike Christianity, will stir action instead of overlooking the status quo acceptance. She, therefore, takes initiative and figures this new spirituality herself. Motivated by her need to act and accept change, she finds a religion known as Earthseed, which is said to be a religion of action, and it works against the existence of a literal God who creates, shapes, and controls reality. Lauren instead writes, “All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth is Change. God Is Change.” (Butler, page 3). Later on she makes clear this verse, writing, “God is Change, and in the end, God prevails. But God exists to be shaped. It isn’t enough for us to just survive, limping along, playing business as usual while things get worse and worse. If that’s the shape we give to God, then someday we must become too weak too poor, too hungry, too sick to defend ourselves. Then we’ll be wiped out” (Butler, page 76). She goes ahead and adds, “There has to be more that we can do a better destiny that we can shape. Another place. Another way. Something!” (Butler, page 76). In the Earthseed verses she explains, “I’ll use these verses to pry them [people who will listen] loose from the rotting past, and maybe push them into saving themselves and building a future that makes sense” (Butler, page 79). Earthseed emphasizes the importance of action, interdependence, and consequences. It is not a religion of passivity; it is a religion that puts responsibility for action on everyone. It is, in other words, a religion that is more likely to change the status quo established by the Christianity, which accepts the deterioration and destruction of the earth and the human race as inevitable. Once again, Lauren’s perspective, this time her spiritual perspective, is shaped by her hyper-empathy and intelligence, by her ability, in other words, to shift between subjective positions and achieve “differential consciousness.” Sandoval writes that the differential mode of oppositional consciousness movement is conditional: subject matter to the conditions of the overriding power, however, able to challenge and change those same conditions. It is a means of awareness that is not unavoidably right or fake, that is only promising and full of life. It encourages social movement with intention; it is both subject to the conditions of power and is able to transform them. This movement creates a diverse kind of concession as it negotiates meaning systems by use of skills achieved by a new category of collectivity that connects strings, makes demands, requires conditions, and bargains terms (Sandoval, pages180-181). Conclusion With Lauren’s belief in Earthseed, she is able to build her community. She also illustrates that she did not just come up with it, like people believe, but survived as a unit which makes the religion sound valid, and therefore other people ought to believe in it as well. The thought of taking up diversity and uniting appears to be Butler’s way of conveying some communication to readers. She is aiming at showing today’s people that the only way to survive and avoid the formation of Robeldo’s 2027 society is to come together and accept others regardless of their race (Mayer, p 91). Summary All through the novel, Lauren, who is the protagonist here, tells about the aspects of the new religion she had discovered, Earthseed. Lauren, a teenage African American girl, lives with her family in Robeldo, a community in Los Angeles. Lauren is the daughter of a Baptist minister, and at a young age, she develops her own ideas about religion. According to Lauren, the Christian God is nonsensical regardless of the environmental and social problems. She, therefore, merges what she learnt from her biblical scripture as the truth due to her experiences of suffering, hatred, violence, and murder. She feels the Christian God has been used to justify the poverty of others while others flourish. The blame for poverty and lots of suffering is put on God so that those in authority do not have to take responsibility for it. All through Lauren’s travels, she taught her group about Earthseed. Lauren equally looks at the possibility of American society’s decline will result in humanity growing a new sagacity of spirituality which, being contrary to Christianity, will bring action as a substitute for neglecting the acceptance of status quo. She, therefore, takes initiative and figures this new spirituality herself. Motivated by her need to act and accept change, she finds a religion known as Earthseed, which is said to be a religion of action, and it works against the existence of a literal God who creates, shapes, and controls reality. This religion states that God is change, and that one may shape that change, which implies that one can control one’s fate and those of others (Butler, p 36). Finally, the group reaches Bankole’s land, where they settle and form the first Earthseed community. Here, they start teaching and practicing the Earthseed values and trying to accomplish their destiny of taking root among the stars. Works cited Butler, Octavia E. Fledgling: Novel.New York: Seven Stories Press, 2005. Print. Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Sower. New York: Grand Central Publ, 2000. Print. Mayer, Sylvia. Restoring the Connection to the Natural World: Essays on the African American Environmental Imagination. Münster [u.a.: LIT, 2003. Print. Sandoval, Chela. Methodology of the oppressed. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. Print. Read More