God Is Change
Book Review: Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler
“In order to rise
From its own ashes
A phoenix
First
Must
Burn.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Talents
Genre: Dystopian, Speculative Fiction
My Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Parable of the Talents is the second book of the Earthseed duology. The first book, Parable of the Sower chronicles seventeen-year-old Lauren Olamina’s escape from her walled neighborhood in Southern California after arsonists have burned it down. Disguising herself as a man to avoid rape, she makes her way north on foot and has to remain vigilant against thieves and drug addicted arsonists. She meets a forty-year-old doctor along the way, who she falls in love with. Eventually, they make it to his family’s property in Northern California and start a new settlement. All along her journey she has been writing pieces of what would eventually become a new religion called Earthseed, which teaches that God is change.
The second book takes place many years after Earthseed has been established and they’ve grown a small community of sixty-five or so congregants. Protecting their settlement, Acorn, from thieves is a community effort, but when militant outsiders arrive in armored assault vehicles and slap shock collars around their necks, they are powerless to resist.
A new evangelical Christian president (Jarret) has been elected. His campaign slogan is: Make America Great Again! (This book was published in 1998 by the way.) He is the leader of Christian America, an authoritarian, nationalist, and theocratic group who administer cruel punishments to non-Christian groups. They see this as God’s work. The Crusaders turn Acorn into a re-education camp and place Lauren and the remaining Earthseed members in remotely controlled shock collars to control and rape them. Her husband is killed.
Before the Crusaders invade Acorn, Lauren has a baby girl, Larkin. The Crusaders remove the child and place her in a C.A. home, where she is molested by the adoptive father, often times in church. They rename her Asha and she grows up with no memory of her mother. As a teenager, she meets her uncle Marc, Lauren’s brother, who is a prominent C.A. minister. He sees her sing at a C.A. event and takes her in. He tells her about her parents and Acorn, but lies and says her mother is dead.
As harrowing as this story is, Butler leaves us with a message of hope. Earthseed provides its followers with a new outlook on life and a way forward from humanity’s penchant towards destruction. It’s a story of faith, Lauren’s faith, that humanity deserves a higher purpose, one that is destined for the stars. It’s also a clear warning against the dangers of authoritarianism, particularly when motivated by religion—a reminder that we are dancing on a very slippery slope.
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