Dystopia and Female Subjectivity in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower (1993): A Feminist Reading

Abstract

 Octavia Butler’s speculative sci-fi novel Parable of the Sower (1993) emphasizes the need ecological sustainability and socialist living by highlighting the civil morose and anarchy of an America in the near future. Lauren, Butler’s adolescent protagonist in the novel navigates home-away life inside a gated community in a post-apocalyptic society in 2024 Los Angles. Her childhood has been marred by dysfunctional parents and the disintegration of the greater society at large, primarily because of environmental degradation, climate change, wealth inequality and civil unrest. The novel focuses on all these issues by bestowing upon Lauren an extraordinary instinct for survival and self-preservation. Her childhood is beset by evils; still she becomes self-resilient. The apocalyptic setting of the novel contributes to heightened sense of emergency that she feels at every other inconvenience and upsets. Butler’s narrative schema focuses on the intersections between post-apocalyptic living and adolescent restlessness of Lauren. The AfroFuturist obsession of the novel comes out in Lauren’s preparation for survival by gathering Indigenous knowledge systems and imparting it with her friends. Butler also reasserts the belief that technological advancements aren’t enough for survival, a familiar refrain in AfroFuturism.  Theoretical framework would include feminism, AfroFuturism and Post-Humanism. This paper aims to evaluate Parable of the Sower as a canonical piece of children’s literature that incorporates sci-fi speculation, apocalyptic anxieties and an AfroFuturist vision of Black History that was decimated by chattel slavery.  Lauren’s survivalist progression through a wasteland of economic downturn and ecological devastation has much relevance for preparing today’s children and future generations for developing the need for sustainable, responsible living and this paper wishes to explore that through a close reading of Parable of the Sower. Theoretical framework would include feminism, AfroFuturism and Post-Humanism. The paper would try to focus on the impact of dystopian urban life upon an adolescent protagonist and would conclude that Lauren’s bildungsroman is as much her own as it is a metaphor for contemporary American society.