Octavia E Butler - Parable of the Talents
Publisher – Headline
Published – 1998
Price – £9.99 paperback £4.99 Kindle eBook
In order for me to understand who I am, I must begin to understand who she was.
Asha was born into a broken world. There are many things she needs to know: how her country could embrace a violent, far-right President promising to make America great again, why they turned a blind eye to the suffering - and the truth about her mother.
In her journals, Lauren Olamina tells of a great love divided between her young daughter, her community and the revelation that led her to found a new faith that teaches 'God Is Change'. But under a tyrannical religious regime who consider the mere existence of a black female leader a threat, Lauren knows she must soon either sacrifice her daughter and her followers - or forsake the beliefs that could transform human destiny.
In my (sporadic) readthrough of Octavia E Butler’s work reading Parable of the Talents was a bit daunting and after the dark dystopia nightmare of Parable of the Sower I was wary what it contained. But this time I went for it and it was a richly rewarding experience and I think perhaps with Kindred Butler’s rightly best novel. It’s a novel asking the question after the Fall what happens next? Do we rise again; do we stay in pieces and in Butler’s traditional intelligent viewpoint there are no easy answers.
It's the late 2030s and the USA has fallen into climate wars, economic meltdown and cities have been rampaged by corruption, gangs and extreme violence. Lauren Olamina has known nothing else and grew up in a settlement that thanks to the attacks saw the various deaths of her entire family. She sought a new place and made a dangerous journey across California. In so doing she met many new people, and a new group was formed. At the same time Lauren has started to create her own set of beliefs which she named Earthseed – that humanity needs a common goal to reach the stars to survive; that God is change and this must be accepted. She has found a partner, set up a small settlement and the group is slowly growing but the wider world stays as dangerous as ever especially with the imminent arrival of a ruthless politician who has easy answers to big problems and very much divides the world between them and us.
The key for me is the four viewpoints of the world that should come next. Much has been noted that back in 1998 Butler posited a Presidential candidate who uses the phrases make America Great Again; harnessed dangerous violent groups and fundamentalist Christians (via his Christian America party) to aid his election and made things a lot worse. It is very hard with 2023 eyes not to see a glaring similarity but equally more impressive is Butler sees times of disruption key to the growth of Populists. She recognises that people want security and simplicity in their messages in her monster in the form of President Jarret but he’s more eloquent than the 21st century equivalents that we know – a man who uses a Preacher style sermon to whip up hatred and portray himself as a saviour. Butler’s writing of his speeches is very much taken from right wing fundamentalism saying everyone else is dammed and corrupt. Getting the wrong person into power makes everyone else suffer and things get worse. Lauren will never come into direct battle with Jarret but his evil and consequences are the world that all the other viewpoints must work with.
The other three viewpoints of the future are via people much closer to Olamina’s and must make their own viewpoints on what happens next. I’m going to split the core character’s Olamina’s view into two and I’ll explain why when I get to it. But the main journey of the book is Olamina’s life after settling down in California. It’s a group in a dangerous time who come together and grow into over 60 people. They gain skills, farm, trade, school the young and the Earthseed belief starts to rise. It’s a retreat and safe haven. After Parable of the Sower’s endless bleakness these opening chapters feel hopeful. Lauren is creating a new group; doing their own thing and Butler is absolutely going to show the reality of small idealist groups versus an uncaring and violent world. The group is destroyed and as with Sower no main character we have journeyed with is safe. We see the whole group invaded and captured by Jarret supporters (it is never clear if this is authorised or just ‘enthusiastic’ supporters overreaching). We see people treated as slaves; raped, tortured and murdered for disobedience. We see people tortured for having a loving same sex relationship. Butler makes us see what this kind of world where they believe in only one way of living leads to. It’s a nightmare not of Sower’s lawlessness but a State that has sanctioned power and abuse of those viewed as it’s enemies. Its not anything we don’t see in any dictatorship but obviously in the supposedly great democracy of the US is jarring but with 2023 eyes perhaps less surprising than we would have thought. In the main section we see Lauren hold onto her dream that Earthseed iis the necessary counterbalance to this world, but slow growth is very much not the answer to make it work. This is a powerful dark narrative that works because it’s all told in Lauren’s diary entries we feel the shock, pain and at times love she has for her group and family. That humanity means despite this tale going to dark places we want to see what happens next.
Into the narrative we have Lauren finding her brother Marc. This is initially a joy as we thought we saw everyone die but trauma leaves its fingerprints, and we find his escape led to both joy and severe abuse and torture as a slave. Lauren is keen for him to embrace her lifestyle and Earthseed but we see he rejects this world. For him the Christian belief their father preached is the only way forward. Shockingly he leaves the group, and we see him become part of Christian America. Marc’s story is the viewpoint when things are bad you must join the system and try to do good within it. He’s a intriguing, flawed character. Prideful, a great orator, can show flashes of kindness and in a group that rejects homosexuality he may be severely repressed but he also very much is a catalyst for the main debate between Lauren’s diary entries and the observations of her daughter Asha.
One of the horrifying parts of talents is the practise of people having their children taken from them and given to ‘good’ Christian American children. One that Butler notes has happened for many years particularly in relation to Black American groups but many other minorities as well. When CA imprison Lauren, they take her child from her, and Asha narrates her story to us from that point. It’s a disturbing tale of children being brought up in CA groups and taught to forget their past lives; be good Christian Americans and can be prone to horrific abuse both at school and in the adoptive family too. Asha’s view of CA is nuanced and less fond of it than marc is and yet thanks to Marc finding her and rescuing her from her adoptive family she clearly loves him as a relative/saviour. This makes the startling section of the tale is how Asha finds out that Lauren is her mother and yet she judges her mother quite harshly.
In some ways Asha’s reaction can be understood through trauma. She is taken from her family and while Lauren was not able to find her for obvious reasons a child may not understand at an emotional level that she had no choice. But the more interesting issue is how Asha feels her mother has one overriding obsession Earthseed. The driver for Lauren since Sower has been that this belief system could change the world; we see it in the settlement; it drives her through her imprisonment and then we get ambiguously though Lauren’s own diaries is post-release she focuses more times on Earthseed’s development than finding her child. This time Lauren wants to get it right. She needs to get earthseed more prominent and firmly embedded in society and the most disquieting moment is Lauren realises for that to happen she needs to focus on the influential and wealthy. A slightly more tailored earthseed belief system allows her to spread the message and becomes a large powerful religious group that can create spaceships by the end. This latter section is rushed through, but the reader has to ask – have we just seen Lauren do an L Ron Hubbard? To make the world change do you have to fool and manipulate people? It’s a beautifully disquieting moment as we have been led to be supportive and sympathetic to o Lauren and yet was this the right thing? Butler leaves it for us to ponder and its not an easy decision even if the idea of humanity touching the stars is one every SF fan probably holds somewhere. When Lauren eloquently early on in the story explains why the need for science fiction and star travel is so important, she speaks to us as fans of the genre but Lauren’s ultimate method to realise this is perhaps one we did not see coming
There are no more Earthseed tales due to Butler’s untimely death but for me this duology works examining the rises and falls of civilisation on a powerfully personal level thanks to Lauren’s diary entries. A cycle of renewal and destruction that we keep thinking we are out of and yet even this century we are learning that nothing stays forever the same. Change indeed rules all. Parable of the talents is a beautiful intelligent and, in many ways, non-judging ways of how we react to these kind of events, it is what we humans are, and yet offers it still a bit of hope but still doesn’t suggest happy ever after endings will be the answer It’s a masterpiece and works as much now as it did in 1998 and it will for years to come.
