One of the few creative aspects of Parable of the Sower, is that the protagonist feels the pain of those she sees in pain; this means she suffers, even becoming incapacitated, when she sees someone else badly injured. Imagine what she feels when she shoots and kills people: she experiences their death before falling unconscious. It leaves her vulnerable . . . though she recovers, and it doesn’t stop her from killing more people she believes are a threat to the small community she has sown, or gathered.
This is, perhaps an important thing for all of us to consider: What if we felt the pain of the sex-trafficked women and children being brought across our southern border? What if we felt the pain of a baby being cut apart by a curette during an abortion procedure? Would we do everything we could to defend the innocent who are experiencing this kind of torture? Some do. Others ignore it, shrug as if there is nothing they can do, or decide to only protect those closest to them.
The question Butler poses here is important: if everyone felt the pain of others, who would continue the barbaric practices we see in the world? Maybe pain sharing has some value. Whether or not you feel the pain of others, let us actively, and collectively, have empathy, and defend the innocent.
Parable of the Sower is one of the more depressing and hopeless books I’ve read in a while. As many anti-Christian books do, it capitalizes on a Christian theme or passage, and twist it into a non-Christian tale. In the story, our protagonist leads a group of survivors through a desolate, dangerous, and dystopian modern day California. The world is Godless, and the characters double down on living the same way, while justifying it. “We only kill people who threaten us.” “We only steal from other people.” “God is Change”…and we “try to shape God.” While there is some creativity, sharing people’s pain, a pyro drug that makes people want to start fires, Butler avoids much descriptive language, writing as desolate as the premise itself. Nonetheless, there were a a handful of interesting lines that were worth posting about. Long to short, I don’t recommend the book, unless you’re after a depressing, soulless, dystopian novel. Equally depressing is the number of people who rated it highly in GoodReads. You can see some of those in GoodReads. I guess I prefer hope and faith.
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