Reader Response #2
As I read chapter by chapter I began to gradually comprehend what’s occurring inside Lauren’s head. How she sees her family, her religion, the community and the world. At the same time, I can relate to Butler’s representation of the world in contrast to reality. Poverty, racism, political problems, sexism, and violence are just few of the things that are actually occurring in this century and probably wouldn’t be solved if our society continues to act like this. Which might be one of the reasons why Butler wrote Parable of the Sower.
Before I begin my analysis I will write a brief summary of chapters 11-15. After Keith’s death, the whole community have been put in a constant peril made by the aggressive attacks of the outsiders. Moreover, seven out of the eleven household community have been reported with the cases of theft and rape, intruders attacked without mercy scavenging everything and leaving their victims naked and dead. In the middle of this jeopardy, news about the city of Olivar has been spread around. Olivar is a coastal city that is relatively well-off compared to other cities in California it was under the private international company called KSF. Olivar offers job, security and food supply which are the total utopia for the residents of Robledo. After few days, Lauren’s father was reported missing and later declared dead. The whole neighborhood especially Lauren’s family was devastated by the lost of Reverend Olamina, but before they were about to recover the pyro addicts/arsonists ruthlessly attacked what was remaining of the whole community and burned it. It was a total chaos ending many lives of the residents of Robledo. Lauren was the only one who survive the incident out of her family. After scavenging what was left of her home she then met Zahra Moss, who has been saved by Harry Balter while being raped . The three of them decided to join forces and head north.
I have to write. I don’t know what else to do. The others are asleep now, but it isn’t dark. I’m on watch because i couldn’t sleep if i tried. I’m jittery and crazed. I can’t cry. I want to get up and just run and run. . . . Run away from everything. But there isn’t any way.
I have to write.There’s nothing familiar left to me but the writing. God is change. I hate God. I have to write.
This is the part where Lauren is alone in a burned house hiding from the people outside scared and confused of what to do next. She was also worried about Cory and her brothers wondering if they’re still alive. Losing her ability to grasp the situation and act rationally. Lauren always know what to do next but no matter how strong she is, no matter how prepared she was, this is just simply physically and mentally exhausting.
Also, In this particular scene, Butler delivers how a human will react in this kind of circumstances. Butler’s portrayal of Lauren is a strong, smart and prepared woman. She can be weak, but that’s only because of hyper-empathy syndrome. However, managing such sickness shows how tough can Lauren be. That’s why in this scene we can see that Lauren is in her weakest point in life. Alive, but alone. Such acts represents humanity, people do act differently base on their attitudes, therefore, being put in Lauren’s situation can really put a scar or traumatized a person forever. Moreover, when a person experiences her weakest point in life, she will try to reach up to God or sometimes blame God for putting her in a difficult situation. Even so, Lauren has a different view-point for the word God. She thinks God is change. What confuses me is why call change a God, when God is change. Can we just say it is change that bring us to where we are now, and it is change that will bring us somewhere in the future in the way we shaped change? Why make the whole concept of God again? I hope Butler will elaborate this more as i go through the story.
The turns of events in Parable of the Sower chapters 11-15 have been exciting and scary. Exciting because the story is getting some real action scenes, and scary because imagine being in Lauren’s stead, everyone in your family was dead and you’re the only one alive in the world where violence is beyond everybody’s imagination. Furthermore, killing yourself might be a much reasonable decision rather than keeping yourself alive in a hopeless world. Despite Lauren’s Hyper-empathy Syndrome she still chose to live and spread her beliefs. It intrigues me how can she believe all of these stuff about Earthseed and her God-is-change mentality. It’s fascinating yet terrifying because, for me, Parable of the Sower made more sense than the bible. Maybe it terrified me because I’m the type of person who is still unsure whether to believe in religion or not. The whole system of religion confuses me and I think most of the church goers in my religion (Catholicism) are just a bunch of hypocrites. They go to church every Sunday acting like they’re angels but as soon as they left the church it’s like their mouths are on fire using blasphemy as their first language. And there’s so many loopholes in Catholicism that made it unbelievable and hard to consider. I’m not generalizing all the people in the world and being pessimistic, it’s just witnessing scenarios like this weakened my faith in my religion but not in God. I concluded that letting go of God is like letting go of the rope when your hanging in a cliff in a life or death situation. In our lives, when we feel alone we need some sort of hope to hold on to in able to continue being optimistic and to move on in life. And that is God for me, my life support when things get rough. Though I don’t need God physically, I need him mentally. For me, whatever religion you have doesn’t matter, it’s your relationship with God that matters the most. And that is the reason why i can somewhat relate to Lauren. Moreover, Butler’s representation of Earthseed can be really compared to what’s happening now, and that made me feel like it’s real. It does gave the reader a huge impact when reality is connected to fiction. In that way, readers can sympathize more to the characters and it does hook you up in to reading more of the story.
To sum it up, Butler focuses a lot in the weak points of the present civilization and based the conflict of the story itself in relating to the major problems the actual society is facing, and show us how a person will react at such circumstances.
C. Silva 
Excellent.