Octavia Butler Predicted Our Current Reality With Parable of the Sower

Young people who have read Octavia Butler鈥檚 1993 novel say it鈥檚 not only prescient, but also carries lessons for today.

Imminent drought, rising sea waters, destructive borders, a vanishing middle class, 鈥渟mart drugs,鈥� Big Pharma, privatized public schools and cities, and a governing body with the slogan 鈥淢ake America Great Again.鈥� These are all themes from Octavia Butler鈥檚 postapocalyptic novel Parable of the Sower.

Published in 1993 and set in 2024鈥攖he protagonist鈥檚 first journal entry is July 20, 2024鈥攖he story imagines a highly capitalistic America, dominated by industry, corporate greed, and impending doom. At the time of its publication, the novel was categorized as dystopian fiction with a climate catastrophe twist, but Butler later self-labeled it as 鈥渟peculative fiction.鈥�

As our calendars finally catch up to the timeline of her imagination, Butler seems to have predicted many realities that are playing out this year in her novel. She did not shy away from being 鈥減olitical.鈥� Still, readers are left wondering what happens when science fiction resembles reality so uncannily.

For young people, classified as 鈥淕en Z,鈥� the questions that Butler poses in her works are at the forefront of contemporary literature, exploring stories that are meant to illuminate, anger, and more importantly, liberate young people and lift up their causes.

Butler opens the novel in Robledo, a fictional suburb 20 minutes from inner-city Los Angeles, from behind the walls that surround the home of 15-year-old protagonist Lauren Olamina. The story鈥檚 narration by the teenage girl remains a key driver of the plot and resonates with Gen Z readers.

Within the first few pages of the novel, Lauren pulls readers into a bleak futuristic version of L.A.:

None of us goes out to school any more. 鈥ll the adults were armed. That鈥檚 the rule. Go out in a bunch, and go armed. 鈥o us kids鈥攎ost of us鈥攖he trip was just an adventure, an excuse to go outside the wall. 鈥e rode past people stretched out, sleeping on the sidewalks, and a few just waking up. 鈥 saw at least three people who weren鈥檛 going to wake up again, ever.

These scenarios hit a little too close to home for Jordan Yanowitz, a 24-year-old from L.A. 鈥淚t resonates deeply with my appraisal of Los Angeles culture: reading this book in 2024 in this strange city鈥eeing a time and place where people have so much anger and angst鈥� and an environment where everyone feels so fundamentally unsafe in public that we isolate ourselves into insular communities and neighborhoods,鈥� he says in an email interview. Yanowitz, who graduated from UCLA with a degree in ecology and now works as a teacher鈥檚 assistant at the university, worries about 鈥渢he dog-eat-dog culture in which we live; it all feels very real for the contemporary cultural feeling of this town.鈥�

During a bike ride from the walled neighborhoods of Robledo into L.A., a rare occurrence for Lauren, readers learn about her unique condition. Lauren possesses the gift and curse of 鈥渉yperempathy,鈥� which allows her to feel, experience, and understand her surroundings more vividly than others. Hyperempathy guides Lauren鈥檚 choices, and she functions as a juxtaposition to her surroundings, seen most clearly in the way that she deals with grief and her ability to do so in a society that has normalized suffering.

Lauren decides early on that she does not follow the same faith as her family, and she spends a large part of the book building upon her spiritual system, which she calls 鈥淓arthseed鈥� (hence the biblical word 鈥淧arable鈥� in the book鈥檚 title). Maybe this is Lauren acting as a typically rebellious teenage girl, or perhaps Butler imagined Earthseed as an applicable manifesto to current society, with change at its forefront.

鈥淚 felt an immense kinship with Lauren Olamina,鈥� says 26-year-old Kathleen Gekiere from Oregon. 鈥淭hese books have spoken to me at difficult times in my life when I was questioning things that were very foundational to me.鈥� Gekiere, who is a Ph.D. student at the University of Oregon studying English and environment, adds that 鈥渕odern dystopian literature really became popular when I was an early teen, [and] so much of my experience with dystopian literature is shaped by the cultural moment I grew up [in].鈥�

For some, Butler鈥檚 work is a direct commentary on social issues Gen Z is starting to experience for themselves.

鈥淎ll of Butler鈥檚 work focuses very specifically on hierarchical power and how it affects us. She shows its effects on our jobs, households, and relationships, and how we can cope with these unequal power relations,鈥� says Killian, a 22-year-old from Atlanta, Georgia, who first learned about Butler in a high school English class. 鈥淢any of us living in this year are intimately familiar with the coming of climate change, the perils of deregulation, the dehumanization of the homeless, and drug abuse,鈥� he says in an email interview, all problems that have grown in prominence since the novel鈥檚 publication.

Butler makes clear that accepting doomsday is not the novel鈥檚 intention. 鈥淲ithout adaptability, what remains may be channeled into destructive fanaticism. Without positive obsession, there is nothing at all,鈥� Butler writes on the first page of the book right below the year, 2024.

Tied to the corporate damage of the suburban west, Butler alludes to the L.A. tech boom of the 鈥�90s when writing about Olivar, a city comprised entirely of workers who live in subsidized housing owned by corporations as payment for working in their respective industries. Lauren鈥檚 best friend鈥檚 family leaves Robledo to work in Olivar in exchange for corporate safety and to escape persecution. Lauren describes this 鈥渨orking model鈥�:

Anyone KSF hired would have a hard time living on the salary offered. 鈥he new hires would be in debt to the company. That鈥檚 an old company-town trick鈥揼et people into debt, hang on to them, and work them harder.

Butler imagines a society in which everything is privatized, and while America doesn鈥檛 yet have corporate-owned cities, one can imagine such a result from late-stage capitalism.

For 27-year-old Zachari Brumaire from California, Butler鈥檚 work resonates as 鈥渓iterature about dealing with exploitation and having one鈥檚 labor used to further the ill effects of capitalism and colonialism and patriarchy against [one鈥檚] will, and how to survive and resist that.鈥� Brumaire is studying political philosophy and religion and runs the Butler-inspired blog , where he publishes fiction and essays.

鈥淎s a young person鈥攂ecoming politically aware during the Great Recession, stuck in a world with awful work and a collapsing climate and rising food prices and health care prices, and no real institutional resistance to COVID and genocide鈥攅verything is so incredibly bleak,鈥� he adds.

Lauren often critiques her association as a political pawn of those in power, categorizing the acts of the arsonists as 鈥減olitical statements,鈥� while she struggles to find a spot in the vanishing middle class.

Some kind of insane burn-the-rich movement. 鈥e鈥檝e never been rich, but to the desperate, we looked rich. We were surviving and we had our wall. Did our community die so that addicts could make a help-the-poor political statement?

A larger part of Parable of the Sower is when the characters walk on Highway 101 and I-5 North to Oregon and Washington, where more water and stability are found. Butler outlines a larger class divide that stems from climate change ravaging the community.

鈥淥ctavia Butler intentionally never drove a car. This moment, where the infrastructure we have today fails the people of the future (and people of the present) because of environmental and socioeconomic changes, challenges how we build our world now. In the context of a carless society, this road becomes a wasteland, filled with paranoid groups walking the asphalt with no shade,鈥� says Gekiere.

Parable of the Sower nails the coffin on the climate crisis. Early in the book, Lauren argues with her father on the privilege of being able to ignore something. 鈥淏ut Dad, that鈥檚 like 鈥gnoring a fire in the living room because we鈥檙e all in the kitchen,鈥� she points out.

Readers soon learn that the fire is also in the kitchen. In a water-scarce community, water takes the form of modern-day currency, costing 鈥渟everal times as much as gasoline鈥� and being 鈥渁s good as money,鈥� according to Lauren. In Chapter 16, Butler鈥檚 protagonist says:

But 鈥� I thought something would happen someday. I didn鈥檛 know how bad it would be or when it would come. But everything was getting worse: the climate, the economy, crime, drugs, you know. I didn鈥檛 believe we would be allowed to sit behind our walls, looking clean and fat and rich to the hungry, thirsty, homeless, jobless, filthy people outside.

Self-described by Butler as a 鈥渃autionary tale,鈥� Parable is a harrowing model of what lies in the future and is already, to an extent, being realized in the present.

To Brumaire, the book is 鈥渘ot so much a cautionary tale as a warped mirror of where we already are.鈥� He adds, 鈥淚t probably was a cautionary tale when it was written, but the authoritarianism and exponential climate collapse and fortress society aspects are, I think, already largely in place.鈥�

Lauren knows her belief system is incompatible with that of her family, and combined with the drug-related attacks and climate catastrophes that await her in L.A., she decides to escape.

鈥淭he Quest of the North,鈥� or in Lauren鈥檚 case, Canada, is a recurring motif in the novel, alluding to migration from South to North America. The North has always represented a sort of progress, for migrants on the southern border of the United States; for Lauren, who escapes to Canada, it represents change.

While Butler uses the walled communities and Robledo鈥檚 class divide as recurring themes throughout the book, she doesn鈥檛 present these ideas without solutions. Instead, she relies on Earthseed, a push for change. This aspect is often left out of reviews that point out the comparisons between Butler鈥檚 2024 and the 2024 we live in today.

The opening of Chapter 9 reads, 鈥淎ll struggles Are essentially power struggles,鈥� and in Chapter 14, Butler writes, 鈥淭o rise. From its ashes A phoenix. First. Must Burn.鈥� Earthseed is about oppression and how to fight it.

For readers making these connections and wondering whether they can be translated into systems that work, the question arises, is it easier to imagine the end of the world than to build a socialist framework?

鈥淚 find that the way Butler was thinking about the extinction of humanity in Dawn [another book by Butler] resonates immensely with our current ecological and sociopolitical state,鈥� says Gen Witter, a 25-year-old from Oregon who first read Butler in a college class at Arizona State University. After being 鈥渦nable to put it down鈥� while pursuing their master鈥檚 degree, Witter explained how Butler inspired them to pursue a Ph.D. 鈥淔or me, Butler鈥檚 writing is not only trying to build worlds on the page but actively deconstructing the real world and the oppressive systems that exist within it through the stories she created.鈥�

For Witter and other readers of Butler鈥檚 work, Parable of the Sower is an awakening. 鈥淓ven though I want to look on the bright side, I refuse to be blindly complicit in systems that keep leading the most vulnerable members of our communities (and humanity, at large) toward death,鈥� Witter says.

CORRECTION: This article was updated at 9:48 a.m. PT on July 22, 2024, to correct Jordan Yanowitz’s name. Read our corrections policy here.

Aina Marzia is a journalist from聽El Paso, Texas, covering intersectional politics and a freshman at Princeton University studying politics and diplomacy. Her work has been seen in聽Al Jazeera聽The Nation,聽Teen Vogue,聽Business Insider,聽The New Republic,聽The New Arab,聽The Daily Beast,聽The American Prospect,聽Grist, and on NPR and elsewhere.

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