The Parable of the Talents

Title: Parable of the Talents

Author: Octavia E. Butler

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Date of publication: 1998

Number of pages: 448

Genre: science fiction; dystopian

Audience age range: Adult

A quick personal review:

Acorn is thriving.  More people are there and are embracing Earthseed. 

In America, a new president, Jarrett,  is elected, and his platform to make America great again (honestly, the book says this!) involves people embracing Christian America and bringing people back to these moral beliefs.  However, in doing so, fanatics take Jarrett’s message too far, and they commit unspeakable atrocities.  They attack Acorn which is seen as a cult. They kill several people, Bankhole dies of a heart attack, all children are taken from their parents including the two month old baby of Lauren and Bankole’s, and all who live are enslaved.  They now wear collars which shock them if they try to leave, and of course, their captors shock them into submission often to prove their power.  The women are often raped by their captors, and all are made to work from down to dusk. They are made to do many tasks, even ones that destroy their burial grounds where trees were planted for each lost loved one.  The women and men are never to speak to each other while working and are kept separate.  

Lauren makes sure that her people know they need to be submissive until they can be saved.  They do their best.

Others are brought to Acorn which is now known as a re-education camp, where those who have offended the government, perhaps by breaking the law, or being a vagrant, or in Acorn’s member’s case, for being a cult, are taken. One day a young man is brought there.  Lauren can not believe it. It is her youngest brother, Marcus. 

A landslide occurs after heavy rains because the trees that had anchored that land had all been removed.  The mud buries the house where the controls for the collars are.  They are free.  The people kill their captors and escape.  Many are killed, but some escape including Lauren and Harry.  Lauren makes sure that her people all go to different locations and establishes a way to communicate with each other so that as they all search for their lost children they can share news.  

Lauren’s desire to find her daughter never wavers.  Marcus, who has joined Christian America and even becomes a minister, tells Lauren to join the religion.  She can then discover records perhaps to locate Larkin.  Lauren will never do so, and soon she and Marcus are completely estranged.

Lauren works to protect her Acorn residents.  She eventually finds many of them safe homes and works to establish jobs and security for them. A few have found their children, but most have not.  

America has changed some.  After a war with Canada and the secession of Alaska, Jarrett’s power has weakened. News of some of his unsavory actions also have caused people to lose faith in him as the country’s leader.  America is a bit safer now, yet joblessness and hopelessness prevail.  

Eventually, Larkin, known in Christian America as Asha Vere, leaves at age eighteen the home where she was raised by a mother who was just doing her duty and a father who demonstrated inappropriate sexual behavior to his child.  She wants to continue her faith, but she is ostracized because she left her home and tried to exist on her own.  She wanted education, yet what was expected of her was to settle down and keep a home much like America’s women of the 50’s.  She wants to meet a well-known minister of Christian America whose name is Marcus. Asha has no idea that he is her uncle at first, but eventually he does tell her of her mother. Asha wants to meet her, even though she believes that Lauren’s first love is Earthseed rather than her daughter.  Lauren cannot forgive Marcus for hiding the knowledge of her daughter - apparently he has known her location since she was a child.  And Larkiin can not not fully accept her mother.  Their emotional battle is heart-wrenching considering Lauren has spent years searching for her child. 

And what of Earthseed?  It has flourished.  Lauren learned the importance of disciples who spread the word, and communities sprang up in many locations and at times with wealthy believers.  Lauren’s prophecy of going to the stars would become a reality although not in Lauren’s lifetime.  There is hope in this conclusion that perhaps a world can be reborn and the powerful and mighty can be toppled so that the people of the nation again become the focus.

Unique qualities:

Like the first volume in the series, this book is told through journal entries; however, this time the journals are not only Lauren’s.  Both Bankhole and Larkin, known as Asha Vere in Christian America.  

A unique quality is also how the book reverts back and forth in time to assure that readers find out important details.  

Red flags:

This book is full of violence, language, sexual assault, slavery, cruelty, and sadism. 

The portrayal of this future America is terrifying.

People who are strong in their religious faith may find this book offensive due to how Christianity is shown as the villain in much of this novel. The fanaticism of the Christian faith causes much of the terrible treatment of others.  Marcus also becomes a minister and ignores what members of his faith are doing; he manipulates his beliefs to suit his comfort.

Recommendations:

I had to read this book.  When I finished the first book, Parable of the Sower, I had to know what happened to the people of Earthseed.  Too much turmoil in the United States assured me that the new community, Acorn, could not exist for long, so I needed to know what would prevail, and frankly, I needed hope for the future of our nation in case economic crisis, struggles for power, and increasing concerns with climate change continue.  

If you have read Parable of the Sower, I recommend that you read the second in the series.