The Parable of the Sower and the Road

Peoples’ lives are journeys, pilgrimages, and/or adventures. Within a person’s inner solitude lies a bright and tender heart where the spirit stays hanging on to be awakened. Many routes and paths to enlightenment or betterment are present for everyone. Each and every individual experiences crises and problems at some point in their lives, as also expressed in the book Lessons for the Journey Called Life written by Elaine T’souvas. These could be transitions and life changing events or moments that interrupt the well planned lives of people. These interferences are never asked for but it always come at a certain point. In times of these detours, crossroads, roadblocks and dead ends, the permanence or transience of human endeavors still shows. Journeys of different people vary from time to time. This paper aims to compare the two journeys: Parable of the Sower and The Road. Fall of civilization and human existence are themes that emerged in these two writings.

In 1993, Octavia E. Butler released Parable of the Sower, the first in her two-book series of novels in the genre of science fiction. The novel is set in a dystopian future about Lauren, a young woman who has a so called “hyperempathy” or the ability to sense the perceived grief or pain and other feelings and sensations of the people around her.

The novel sets off in the near future of the United States. The civilization of the country has degenerate swiftly over the past few generations (Butler 5). Food became scarce and inflation is out of influence. Suburbia subsists in walled areas, looked after by families banding collectively to survive. Lauren Olamina, the main character, lives in such a community wherein her father is the preacher in their area (Butler 28). Lauren is closely connected to the pleasure and pain of other people. The government authority in the story is deteriorating and drug abuse became rampant. Not long after, violence swept over their community and Lauren was forced to abandon their commune (Butler 79). The majority of the novel traces the journey of Lauren through the United States as well as the companions she met along her way (Butler 126). They headed to Canada to search for safety and employment. While doing so, Lauren and her companions are reminded that they must be continuously aware of the cruel world that they are wandering through, and keep their eyes open on finances as well as weapons. Over and over again in the story, Lauren together with her friends had to fight for their lives or run for them. Religion became an integral aspect in the story as Lauren started to create her personal views on God and man’s position in this world (Butler 167). Throughout the story, basic tenets and religious discussions among the characters were presented. As Lauren’s journey continued, she turned into something of a prophet or messiah of her views or the Earthseed (Butler 212). Lauren encourages people to join her and be her disciples as they begin a new religion in the world. Lauren’s journal entries filled out the novel itself. Overall, the Parable of the Sower simply illustrated the near collapse of civil society due to poverty and scarcity and when the community’s security was at hand, Lauren’s home was destroyed and her family was murdered (Butler 293). In her journey, she tried to start a new community with her founded religion Earthseed together with her friends and survivors(Butler 302).
The Parable of the Sower is a vibrant often disturbing story of loss, friendship, and survival amidst the breakdown of the society. The transience of human efforts and ventures are illustrated in this novel. Lauren’s continuous journey in search for a secure haven proves the will of human beings to do whatever in order to survive. The journey of Lauren in the story exemplifies the triumph and resilience of spirits of human beings. However as seen in the collapse of their civilization, everything is temporary. The actions and activities of the people in the story were all fleeting and passing. In the introduction of Lauren’s family and neighbors, soon after bad things turned into reality and these people didn’t survive. Not everything lasts, can be a subtle theme of this novel.

The problems that Lauren encountered in the story are but exhibitions of the struggles and troubles of every human being. These are inevitable, hence humans are faced with a challenge to solve these problems and continue with their lives. As Lauren went on to travel, she had journals that took account of her experiences. All these measure to the idea that things and endeavors are fleeting. But these passing moments are all significant in the lives and existence of human beings. Everything that happens in the environment is connected to what will happen in the future. As mentioned in the story, the collapse of civilization showed that that specific era or generation was passing and a new one is about to begin. Earthseed, Lauren’s new religion is an example of a transitory action or endeavor that will yield future help or benefits to the people who survived in the story. The fleetingness of the human endeavors is presented in the story not due to a plague, war, or invasion. The civilization in which Lauren lived simply collapsed for the reason that it was rotten. Things tend get worse each passing day and people become a little more frantic about it. First several breakdowns are fixed and then it will come to a point where everything will seem to be harder to be fixed. The novel is not merely about disaster or a skeptical dystopia. It’s all about the journals of a woman who saw how things got worse and prepared herself the best way she could (Butler 89). She travelled, met people, learned a lot of things, and in the end survived. The story is a great way of showing how people are continuously doing and exerting efforts to help make this a better place for everyone (T’souvas 89; Butler 174). Truly human actions are temporary but still have an effect on the future.

In 2006, American writer Cormac McCarthy published the novel “The Road”, another novel that entails about a journey.  The story revolves around a passage of a father and son over several months over a vast landscape eaten by destruction because of an unprecedented catastrophe that destroyed almost all forms of life while also destroying all civilizations on earth (McCarthy 27). In the novel, the father and son “carries the ‘damaged’ fire” of humanity on the road of hope for survival. Awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 2006, it also received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2007. It is one of McCarthy’s most critically acclaimed novels and some claim that it is the most chilling commentary of the post- 9/11 world.
A few years after an unprecedented catastrophe that destroyed all civilizations and the life on earth, an unnamed father and son journeyed the ruined landscape towards the sea (McCarthy 8).  The Road featured an unwelcoming scenery as the sun is totally obscured from vision because of ashes that thrive in the air. No plants can grow in the terrible landscape as the two needed masks to breathe the filthy air (McCarthy 29). The human survivors of the great disaster were reduced to cannibals and violent creatures (McCarthy 30). Their present location did not hold any future for them; another winter will not let them live so as for the father to decide to go on a journey in the blurry hopes of finding other few good people (McCarthy 48).
Prior to the story, the boy’s mother committed suicide at the time she was pregnant with him as her mother was hopeless and wretched as cause of their situation (McCarthy 53). While his father, who is obviously dying as an explanation to him coughing blood every morning. His father struggles to protect him from danger – exposure, starvation, threats of attacks, and even from his kind heart and desire of helping other wanderers that could prove dangerous for the both of them. The boy is the world to his father, and the father to the boy (McCarthy 103). They reassured one another that they are the “good guys” who were to “carry the fire” (McCarthy 158).

Their journey was nothing but easy. They experienced horrors such as people half-alive as they are being harvested into food (McCarthy 189), a baby put on a spit and roasted (McCarthy 201), band of cannibals roving for food (McCarthy 238). Their search for hope was slowly vanquished. The boy was put on a fall after all the hardships and trials and most especially because of his father’s death due to his standing illness. He was forced to journey alone and a few days later, encountered a man and his wife and children who was actually tracking he and his late father (McCarthy 270). In the end, the boy was invited into the care of the man and his family of wife and children (McCarthy 276). As one of the children was a girl, the possibility of a future of the human race was implied amidst the grim conditions of the environment.

In the novel, the transience of human endeavors is ultimately revealed. The human civilization was put in the midst of extermination when an unprecedented cataclysm erupted. There is no single individual that could reverse their only momentary existence in this world (T’souvas 68). McCarthy showed in his novel that this world is not for humans to control, true enough, humans are for the world to control. Monuments, structures, machines – everything human-made, can all be and will all be in-time destroyed.

A human lifetime is short, compared to all the years of this earth that we live in (T’souvas 103). But despite that, the earth features no permanence. The earth itself is open to changes, transformations, destructions. Everything that a person could have created in his life can only do him good until he lives. But once he dies, all these things would not do him any good (T’souvas 250). Compare that to the miniscule size of a person. The father and son tandem illustrated the passing on of legacy, from one generation to the next. The father knew that he will not live long, but he needed to preserve the future of his son (McCarthy 65). Thus, he decided to go on the journey searching for hope, he decided to take a gamble, rather than be sitting ducks. Any parent, any father in this case, would want nothing short of what is the best for his son. His son has a life to live; the boy was his father’s continuing heritage. This characteristic of the father only further support the temporariness of humans and their endeavors, that humans, are mere passerby in this world we live in.
In both The Parable of the Sower and The Road, the journeys illustrated the endeavors that human beings embark on. The human conditions and affair are given more details in these two novels.  Both stories maintain that human actions are transitory. All the success, glory, happiness are just transient, as well as the troubles, predicaments, and roadblocks in the lives of people.