Earthseed: Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents

by Octavia E. Butler

Did the Ku Klux Klan wear crosses—

There were crosses all over the place during the Inquisition and before that, during the Crusades. So now we have another group that uses crosses and slaughters people.

He wants to take us all back to some magical time when everyone believed in the same God, worshipped him in the same way, and understood that their safety in the universe depended on completing the same religious rituals and stomping anyone who was different.

these days when more than half the people in the country can’t read at all, history is just one more vast unknown to them.

Today: don’t read

Jarret supporters have been known, now and then, to form mobs and burn people at the stake for being witches.

A witch, in their view, tends to be a Moslem, a Jew, a Hindu, a Buddhist, or, in some parts of the country, a Mormon, a Jeh...

Jarret condemns the burnings, but does so in such mild language that his people are free to hear what they want to hear.

It seems inevitable that people who can’t read are going to lean more toward judging candidates on the way they look and sound than on what they claim they stand for. Even people who can read and are educated are apt to pay more attention to good looks and seductive lies than they should. And no doubt the new picture ballots on the nets will give Jarret an even greater advantage.

We are now 59 people—64 with the Dovetree women and children,

I’m jumping to all kinds of unwarranted conclusions. At least I hope they’re unwarranted. Between my horror at what’s happened down at Dovetree and my hopes and fears for my own people, I’m upset and at loose ends and, perhaps, just imagining things.

Harry Balter and Zahra Moss,

Travis, Natividad, and Dominic Douglas,

Allison Gilchrist and her sister Julian—

my father

Justin Rohr became Justin Gilchrist

Grayson Mora and his daughter Doe and Emery Solis and her daughter Tori.

One of the most valuable things they traded with one another was knowledge.

Every member of Earthseed learned to read and to write, and most knew at least two languages—usually Spanish and English,

Education was no longer free, but it was still mandatory according to the law.

The problem was, no one was enforcing such laws, just as no one was protecting child laborers.

the Peralta and Faircloth families

Ramiro Peralta

Alan Faircloth

they’re afraid and ashamed of their fear, ashamed of their powerlessness. And they’re tired. There are millions of people like them—people who are frightened and just plain tired of all the chaos. They want someone to do something. Fix things. Now!

plant collecting with friends.

aloe vera

big mounds of agave.

Each leaf was tipped with a long, hard, dagger-sharp spike, and for good measure, each leaf was edged in jagged thorns that were tough enough to saw through human flesh. We intended to use them to do just that.

We’ve survived as well as we have because we keep learning.

thorn fence.

an old gray housetruck

Uncertain what this is

Jorge Cho

Natividad Douglas

Michael Kardos.

Washingtonia palm tree

The weed-strewn fields of what had been the farm swept back and up into the hills. Above them were the pines that could shelter and conceal, but they were far beyond our reach.

Then we heard the sound of a child, crying.

he’s been a surrogate father to his younger sister and brother for six years.

We never asked more of them than that they do their share of the work to keep the community going and that they respect Earthseed by not preaching other belief systems.

But to Michael, this sounded like altruism, and Michael didn’t believe in altruism.

We had a way of life that he thought was sensible and a goal, a Destiny that he thought was crazy,

Noriko

The people in that truck should either make sure we’re dead or they should leave.”

“In a truck like that, the guns should be run by a computer. Automatic targeting.

Then I realized that this time, they weren’t shooting at us.

When someone was in pain, the only way I could avoid sharing the suffering was not to look.

The one good thing about sharing pain is that it makes us very slow to cause pain to other people.

“Those guys out there…I think they’re dead. They must be dead.” “They’re down anyway,” Michael whispered as he looked where Jorge had looked. “I can see at least three of them in the field beyond the chimney and the truck.”

“They seem to need a moving target,” I said.

I’d say either the truck or the people in it are not in good working order.