Isabela's Insights on Utopias & Dystopias

 Currently, in the story, everything is going really well. Lauren and her "tribe" picked up four more people, and Lauren and Bankole began a romance. They are also now all heading to Bankole's land to start an Earthseed community. Bankole (fake casting) When Bankole was first introduced into the story, I remembered Lauren feeling attracted to him- but she claimed it was familial. Due to Bankole's age, (57), I sort of assumed it was because Lauren lost her father. I do believe this plays a part in their relationship and Earthseed- a sort of "father" figure for both.  However- then they slept together. I just can't condone this- I just can't. I get it kind of- like the moral decay of society and then going back to tribal roots of humanity. But child brides????? I mean I understand eighteen is the age of consent and to marry but to a man who is 39 years above her?  I really dislike how casually that was looked over: when Lauren tells Bankole her age, he...

 As a woman, reading Parable of the Sower is a breath of fresh air compared to reading the sexist rambling thoughts of Winston in 1984. Not only is the main character in Parable of the Sower a black woman, but she's one as well with a "disability". (I put this in quotes because her hyper empathy is seen as a disability really only in this context: it was because her mom was on drugs, and because there is so much suffering in public right now it makes it hard for her to function.) This allows for a totally different and unique perspective on a dystopian future. While all women suffer from horrible things in both the worlds of Parable of the Sower and in 1984, the perspective that is taken on this is totally different. In 1984, Winston shows readers a very small part of what's happening in the world around him. He discounts poor people as being 'too stupid', and he laments about women's lack of promiscuity towards him specifically. Even though it's not t...

 Chapters 14-16 of Parable of the Sower reminded me a lot of the Hunger Games. I wanted to go ahead and compare the two for this blog post. :) The Hunger Games is told from the perspective of a teenaged woman protagonist, who lives in a dystopian future in America, where America has fallen into poverty.  In Parable of the Sower, there is also a teenaged woman protagonist who is our perspective in a dystopian ruined America as well.  Other similarities between the two novels have to do with the feel of chapters 14-16. Originally, this book did not remind me of the Hunger Games at all. There was much more of an emphasis on religion and living in a semi-good area, rather than a poverty-stricken one. However, all of this changes when Lauren's community is set on fire, and she loses her family.  In these chapters, Lauren goes out on her own to escape to Canada- but really she's ultimately just trying to survive. While in the Hunger Games the main character is not exactly ...

In chapter 13, after Lauren's house has been burglarized, she thinks: "We'll adapt. We'll have to. God is Change. Strange how much it helps me to remember that."  The idea of God being Change is an interesting one, and in my opinion, is different from Christianity. (Baptist Christianity is the major religion in her town, with her father actually being a preacher too.)  While I do admittedly have limited knowledge of Christianity, I believe Lauren's idea that God is Change must be drastically different from Christianity. This would explain the tensions between Lauren and her father, as Lauren believed in a different kind of religion compared to him.  Simultaneously I ponder what Lauren could mean by saying God is Change. It sounds so simple and absolute. Yet I wonder how this is put into practice? Do people pray to change or for change? Or is it about submitting to change and the all-knowing fact that change will happen no matter what? I am very intrigued by bo...

This was the Earthseed quote that started chapter 8, which began by Lauren explaining about Bianca Montoya- a 17-year-old girl who became pregnant by a 23-year-old named Jorge Iturbe. Also in this chapter, her brother Keith, while trying to prove himself to be mature, goes beyond the gate with their family's key- and it gets stolen. I wanted to use this blog post to talk about Lauren's feelings on Bianca's pregnancy, and how it mirrors a lot of discussion in our country about who is able to correctly have and provide for children.  "I like Curtis Talcott a lot... But if all I had to look forward to was marriage to him and babies and poverty that just gets worse, I think I'd kill myself." Firstly, Lauren discusses the age difference between Jorge and Bianca, and I can't help but feel uncomfortable with it. In my experience, there is always some sort of manipulation that goes along with those types of relationships, because the power imbalance is so great. B...

 First of all, I just wanna say, this book is so refreshing in so many ways. The main character is so much more relatable and different from stupid misogynistic white men- and I love it! So basically so far we have been introduced to the main character and her living situation in a Dystopian 2021 where America has basically fallen. She is a black young woman who is "disabled"- and that alone gives for a new take on such an old Dystopian trope.  So- hyper empathy- what is it? Well, it is described as what happened when her mother, who was long gone by the time the book starts, was a drug addict. So it was a leftover effect of her mother doing drugs while she was pregnant with her. Hyper empathy is exactly what it sounds like. She has the ability to be able to feel all the pain and joy a living thing feels. Everyone seems to treat her like this is a bad thing, and I mean in some ways it kind of is. She is living in a place that is literally crawling with suffering people- on th...