The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler is a future-based dystopian novel that follows the coming-of-age journey of protagonist Lauren Olamina, a young black woman faced with the difficult task of surviving it. travels north through California in search of establishing his religious community, Earthseed, after his Robledo neighborhood is destroyed by drug-addicted thieves and murderers. Lauren and two other survivors of the invasion of his neighborhood, Zahra and Harry, accompany him on his journey to the North in hopes of creating a better future for himself to escape the turmoil of violence, arson and thefts that exist in the economically and socially collapsed world. Along the way, the group welcomes other refugees who soon become part of Lauren's Earthseed community called Acorn by the end of the novel. Lauren's central Earthseed belief that "God is change" helps her adapt to survive in California's post-apocalyptic landscape. Two important themes of the novel are freedom and slavery, both used by Butler in different ways to tell African American history in the context of the future. Butler describes slavery in the novel as manifesting in two different ways, one being debt slavery triggered by capitalism and the other being forced labor in rural areas of the country, painting the picture of African-American plantation slavery. Lauren is a symbol of freedom from the past throughout her journey to escape the decayed state of society and establish a new life elsewhere, while helping others join her along the way. Both uses of these themes contribute to Butler's vision of a future where freedom is diminishing and slavery is infiltrating, a society that echoes the past of African Americans and their struggles for human rights. man. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Lauren's character rejects this idea, proving that determination to rebuild a community once destroyed in one's life is possible and can repair the universal loss of human society. faces. Butler's world envisions the regression of America's "freedom" and its progression toward a slave state, where the future now reflects the past. One of the central manifestations of slavery in the novel is debt slavery in which a person is economically tied to their worker or debtor to repay their debt. The prevalence of debt slavery in the crumbling economy of Butler's dystopian future drives home his message that slavery did not cease to exist beyond its birth on plantations and took a form modernized thanks to the exploitative effects of capitalism. The existence of modern debt slavery is first introduced to us in Chapter 11, where continued thefts from Lauren's walled neighborhood of Robledo prompt local families to leave the walled community in search of safety. The neighborhood is informed of the possibility of leaving Robledo and moving to Olivar, a coastal town recently purchased by KSF, a German-Japanese Canadian company that aims to dominate the agricultural and solar industry along the coastline by attracting its residents with many opportunities. jobs, security and a guaranteed food supply. In exchange for these benefits, citizens will pay high taxes and receive low wages, driving up the cost of living to a high level. Eager to boost its economy, the citizens of Olivar voted for KSF to take over and revitalize thelabor market. Olivar's takeover sparks debate among members of the community, particularly between Lauren and her mother-in-law, Cory. Both Lauren and her father recognize the true cost of buying out KSF: gaining capital by placing the residents, its workers, in perpetual debt by offering low wages for work and high taxes. She notes that this method of exploitation is an “old corporate trick” to “put people in debt, hold on to them, and make them work harder” (Butler 111). Cory disagrees and tells Lauren that there is "no reason to believe the company would allow this sort of thing" (Butler 113). Lauren recognizes Cory's desperation to escape the uncertainty of everyday life, but cannot accept the idea that life in Olivar is better than in Robledo, knowing that they will have to sacrifice their freedom for security and live with debt. “Freedom is dangerous, Cory, but it’s also precious. You can't just throw it away or let it go," she points out (Butler 112), explaining to her mother-in-law that while Robledo isn't the safest, their community has more agency than Olivar, where they will be enslaved by debt. KSF's privatization of Olivar aims to "illustrate how contemporary capitalist enterprises like big business, in their contempt for humanity due to their hunger for the almighty dollar, oppress people as much as the slave system of before -war has done so in the historical past” (Allen 2009). KSF is the author of modernized debt slavery, a capitalist machine that manipulates the general public into believing that working for its company will bring them the benefit of security, when in reality, its workers are deprived of their freedom while spending their lives. repay the company's debt. The evolution of slavery transcends race in the context of the novel, where anyone can be exploited for profit. Furthermore, "the KSF situation is also reminiscent of the way mining companies in areas like West Virginia treated their workers in early American history, as well as the sharecropping system that developed in the South after the war civil” (Allen 2009). Butler draws a parallel between the future and the past of power struggles between workers and their companies to warn that if no regulations are applied to the enormous corporations of our generation, history could repeat itself to the detriment of human rights. man. Slavery also manifests itself in its most “traditional” form where “black and Latino workers are held in slavery by Southern farm owners” (Allen 2009). Butler continues to allude to America's slavery past by illustrating how agricultural labor still persists in rural areas of the country, evoking the image of African American plantation slavery. The juxtaposition between debt slavery triggered by capitalism in the cities and slavery on the farms presents two different landscapes of the coexisting past and future. We learn about the continued forced labor that exists in Lauren's world later in the novel where she meets Emery, an escaped ex-slave who reveals his past of hard labor on a farm to pay off his debts. In chapter 23, the group comes across Emery and his daughter sleeping at their campsite. They take them both in and she tells Lauren about her experience of having to pay work for food and housing and how the low wages they earned couldn't sustain themselves. expenses. She and her now-deceased husband were slaves who were "forced to work longer hours for less pay, could be "disciplined"if they did not respect their quotas, could be exchanged and sold with or without their consent, with or without their family..." (Majordome 265). Emery's experience facing oppression from his slave master describes the same abuses that occurred on plantations hundreds of years ago. Slave masters used these same tactics to manipulate their slaves and prevent them from disobeying them. His experience also provides evidence of the return to a labor-dependent agricultural economy, given how much of the population fled cities destroyed by violence, theft, arson, and more. We see this exact image in chapter 20 where Lauren and her group take a detour. around the Bay Area that is being destroyed by arsonists and thieves who "seem determined to destroy what's left" and are "desperate, running people away from their guns, their money, their food and their water..." ( Butler 226). The drastic change in the landscape of Lauren's world further illustrates how America is returning to its past of slave economics, emphasizing Butler's idea that history is cyclical and that the Slavery is not a thing of the past and will continue to persist through time unless resolved. Freedom is used thematically throughout Lauren and her journey North in search of a better life, leaving the past behind. She represents new hope for life in a world that is deteriorating around her, exemplified by her determination to help herself and others escape their difficult circumstances and create a new colony in the North . Butler portrays Lauren as an ex-slave and a symbol of freedom for others like her to triumph over their past and believe that life can flourish in such a destructive world. Lauren's travels involve her and her group meeting several disadvantaged groups and individuals who they help guide on their journeys with them. She forms an alliance with a mixed couple, Travis and Natividad, after saving their water from theft and protecting them from a wild dog attack. Later, the group rescues Allie and Jill, former prostitutes, from the rubble of a collapsed house and takes in ex-slaves Emery and his daughter Tori, as well as Grayson and his daughter Doe. Earlier in the novel, Lauren was very suspicious of others, particularly in chapter 16 where she refused to let a seemingly innocent old man cook her potatoes in their fire. Now, Lauren takes risks to help others in need and provides them with food and supplies from her camp, along with the added security of traveling in a pack. Her group is now made up of former slaves, prostitutes and minorities whom she helped to get back on their feet, like the leadership of Harriet Tubman, an ex-slave who helped slaves escape to the north to Canada via the Underground Railroad (Allen 2009). Likewise, Lauren symbolizes being the conductor of her own Underground Railroad, providing herself and others in need with opportunity, freedom, starting over (Manuel 2004 ). Butler draws a parallel between these two black heroines as a liberator allowing the underprivileged to leave their traumatic past behind and start anew. These parallels are significant in the way Butler tells African American history within the context of the 21st century in the novel and in the way Lauren's journey to Canada to found Earthseed, her religious community, resembles that of slaves traveling towards the North in search of freedom. Acorn, the first Earthseed community she establishes at the end of the novel, symbolizes the freedom of the past and similarly represents liberation.