The science-fiction novel Parable of Talents by Octavia E. Butler tells the story about a young female adult, Lauren Oya Olamina, living in the post-apocalyptic United States of the not so distant future. The book is a sequel to Parable of Sower (also by Octavia E. Butler). In this continuation, Olamina has successfully established a community called Acorn, and has began spreading her religious ideas of Earthseed. This futuristic America is quite frightening as chaos fills the street, wars in almost every nation occur, and Christian extremists enslave the "non-believers." This terrible future continuously takes away numerous lives and begins to break apart families and friendships to the point where one seems physically dead to the other. All that I can say is hopefully, none of this will actually happen.
Out of the whole chaotic story of characters appearing, dying, and vanishing, there was one who seemed to interest me the most. It is Marcos Duran (a.k.a. Marc), Olamina's (the main character) handsome younger brother. Olamina thought that he was dead because of the long time that they have were separated (without any form of contact) for. He has probably the character that suffered the most in the novel. He was shot, injured, robbed, beaten, and used for sex numerous times. Olamina randomly ran into Marc and rescues him by purchasing him from a man involved in terrible business of collared prostitution. These collars force the wearer into unrealistic forms of pain with just the press of a button. Olamina brings him back to Acorn so he can live peacefully as he did before. Unfortunately, Marc has been though so much that he cannot just simply go back to life as it was before. Also, he has become a deeply religious Christian and refuses to be surrounded by all the heathen Earthseed believers. With the failed attempts of preaching to the members of Acorn, he decides to leave the small village. In the end of the novel, he ends up hurting Olamina and tries to apologize. He uses the excuse, "I'm sorry... I had been alone so long..." (pg. 404). It is a shame that this happens because Olamina had tried giving a helping hand out to Marc by bringing him to Acorn. Olamina brought him to Acorn in order for them to be together so he would not have to suffer alone anymore. Even though he had always told Olamina that she was still his sister, and that he loved her, he seemed to just turn his back on her. After he left Acorn, he started preaching all over Christian America, he said stuff about Olamina on how she "...permitted herself to be pulled down by Satan" (pg. 305). Marc also blamed her for his leaving of Acorn by saying, "... through the influence of Satan, done him a great injury" (pg. 305). He did not even make an attempt in believing her stories of the corrupt Christian America. Marc had truly betrayed her.
The topic of the story is a bit difficult to listen to. Its content and little side stories of characters are quite graphic. The novel does use some fine vocabulary words such as "parable" (which just so happens to be found in the title) and some harsh vocabulary (curse words). Because of these two factors, I would say that this story is intended for an audience of readers that are either adults or at least young adults (possibly mature teenagers as well). Gruesome scenes are mentioned countless time about people getting shot, others dying, some getting stabbed, and so on. Olamina even says that cruelty is pretty common in the hectic future that she lives in. She mentions this right after listening to how the young Noyer children and how they arrived to the city of Acorn. Olamina really did care for the children, but her tone sounds as if she were nearly shrugging it off. "It was a familiar sort of story-horrible and ordinary. Almost everyone in Acorn has a horrible, ordinary story to tell" (pg. 56). The novel also involves a lot of situations involving rape and other forms of sexual abuse. Homosexuality is brought up too. This is not really so appropriate for a younger audience. Small children were even being sold as slaves and for other purposes as well. When the town of Acorn had been torn up by Jarret's Crusaders, I am pretty sure all, if not, nearly all the women in the small community of Acorn had been raped and surely abused by their captors. "The way they rape us, the way they lash us, the way they let some of us die-all that tells me that they don't value our lives" (pg. 215). Strangely, I find the gory violence to be a bit worse. Olamina asked her brother Marc about what happened to him and the other members of their family on the day they got separated. Marc's emotions were running high when he told Olamina the story. "Then I saw Mama get shot... I saw blood pouring from her neck... He shot Ben while Ben was trying to get up. Ben's head... just... broke apart" (pg. 118). There are more explicitly detailed events that are within this book.
Parable of Talents by Octavia E. Butler is a book tells the tale of a young African American female, commonly known as Olamina, who lives in this hectic Christian supremacist United States of the future. While I was reading this book, I noticed that the rule of Jarret over his Christian America had caused the nation to be put in to a form of regression. Harsh punishments were all the more common. Brutality and weaponry ran the streets. Women and children were put below men as they were in more primitive cultures. This unfortunate future continues to send a mature vibe for a more adult-like audience. All these terribly horrid events of death and rape are quite occur more often in the time that they live in. They seem to create and tear apart relationships between families and friends. Especially, the old bond between Olamina and her brother Marc. All that Marc has been through while he was away from Olamina seems to shape the story and especially plays a role in the way the novel ends. I am still a bit curious about what happened before Olamina founded the community of Earthseed. I have not read the first book (Parable of Sower) yet. But I am hoping that I will inevitably be able to get to that book before I begin to forget about the story of Olamina and her religion of Earthseed.
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