Second Reading/Lit. Circle Letter

Dear reading group members,

This is the second reading group letter I am writing on Parable of Talents by Octavia E. Butler. Might I just say, it has gotten quite intense ever since the first chunk of reading. Now I am able to keep track of the characters that are coming and going. They seem way much more familiar to me. And to you guys (in my reading group) and to all others reading my blog, please do not call me a wuss, but I slightly find myself growing a bit more emotionally attached to the characters as I read on. I am not to the point where when a character dies (which happens quite often in this ugly future) I cry my heart out. It is more of a distant relationship where I view them dying as more of a stressful feeling, as if I had nearly failed a test. This stress somehow makes me read a bit faster for a while in order to figure out what will happen to the remaining characters and how will they overcome this problem. I am not really use to this strange feeling because I was not that much of a reader in my past years.

There is something else that appears very strange about this book. One of my reading group members convinced me to join him (we needed a minimal of three people in a group which means we would only need to get one more person to read along with us). Pretty much he chose the book and I just went along with it. Now I do not know if he knew that the book would include antisemitism and these "reforming camps," but they seemed to tie in a lot with what we had just learned about genocide and Adolf Hitler in our English class. It also seemed to get a bit involved with recent facts that I just learned from history class. Strangely, the history stuff does not involve anything about genocide, because we have not gotten to that topic yet in history class. In Parable of Talents, Olamina's daughter, Larkin, mentioned something about her growing up in a new "Christian America" era. Because she was taken away from her non-believing heathen parents, she was given to a "good" Christian family. Growing up in this terrible future was strange. Larkin said that children were preferably to be seen and not heard (this means they should be present but must not unless spoken to). That was when it hit me. America was forcing itself into regression. Life was becoming more primitive! That quote of "children being seen, not heard" was in my history book about family and childhood life during the time of the Industrial Revolution! Not only that, but the cruel treatment of women and the witch burnings were a big hint too. I think that I may include this regression of America in my review essay of this book.