Parable Of The Talents By Octavia Butler Summary
“All that you touch you change: Utopian Desire and the Concept of Change in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents”
By Patricia Melzer, Femspec 3.2
This analysis examines two literary narratives by Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower (1993) and Parable of the Talents (1998) that elucidate the intersection of three fields in Western thought: the notion of utopia, feminist politics and theory, and feminist science fiction. This intersection is crucial for feminists in that it provides tools for negotiating difference within feminist politics. I lay out the dynamics within Octavia Butler’s feminist utopian/dystopian writing that define her concept of “utopia” as both a utopian desire and a longing to transform. These allow her to theorize about future social relations and inform the strategies for feminist politics that she develops.
Feminist debates on difference address the complex ways in which women are positioned in relations to power based on race, class, and sexual difference. Within these …show more content…
For example, she is critical of Lauren’s brother Marcus’ in Talents, who betrays his sister by keeping her daughter Larkin/Asha without telling her about her origin. He struggles with his homosexuality that his Christian faith forbids him, and Larkin/Asha becomes the only child he can ever have. Butler’s emphasis on the restricting effects of Christianity on its members that seems to construct homosexuality as an acceptable form of sexuality is supported by the betrayal of two lesbian lovers by non-Earthseed people in the concentration camp. The moment in which Lauren feels sexual desire for a woman at the end of Talents similarly disrupts the rather conservative element of normative heterosexuality that runs through most of Butler’s narratives, ((18)) introducing what Russ calls sexual “permissiveness” (Russ
By Patricia Melzer, Femspec 3.2
This analysis examines two literary narratives by Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower (1993) and Parable of the Talents (1998) that elucidate the intersection of three fields in Western thought: the notion of utopia, feminist politics and theory, and feminist science fiction. This intersection is crucial for feminists in that it provides tools for negotiating difference within feminist politics. I lay out the dynamics within Octavia Butler’s feminist utopian/dystopian writing that define her concept of “utopia” as both a utopian desire and a longing to transform. These allow her to theorize about future social relations and inform the strategies for feminist politics that she develops.
Feminist debates on difference address the complex ways in which women are positioned in relations to power based on race, class, and sexual difference. Within these …show more content…
For example, she is critical of Lauren’s brother Marcus’ in Talents, who betrays his sister by keeping her daughter Larkin/Asha without telling her about her origin. He struggles with his homosexuality that his Christian faith forbids him, and Larkin/Asha becomes the only child he can ever have. Butler’s emphasis on the restricting effects of Christianity on its members that seems to construct homosexuality as an acceptable form of sexuality is supported by the betrayal of two lesbian lovers by non-Earthseed people in the concentration camp. The moment in which Lauren feels sexual desire for a woman at the end of Talents similarly disrupts the rather conservative element of normative heterosexuality that runs through most of Butler’s narratives, ((18)) introducing what Russ calls sexual “permissiveness” (Russ