50 pages • 1 hour read
Parable of the Talents
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Prologue-Chapter 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Prologue Summary
The novel begins with a quotation from a spiritual text, Earthseed: The Books of the Living, written by Lauren Oya Olamina. Lauren’s daughter, Larkin, reflects on the legacy of her mother, who is now dead. Larkin has ambivalent feelings about her mother, noting that her mother was “there for all the world, but never there for me” (xiv). The parallel construction of the sentence introduces the conflict between Larkin’s awareness that her mother was a profoundly influential spiritual leader and her grief that the two of them did not have a closer emotional bond. To process these feelings, Larkin is compiling a text that will combine the writings of both her mother and her father, Taylor Franklin Bankole, with her own reflections.
Chapter 1 Summary
Writing in 2032, Bankole looks back on a period of upheaval and suffering known as the Pox—usually dated between 2015 and 2030. Bankole, born in 1970, argues that widespread problems began plaguing the United States of America much earlier and remain ongoing. Larkin interjects in the narrative to explain some context about her parents: the two of them met in 2027 during a period of violent crisis. When they met, Bankole, a physician, was 57, and Lauren was 18, but they fell in love, nonetheless.
The narrative switches to an entry from Lauren’s journal, dating from September 2032. At this point, Lauren and Bankole live in a community known as Acorn. They had founded the community five years prior in a rural and mountainous area of California. Lauren remains haunted by memories from her earlier life: she grew up in Robledo, a suburb of Los Angeles, with four brothers, her stepmother, and her father, a Baptist preacher. Lauren’s mother died giving birth to her; while pregnant, Lauren’s mother had taken a drug called Paracetco, and as a side effect, Lauren was born with hyperempathy syndrome. If anyone near her experiences pain or pleasure, Lauren also feels those sensations. By the time Lauren was seventeen, her entire family had died violent deaths, and she was forced to flee from her neighborhood. She recalls the influence of growing up with her father’s spiritual teachings.
On the day that she writes her journal, in 2032, Lauren is worried about a troubling event. A nearby community, known as Dovetree, has been violently attacked by a group of armed men wearing uniforms with crosses on their chests. Unlike other, more familiar types of attacks where the aim is clearly to steal supplies or abduct children and sell them into slavery, this type of attack seems different. Lauren worries that it could have something to do with the supporters of a current presidential candidate, Andrew Jarret.
In addition to being a political leader, Jarret is the head of a fundamentalist religious sect called Christian America, and his followers are known to violently persecute anyone who does not share their faith. Lauren reflects that “[Jarret] wants to take us all back to some magical time when everyone believed in the same God, worshipped him in the same way” (15), suggesting with her use of the word “magical” that she knows Jarret is fabricating an alluring narrative and appealing to a desire for security in a time of crisis. The rise of Jarret and Christian America makes Lauren nervous because her spiritual community, known as Earthseed, might be seen as a dissenting rival religion. Lauren is hopeful for the future of Earthseed and eager to protect her growing community.
Chapter 2 Summary
Larkin provides some context about the history of Acorn and Earthseed: the community was founded in 2027 with 13 original members, including Lauren and Bankole. The group had formed with individuals Lauren encountered after she had fled from her home; the others were also refugees, many of whom had lost family members in the violence of the Pox. Bankole led them to an isolated piece of land previously owned by his sister, whom the gangs had killed. Lauren and her followers established a thriving community, which gradually grew as they took in orphans and refugees. Bankole’s skills as a doctor were highly valued by the residents of various nearby small towns, even though they were initially somewhat suspicious of him as a Black man. By 2032, the community had grown to more than 60 people.
The narrative switches to another journal entry from Lauren. Lauren has raised the subject of Jarret at one of the open community meetings known as Gatherings. She is dismayed but unsurprised to see that some members of the Acorn community wonder whether Jarret might be able to create more opportunities and stability as a result of what they see as his strong leadership. On the day after the Gathering, Lauren goes with three other members of the Acorn community to gather plants. Acorn residents always take many precautions to keep themselves and their community safe, but they are caught off-guard when an armored truck opens fire on them.
The group is able to take cover, but they can hear the sound of a child crying. Wanting to both help the children and potentially take the truck, Lauren takes a risk. Lauren and her followers find a family that has been severely wounded, with some members killed, and bring them back to Acorn along with the truck. Bankole gently scolds her for her rashness and raises the idea of the two of them moving into a town where they might be safer and more secure. Because he is a doctor, he could easily find work and be welcomed almost anywhere. Bankole also tells Lauren that he is preoccupied with security because “I’m thinking about a safe place for us, a safe place for you when I’m dead” (40). At this point in the narrative, Bankole only mentions his death because he is almost 40 years older than Lauren, but the comment foreshadows that danger and violence will soon be threatening the relative security of the Acorn community.
Chapter 3 Summary
In a journal entry, Bankole reflects on his fears that Lauren’s ambitions for herself and Earthseed may make her a target of violence and backlash. Larkin writes about her impressions of the Earthseed religion, contrasting it with other religious systems and expressing her surprise that so many people have been drawn to it. Then the narrative resumes with Lauren’s journal. Of the individuals rescued from the armored truck, the two adults died, but the teenage son, Dan Noyer, and his two young sisters, Kassia and Mercy, survived and are being cared for by members of the Acorn community.
The Noyer family, including two older daughters, had sold everything they had and were attempting to make their way to Alaska in the hope of a better life there. Alaska had seceded from the United States in 2031, and there are now many tensions between the Alaskan and American governments; Lauren fears that if Jarret gets elected, there may be a war. During the armored truck attack, a gang abducted the two older daughters (Paula and Nina) and then shot the parents and older children, leaving them for dead. Lauren and the Acorn community help Dan and his sisters mourn for their parents, using Earthseed teachings and rituals. Lauren believes that these rituals help the community to come together, reflecting that “there are times when people need religion more than they need anything else” (57).
Chapter 4 Summary
In his journal, Bankole reflects on the impact of climate change, noting that the natural environment is suffering. Larkin reflects on her impression of her father’s writing, observing that “he saw little good in our future. According to his writing, our greatness as a country, perhaps even the greatness of the human species, was in the past” (59). Larkin uses what she perceives as the difference between her parents’ beliefs to further her argument that Lauren was reckless and stubborn in her optimistic hopes for Earthseed and the future. The narrative returns to Lauren’s journal. Lauren describes a community discussion at Acorn where some community members advocated for expanding their economic activities now that they have the truck. However, others worry about the risk of drawing attention to themselves, especially if Jarret ends up getting elected. Lauren acknowledges that these fears are reasonable, but she is eager to see Acorn expand and grow so that more people can learn about Earthseed.
Dan asks Lauren about what will be required if he and his sisters choose to stay at Acorn after they finish healing. Lauren explains how the community is structured and about some of the key beliefs associated with Earthseed. Dan is curious but is fixated on worrying about the fate of his two sisters who were abducted. Lauren promises him that Acorn will do everything to locate the girls and get them back if possible.
Prologue-Chapter 4 Analysis
The novel’s opening chapters establish the narrative frame and structure and provide important context into events in Butler’s previous novel, The Parable of the Sower. The Parable of the Talents is narrated from multiple characters’ perspectives, most significantly in the alternating voices of Lauren and Larkin. Larkin is positioned as an editor for the entire narrative, sifting through and choosing documents to tell the story of her mother’s life and experiences. As Larkin comments, “I must begin to understand who she was. That is my reason for writing and assembling this book” (xiv). This position gives Larkin an influential role in constructing the narrative, especially because she also interjects and intersperses her perspective among these writings. Given Larkin’s training as an academic historian, it makes sense that there is an interplay between Lauren’s own writings functioning as primary sources (documents or other artifacts created by individuals with direct, first-hand experience of an event) and Larkin’s commentary as a secondary source.
However, Larkin is not an objective witness and can be considered unreliable. She shapes the narrative with both a commitment to truth and accuracy but also a strong bias born out of the bitterness, anger, and mistrust she carries towards her mother. From the very beginning, Larkin is open that “I’m not glad to have known her through her [writings]” (xiv).
Throughout the novel, Butler explores the tension between humanity’s potential to strive toward ideals and the fallibility of human psychology. She develops this theme by positioning Larkin as struggling between an intellectual goal and the emotional experiences of grappling with her family history. Significantly, the history of Earthseed and Lauren’s life is not told by a neutral observer but by someone deeply implicated and emotionally engaged. While Larkin does not identify as a follower of Earthseed because of her genetic heritage, its history is also her history. Likewise, for Octavia Butler, writing as a Black woman about experiences of enslavement and suffering among primarily people of color is not simply a thought experiment about a possible dystopian future. It is anchored in a legacy of history and a connection to people who previously lived through similar experiences.
Because The Parable of the Talents is a sequel, Butler situates and contextualizes some key events from the previous novel through narrative techniques of flashbacks, Lauren’s dream sequences, and Larkin’s meta-narrative commentary. These techniques allow readers to quickly understand the events before 2032 and contextualize why Acorn is so important to Lauren. Lauren was brutally torn away from her family and home, made a perilous and lonely journey walking the highways of California, and then finally found a refuge and a home. In a novel strongly associated with Biblical allusions, Lauren’s experiences mirror narratives of exile, wandering through the desert, and finally arriving at a chosen land. Finding Acorn and then establishing a secure and thriving community there is nothing short of miraculous, given the violence and chaos raging in the surrounding world, and this success strengthens Lauren’s conviction that her audacious ambitions for Earthseed are viable. The name of the community functions as a metaphor wherein something small and ordinary contains the potential for something much more majestic to grow gradually; it also highlights the important theme of connection to, and respect for, the natural world.
However, while it situates the start of the plot action in a moment of relative peace and optimism, this first section of the novel also contains significant foreshadowing of more sinister events to come and introduces some of the key conflicts. The events at Dovetree, the growing power of Jarret and his followers, and even the tragic attack on the Noyer family all foreshadow subsequent violent events to come. Even while some aspects of life at Acorn seem to be thriving, Bankole represents a more cautious and conservative outlook and longs to create more security for himself and Lauren, explaining that he longs for “a safe place for us” (40). In this section, and later, once Lauren is expecting a child, Bankole operates from a more traditional, patriarchal view of the nuclear family unit. He cares deeply about other people but is focused on safeguarding Lauren and their child, whereas Lauren takes a more diffuse view of family and community. Lauren feels a connection to Earthseed and the community of Acorn that is arguably as strong as her love for Bankole and her regard for her own safety. This section also shows Lauren’s ambitions to grow Earthseed already conflict with the views of others around her.
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