One of the most shocking things to me in Parable of the
Sower is the relationship between Lauren and people she doesn’t know. On the road,
she has many small interactions with people but all of them are fraught with
distrust and apprehension on both sides. When she helps an old man up after the
earthquake, he is frightened of her. She is wary of him, too: “I gave him a pat
on the shoulder and sent him on his way, checking when his back was turned to
see that he hadn’t lifted anything. The world was full of thieves. Old people
and young kids were often pickpockets.” She and everyone else have an innate distrust
of everyone, and she really hasn’t had much cause to think otherwise. In
Robledo, sharing her secrets quickly results in being scolded, and only
recently has Lauren had anyone to share her ideas about Earthseed with. The
road is a scary place. Everyone is frightened of a bigger fish and ready to
bite like a cornered dog if stressed. This is why it takes so long for Natividad
and Travis to warm to the gang. It’s also why Bankole is such an arresting
character to Lauren: he is not scared of the group, but does not try to
threaten them.
The people on the road seem to move as a massive, turbulent
but slow wave. When they see the burning buildings after the quake, the wave
speeds up and begins to wash over the town. None of these people are trying to
be evil or kill people, but are doing their best to survive. And if survival
means taking someone else’s belongings by force, it’s what must be done. Everyone
is so guarded with possessions and emotions that they appear to be tough,
gritty cowboys, but are really just people. It struck me how changed this is
from other books: in Handmaid’s Tale,
Brave New World, and 1984, there
is an overarching power structure telling people not to reveal their emotions,
but here the paranoia is self-imposed because of poverty.
Part of Earthseed is trust: knowing that you can only
change, but not depend on, anything. Inside Robledo and out, Lauren is a
trusting person. On the road, trust can get you hurt, but the gang has extremely
good luck finding good people—or perhaps their trust changes those they meet.
The trust dynamic in "Parable of the Sower" is a very interesting topic to debate over. If you were in Lauren's shoes, would you go out of your way to help someone you've never seen before and risk the group's safety? I believe morality pays a large part into the decision to take strangers in and get to the point where both parties trust each other. With the reputation Lauren gives outsiders, it seems as if the risks associated with approaching one outweighs the rewards. For example, Lauren decides to take in Mora and his daughter even though he demonstrates a deep dislike for the group and even ditches the group during their pivotal shootout where Allie dies. On the other hand, Lauren must see something in Mora that causes her to accept him into the group: his potential to change. Lauren built Earthseed upon the values of change, so it's important for her that her followers be willing to accept its beliefs in change and why she scrutinizes everyone as a potential follower to her cause.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, the trust Lauren puts in the group and the willingness the group has to take people in gives me a bit of faith in humanity. It is understandable, though, that many people on the road have to distrust in order to survive. I would say that Lauren's trust changes those she meets, especially in the final chapters of the book--all the people choose to stay, when they could easily leave the ruins of the house.
ReplyDeleteNice post! Trust can be hard, and especially hard in dire cirumstances, because you know that the person only gets one chance- theres no second chance with a life. Trusting someone to do the dishes isn't the same as trusting someone not to steal the money in your pocket that you so desperately need, or to shoot you in the back and take your supplies when you're basically homeless, etc. But once you help someone out and take that first step, most people just want to be cared for and carer for others too. Its just the circumstances that make it hard to see that.
ReplyDeleteI think is paranoia is absolutely essential to survive in Lauren's world. Paranoia is what got them to set up their watch schedule and avoid as many threats as they could. However, there is still trust in Lauren's world even though it takes longer to form. This trust isn't blind and stupid, it's greater than trust that forms between people today because in Lauren's world trust can mean life or death.
ReplyDeleteOn a certain level, Lauren is admirable for going against the grain and trusting people as much as she does. However, on a fundamental level, I’m sort of skeptical of whether the group stays together because of Lauren’s trust changing the initial mistrust of others. Personally, I feel that it’s sort of the situation where there is a mutual benefit to them all staying together and that the only reason they are able to trust each other not to screw each other over is because all of them would be much worse off alone. Particularly, Lauren seems to always find people to join her group who are really struggling to survive.
ReplyDeleteLauren does seem to have a lot of trust in people given her circumstances. Yes she is paranoid, but not to the extent you'd think she would be given her situation and what their world is like. But the paranoia is essential to survive in Parable of the Sower -- without it, they could get killed.
ReplyDeleteIt's definitely interesting to consider the relationship between trust and the moral character of the individuals that Lauren meets. On the one hand you could argue that all of the members of Lauren's group were good before they joined, and that she was able to detect their "goodness" (or was just lucky), but as you pointed out, it's also plausible that her trusting nature was able to spark change in those who joined her group. While I personally think that it's probably a mixture of the two, I would guess that it was mostly reliant on the innate "goodness" of the people that Lauren chose to accept into the group - they all seemed like reasonable people, and I don't think that trust would mean anything if Lauren was confronted with a more hardcore thief or pyromaniac.
ReplyDeleteI would really hope that more people would act like Lauren does on the road: helping those people that need help, but unfortunately it makes a lot of sense for the majority of people not to. Most of those on the road have probably been driven out of safer communities, and, like Lauren, they probably started alone or nearly so, meaning that any risk they take could easily end in their death or the loss of all of their belongings.
ReplyDelete-Sasha
I find it absolutely incredible that anyone would have the naivety to trust anyone in a society like that "Parable of the sower." I can say that, if presented with a society like this one, I would probably become a loan ranger or simply have relations with people who I trusted before. Despite all this, trust does happen. I would argue that the point of the novel is to understand how people interact with one another in times of grave danger, rather than the trip North.
ReplyDeleteThis topic of trust between the group members was something that kept running in the back of my mind while reading the novel. I think you make a good point about how their poverty plays a major role in their distrust and paranoia. This makes me wonder if we would automatically start being more paranoid if we grew up in poverty or if there is more to the story, like the violence that Lauren and them experienced.
ReplyDeleteYes, I noticed this while I was reading as well. I think that Parable of the Sower does a good job at showing us a different aspect of humans than the other books: desperation. Quotes like the one you gave, and others found throughout the book show this off in a way that I don't think the other books did.
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