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Pink_Blue1214 OP t1_jcqyx7w wrote

Reply to comment by Express_Papaya_5221 in Lauren Oya Olamina from Octavia E. Butler’s “Parable of the Sower/Talents” - is she a Mary Sue? by Pink_Blue1214

“Nothing to suggest this is a conscious ploy that gets any sort of payoff” is how I’d describe a lot of my feelings about the book — particularly Lauren’s relationship with Bankole. My students and I have been uncertain of how Butler wants us to perceive this relationship. Is it meant to be uncomfortable? Is it not? Big question marks

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techneton t1_jctl6e1 wrote

I didn't think Butler was trying to make a judgement about the relationship as much as she was illustrating something about Lauren.

I see Lauren's relationship with Bankole as further illustration that she has a kind of...I don't wanna outsized or inflated...but she has a large perception of her own capability and self-importance. She sees herself as special and so, while she is a sharer, she kind of holds herself above and apart from most people, especially those her own age. It's easier for her to feel that Bankole is her equal because he's so much older and more experienced. The wisdom and experience conferred by his age allows her to see him as more "equal" to her than people in her own cohort.

Now that I think about it, I kind of think Lauren being a sharer could be a way Butler tried to humanize her in the first book. Again Lauren holds herself above and apart from other people. Lauren is an adept reader and manipulator of others and is always thinking about how she and hers can best benefit from a situation. If we weren't constantly being beat over the heat with her empathic capability she could have felt kind of sociopathic.

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Pink_Blue1214 OP t1_jctnqbv wrote

That’s a great way of thinking about Lauren’s hyper empathy! Now that you say this it’s function as a character trait feels clearer to me

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techneton t1_jctqdqe wrote

Yeah! And thinking about it a little more, it also serves in-universe to make Lauren a softer and kinder person in Butler's "what might a person who started a religion as a teenager be like" experiment.

As a person, Lauren is so stubborn and ambitious. She has a huge sense of "destiny" and self-importance even at a young age that leads her to view others kind of as pawns or tools in her grand vision.

If she didn't have experiences (hyper-empathic ones) which forced her to constantly directly confront the pain and humanity of others, it might be easy for her single-minded grand vision and self-righteousness to eclipse her empathy and altruism and lead her to trample others underfoot in pursuit of her own goals and affirmation of her own beliefs.

In that regard you could examine Christian America/President Jarrett and maybe Marcus maybe as sort of parallels to Lauren, or more examinations of how belief, vision, and empathy interact with each other in people and in society.

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Express_Papaya_5221 t1_jcrc0c0 wrote

The possessive nature of Bankole worked for me in injecting unresolved tension. The big wet blanket I felt was the set-up of the cartoon-ish inhumanity of the horde outside of the gates, that seems to play on middle class fear of homeless people, and how in this world religion and not social reform is the one thing that save us. Couple that with a sci-fi device like the "hyper-empathy" that has no real function in the drama, and turning the protagonist into a remorseless killer half way through, it really was an absolute mess of a book imo!

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Pink_Blue1214 OP t1_jctnwu0 wrote

Definitely noticed the antipathy towards homeless/poor people in the first novel. My students and I talked about how Lauren can be a little hypocritical- referring to people who live in the streets as “human maggots” while she lives a comfortable and enviable life inside a gated community

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Express_Papaya_5221 t1_jcudjv7 wrote

Absolutely! I hoped there would be a turning point in the domestic abuse scene when the brother returns after having run away, that it would provide a better metaphor for the state of the world, patriarchal tyranny ruining society or something, empathy being the better tool etc, but that's not what that thing turned out to be :)

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