(this essay was originally written in 2018)
Dystopian futures are considered imagined societies or places where people live within an oppressive framework that dehumanizes their existence. Dystopian or post-apocalyptic fiction can construct worlds further out of reach than the present circumstances on earth — for instance, worlds could be light-years away on planets inhabited by alien species containing technological possibilities beyond humanity’s scientific comprehension; worlds could be dimensions away with fantastical elements comprised of magic, wonder and horror beyond the limitations of the human experience. Or, it may be a world not so far away at all, perhaps a stone’s throw ahead where the ripples resonate clearly to the reader, and the tools of oppression seem eerily familiar and not beyond imagination nor nightmare.
When thinking about the environments constructed within dystopian futures, I wish to consider the environment as a place, setting, and associated entity. How is territory used as a vehicle for oppression and danger, and when is it used as a source of power and strength? I will examining the following novels, Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves, both novels reference the destruction of the land in response to climate change which infers the disassociation of human society has with the environment they live in. Parable of the Sower follows protagonist Lauren, an African American teenager who lives within the gated community of Robledo in California, her objective is to find a place to reconstitute what a society and belief system could look like through her self-written spiritual philosophy, EarthSeed. The Marrow Thieves follows Frenchie, a Metis teenager, who is on the run from recruiters in a post-apocalyptic Canada, the dire state of the world has caused the majority of the population from being able to dream — except for Indigenous people, who are now being hunted for dream extraction found in the marrow of their bones. In this comparison, I wish to consider aspects of the environment and how the characters make meaning of it — specifically, the reflection found in star gazing, the representation and purpose of fire, and the interaction with land as a physical place and spiritual territory.
LOOKING AT THE STARS: For Direction and Dreams
Stars offer direction for human navigation on territory and open waters, the galactic skies reflect the divinity of the heavens but are also seen as a starlit map by many cultures and peoples. When stars are formulated into clusters or gatherings they are known as constellations which is literally the gathering or clustering of stars. For Lauren and Frenchie, these moments of gazing at stars contain an allusion for the necessity of kinship, gathering or clustering together for survival, but also an understanding of life and existence beyond their present circumstances. These scenes provide a glimpse of how Lauren and Frenchie understand or formulate their spirituality — in terms of navigation, these scenes offer subtle guidance and indication towards the growing ideology and objective for each character. “Out here stars were perforations revealing the bleached skeleton of the universe through a collection of tiny holes. And surrounded by these silent trees, beside a calming fire, I watched the bones dance. This was our medicine, these bones, and I opened up and took it all in. And dreamed of North.” (Dimaline 9) This moment occurs during Frenchie’s first night alone near the beginning of the novel, Frenchie is broken and tired from evading capture from the recruiters and finds solace amidst the vast night sky and the warmth of the fire. Allusions to ancestors emit from this reverent experience — the bleached skeleton is in reference to the Indigenous Creator but also the implication of the bones and remains of ancestors lie within the land on a physical and spiritual level. While he may be alone in the first leg of his travels, there is hope and healing to find within the territory he rests within. This passage also refers to Frenchie’s spiritual understanding of self, he effortlessly ties meaning into his current circumstances and the larger scope of what exists in the world and universe. This is the first significant reference to Frenchie’s Indigenous spirituality and it allows the reader to recognize the beliefs that Frenchie embodies early in the story.
Lauren also finds a rare moment of reflection while gazing at the night sky and the stars, in the first chapter of Parable of the Sower, “I lie there, looking up at the stars. I pick out some of the constellations and name the stars that make them up. I’ve learned them from an astronomy book that belonged to my father’s mother” (Butler 5). Later in this chapter, Lauren speaks with her step-mother who talks about the light caused by cities and Lauren affirms her preference for the light from stars. This chapter introduces Lauren as someone with a passion for science and reading, who is keen to exercise her self-educated knowledge when given the opportunity. It’s also a first glance of the kind of tone and practicality Lauren has with her thoughts, she is not wistful or pensive but instead curious and information seeking.
Lauren independently seeks knowledge by reading books, there is no obligation or external pressures placed upon her by family or by the education system (Butler 57). Frenchie’s environment does not afford opportunities to read, he is constantly travelling by foot and makes no mention of carrying books, so it is not discernible what his formalized academic capacity is. However, by the time Frenchie meets Miig and his travelling companions, it becomes clear that his education is experiential and observational — taught through on-the-land practice and through oral storytelling, specifically by Miig’s telling of Story (Dimaline 23). Story is a methodology that Miig uses to share history, traditions and culture practice and it provides a space for the Indigenous youth to find meaning in their cultural self in the present. Story is comparable to Lauren’s creation of the spiritual philosophy of EarthSeed, which she works on throughout Parable of the Sower as a way to imagine a way of living that is empathetic, connected and prepared for change (Butler 26). Lauren explores freedom from the oppressive system she lives within by creating a new ideological framework, which is similar to how Frenchie finds strength by learning more about the survivance of Indigenous people through the telling of Story and how this informs his present circumstances.
Lauren’s scene regarding star gazing also subtly alludes to the ultimate objective that Lauren wishes to seek with her philosophy of EarthSeed: “...the Destiny of EarthSeed is to take root among the stars” (76). The meaning behind this passage from EarthSeed is to envision a way to bring humanity together, to better understand the connectedness of societies in relationship to earth and to recognize that this may require society leaving earth to establish colonies or new settlement on other planets. In looking at the stars and constellations above, Lauren does not see ancestors like Frenchie does or an attachment to the physical territory, instead she imagines a way out of her lived circumstances and the possibility of something new. These stars call on a future direction for both characters, for Frenchie it’s a beckoning and connectedness to his ancestors and what that means for his future, it’s a reminder that his place is here (on the land); for Lauren, it’s a signal for where she wishes to go with her future, both ideologically and physically, it’s the possibility that her place is there (among stars).
DRAWN TO FIRE: For Wisdom and Change
Fire holds an enigmatic presence in both novels, its purpose and meaning fluctuates depending on whether it is man-made or a naturally occurring element. Fire can be controlled but it can also be unwieldy; it is a source of both comfort and fear; change can be found in fire but it requires destruction. Symbolically, it indicates wisdom and knowledge sharing in The Marrow Thieves, as a source of communal learning through Miig’s telling of Story. In Parable of the Sower, fire brings destruction but it also causes change — something that Lauren both struggles with and acknowledges as the only consistency of life in her development of EarthSeed.
In The Marrow Thieves, fire is relied upon as a nightly ritual for warmth and comfort but also as a method to bring people together, it is a place to rest and to learn from Miig’s iterations of Story. The importance and value of healing around a fire is reiterated by Dimaline who titled the second chapter, The Fire. This portion of the book focuses on Miig’s telling of Story and makes little reference to fire, besides it being the place to gather, listen and learn. One can conclude that for Frenchie, creating a fire is a crucial place for knowledge sharing, cultural learning and familial connection — it’s how Frenchie and the other younger travelers connect to the broader fabric of Indigenous resilience. Additionally, references to culture and ancestors can be seen in the fire. Throughout the novel, there is no shortage of descriptions that liken it to dancing, jigging or celebratory movement: “The fire made the shadows of her fingers into a huddle of people against the trees. Old Minerva watched the new shadow people, slowly clapping her hands at their firelight jigging.” (Dimaline 33) The fire personified contains a form of spirit of shadow people that is compelling enough for Elder Minerva to witness in delight.
In Parable of the Sower, fire is deemed as reckless and something to fear, at the beginning of the novel, Lauren dreams of being swallowed by an unexpected fire: “The wall before me is burning. Fire has sprung from nowhere, has eaten in through the wall, has begun to reach towards me, reach for me. The fire spreads. I drift into it. It blazes around me” (Butler 4). This passage alludes to the arson that later destroy the community of Robledo — the wall eaten through by flames refers to the gate of the community being destroyed and resulting in pyro addicts setting the neighborhood on fire (153-4). Pyro addicts are drug users who receive sexual gratification by watching things burn, these characters or subgroup represent a level of depravity that society has reached but it also may be considered an allusion to how the ideologies of nihilism and anarchism is used to combat institutional oppression — reckless destruction and dissolution of society versus submission of the current oppressive framework (144). Which causes me to reflect on the later portion of this passage— how Lauren is drawn towards the flames. The fire as a symbol can also be considered a disruption, as a catalyst for change. Lauren is drawn towards something transformative, something that destroys the status quo of the environment she was born and conditioned into. While it’s safe to conclude that the use of fire in Parable of the Sower, is not the welcome source of wisdom and comfort as described in The Marrow Thieves, it is a crucial catalyst for destruction echoing Earthseed’s valuable tenant about change:
“All that you touch
You Change.
All that you Change
Changes you.
The only lasting truth
Is Change.
God Is Change” (Butler 195).
THE LAND I AM: What one can be
I am interested in exploring how freedom of self is found internally through spirituality and philosophical understanding but is also tied to how an individual applies this to living within their physical environment and the land they live within. In the opening chapter of The Marrow Thieves is entitled Frenchie’sComing-toStory and it describes how protagonist, Frenchie, loses his family to the recruiters which results in him continuing his journey upon the land alone. Frenchie pieces together his last moments with his blood family and how he comes to find kinship in Miig and his travelling family. A Coming-toStory is subsequently considered a creation story by Miig, “‘everyone tells their own coming-to story... Everyone’s creation story is their own’” (Dimaline 79). It’s worth reflecting on how a creation story based in Christianity would dictate god’s construction of earth and man within seven days while an Indigenous creation story spans dramatically from Nation to Nation, varying on the geographic area of a First Nation and how this integrates with culture and ancestry. In Frenchie’s creation story, he recollects moments and stories relating to his family before being separated from them and follows advice from his father to “head north to the old lands”, his family trusts the safety of familial territory that is not personally known but is known intergenerationally through his people. This knowledge and shared memory of territory through kinship demonstrates Frenchie’s immersion with land as an Indigenous person.
Frenchie does not regret leaving the urban areas he previously relied on as a home environment, he explains that once there was no longer electrical power, these locations were not safe (Dimaline 5). This is due to an increased risk of people willing to capture Indigenous people for bone marrow extraction, a very real operation that reveals how society accepts the oppression and violent genocide of Indigenous people. Because of this, there is solace and a means for safety that is found by escaping into the land. For Frenchie, there is promise of finding other Indigenous people outside of the urban centres, there is safety of familial territory and there is trust in navigating to places far away from recruiter and settler culture. As Frenchie learns to live upon the land, his perspective and observations begin to see more meaning within the territory he lives within, his will for survivance is also informed by the oral narrative told in “Story: Part Two” (Dimaline 87). In the following chapter, “Back Into the Woods”, Frenchie talks about this after living on the land with his travelling family for an extensive period of time: “There was something beautiful about the way the woods were now. I had no context for a before and after comparison, but I knew that the way things were now could not have existed with so many people and so much scavenging before the wars and the relocations...In this time, in this place, the worlds had gone made with lush and green, throwing vines over old electrical poles and belching up rotten pipelines from the ground” (345).
Frenchie recognizes the returning health of the land due to decreased population, wars and natural resource extraction. He chooses visceral descriptions of the earth sprawling and reclaiming imposed man-made structures and purging previously embedded pipeline and notes restoration of the land becoming greener. Frenchie’s observations of this may reflect his own comfort with living upon the land, he’s able to sense differences, and how nature was regenerating itself within its territory. This healing for the land reflects Frenchie’s personal experiences and knowledge of Indigenous survivance and culture intertwines — there is strength found in the land and in the people when relying on traditional Indigenous knowledge keeping and practice. There is also assurance and strength found in the group he has found and relies upon as family. This consciousness is important, he sees something greater occurring with the land and a beauty in the grittiness of survivance. This recognition reminds me of a text by Leslie Marmon Silko who discusses the dissolution of person and land in Yellow Woman and the Beauty of Spirit: “So long as the human consciousness remains within the hills, canyons, cliffs, and the plans, clouds and sky, the term landscape, as it has entered the English language, is misleading. ‘A portion of territory the eye can comprehend in a single view’ does not correctly describe the relationship between the human being and his or her surroundings. This assumes the viewer is somehow outside or separate from the territory she or he surveys.” (Silko 28)
Silko questions the existence of interior and exterior landscapes both physically and geographically but also how a subject perceives themselves within it. In The Marrow Thieves, this disassociation between human society and the earth is problematic and has resulted in cataclysmic climate change. Silko shares that within Pablo spirituality and understanding one cannot watch the land as a voyeur peering into a ‘landscape’ — which also means, one cannot watch climate change occur as bystander nor can they watch oppressive forces innocently, there is a connection of self within the grander scope of how living beings imprint upon territory. Frenchie finds hope in the forest growing back which allows him to believe that it’s possible to heal from traumatic impacts inflicted upon nature and in many ways, this form of hope is applied to how he believes his new-found travelling family will survive upon the land. In Frenchie’s reflection, he also recognizes over-population as a contributing reason for how climate change occurred which is an important acknowledgement of the weight human society has on the environment and how this creates an imbalance upon the land.
The land in Parable of the Sower is not as familiar to Lauren and is often described as something to fear beyond her gated community of Robledo. Prior to leaving the gated community, Lauren frequently mentions new death counts occurring in places across America as a result of natural disasters, violent storms and the spread of disease via water contamination, all due to the impacts of climate change, “There are over 700 known dead so far. One hurricane. And how many people has it hurt? How many are going to starve later because of destroyed crops?” (Butler 15). Lauren’s matter-of-fact descriptions report the present circumstances she faces in an almost utilitarian manner, it’s rare for her thoughts to deviate past immediate survival and factual evidence and observations of what is occurring around her. It’s only in the writing and reflection found in Earthseed that Lauren is given space from focusing her attention on the immediacy of her situation and provides her with the emotional capacity and freedom to consider this spiritual philosophy as a form of escape from her present circumstances.
There is a particular difference in tone between Lauren and Frenchie that is important to elaborate on. Lauren’s speech is not lavished with expansive details, instead, the reader must surmise depth of emotions through bits and pieces of stories that Lauren mentions throughout the novel. Being in an environment that requires a strong will to survive, it’s almost as if Lauren cannot afford the time and space to lose herself in self-reflection, which may be attributed to compartmentalizing her symptoms of hyper empathy syndrome (Butler 11-12). Contrasting this, Frenchie’s observations, while still tethered to emotions and affixations typical of a teenaged boy, contains moments of seeing depth in his darkest moments. He threads meaning between his subjective experiences, and into the natural environment he travels upon, weaving his impressions and cultural understandings of ancestral lineage and subsequent resilience. In contrast, Lauren does not perceive healing in the land or territory around her and is persistent to escape its present dangers. Lauren’s healing and self-preservation is internal: intellectually, spiritually and psychologically through the ideology of Earthseed and there seems to be a baited patience in manifesting Earthseed into a physical location at Bankhole’s family property (275). “It might be possible to find such an isolated place along the coast, and make a deal with the inhabitants. If there were a few more of us, and if we were better armed, we might provide security in exchange for living room...We might be able to do it — grow our own food, grow ourselves and our neighbours into something brand new. Into Earthseed” 224).
Throughout Parable of the Sorrow, Lauren’s survival and purpose appears to centre on the unification of humanity through common goals to better understand the environment, understand change, and work towards a different societal structure. Earthseed centres humanity, people, and provides metaphorical rationale and musings for readers to consider their relationship to self, to others and to the future. It implores believers to look outward and upward, at how humanity may exist elsewhere, physically beyond earth. There is power and freedom in the ideas Lauren expresses in Earthseed which allows her to venture into a psychological landscape that surpasses the oppression that locks her into the current environment. Recalling Silko’s quote, Lauren succeeds in seeing humanity as a connected landscape— one that an individual cannot extract themselves from — but she has not fully externalized the physical application of her Earthseed ideology, it remains as hopes and dreams.
In conclusion of this exploration, I’ve come to witness that the description of the land in both stories reflects health in the people and can be used to highlight differences in spirituality and survival for Frenchie and Lauren. How Frenchie comes to know himself is distinctly tied to the land, whether it be overcoming challenges to learn survival skills or witnessing the natural beauty around him. With knowledge and wisdom gained from fire, Frenchie grows into himself with the support of his travelling relatives. Dimaline draws connections to the health and resilience of the land reflected in Indigenous people overcoming the oppressive environment they live within by the practice and revitalization of Indigenous ways of being. At the end of The Marrow Thieves, Frenchie finds community in a large group of Indigenous people living within caves and a hidden valley, this shelter provides them the opportunity to practice traditional culture, language and ways of being — this knowledge and place of practice is held quite literally within the land (Dimaline 166-68). In Parable of the Sower, the land is often described in a state of distress and trauma, the impacts of climate change have scourged the territory that Lauren lives within and she looks elsewhere for a hopeful future state. It can be considered how Lauren’s Earthseed requires a disassociation from the earth to help embolden ideas regarding leaving the planet and that any settlement required as Earthseed is a vehicle or process for future settlement in space. The end of Parable of the Sower, her group is left with the realization that Bankhole’s family has been unexpectedly murdered some time ago which obstructs the ease of a happy ending found in reaching their destination. In response to this, Lauren leans into Earthseed, states ‘God is Change’ and embraces the work required to establish the next steps of her journey — Lauren plants acorn trees, the first real immersion of her philosophy with the physical environment (Butler 328). It’s in this struggle, this friction, to find connectedness that both characters can meditate through varying means, such as healing around a fire, digging deeper into a spiritual philosophy or finding direction and hope by gazing above at the stars which help the characters embody the strength needed to enact change. In consideration of this reflection, there is a particular moment with Frenchie that I wish to conclude on, In a moment of adversity Frenchie constellates spiritual strength in his own physical and celestial body, understanding his existence contains worlds and generations of ancestral knowledge and resilience: “I got to my knees, pressed my fingers so tight the skin around my bitten nails ached, and prayed. I needed an answer. I prayed and prayed, closing my eyes so tight I saw constellations on my eyelids. And I listened for an answer.” (199)
Works Cited
Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Sower. New York: Warner Books, 1995. Print.
Dimaline, Cherie. The Marrow Thieves. Toronto: Dancing Cat Books, 2017. Print.
Silko, Leslie M. Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit: Essays on Native American Life Today. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997. Print. 16
