Dystopian Heroines

When one reads Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower, Frederic Jameson’s “Progress Versus Utopia; or, Can We Imagine the Future?”, Jayna Brown’s “The Human Project: Biological Dystopia and the Utopian Politics of Race in Children of Men and 28 Days Later”, and sees Children of Men the ideas about dystopia presented in each meld and become one dark vision of decay, disease, and agony. In Parable of the Sower, Butler introduces the reader to a dark future where people live in gated communities for increased security, not just privacy. Butler’s dystopian society shocks the reader into accepting a world devoid of what we know as normal, where the fear of fire fills everyone’s mind.

The idea that corporate America has led to the downfall of America is evident in Frederic Jameson’s essay. Jameson says that capitalism prepared us for an individualistic future, one where people only care for themselves. This is evident in the Parable of the Sower because it is no longer human instinct to automatically trust people, instead everyone is out for him/ herself, and the setting up of unified communities and large traveling groups is very difficult. Jameson is not surprised by American dystopian fiction because people know that the present cannot last forever, so our ideal society will eventually crash, becoming corrupt, with a government that doesn’t work.

Butler introduces her heroine, Lauren Olamina, a teenage African American girl who is constantly preparing for the world to crumble, as a prayer of hope for the world. Lauren is a sharer; she can share other people’s emotions. Lauren is a neo-prophet who is evolving a religion called Earthseed where “G-d is Change,” and everyone shapes G-d. She says that she “[b]egan to discover [Earthseed] and understand it,” meaning Earthseed comes from a higher authority, and not her imagination. After Lauren’s community is destroyed, she takes off for the north with two other refugees.

Lauren eventually becomes the heart of the group, adopting four ex-slaves. In a scene after Allie’s sister Jill dies, Lauren shows her compassion and strength by hugging Allie who wants to be alone and away from the group. Her compassion may be what saves her companions because she is what ties them all together and without her, they would likely be dead on the highways.

I find it interesting that Butler had a young black woman become the leader of the society because until last year, the leaders of American society have always been older white men. However, Lauren being a sharer might actually be what makes her a good leader. She can feel how others feel and is more trusting than her companions. Lauren has the strength to survive that characters like Robert Neville in I am Legend have, she never gives up hope and believes in the possibility of the return of American success, even though she never experienced it.

In part of the novel, Lauren says that she thinks that Travis, Natividad, and Dominic are “natural allies—the mixed couple and the mixed group.” This suggests a world that never went through the radical racial empowering of the mid to late 20^th Century. There is still a racial divider, yet it is skewed by the predicament that Butler presents. In terms of race, Butler depicts the “pyro” druggies as mainly being rich white kids, while modern society tends to see it as a reversal of roles between who is involved in drugs, and who isn’t. In the last part of the novel, Bankole, a member of their group, makes a reference of society going back two hundred years. There are allusions to the Underground Railroad by once again having a group, predominately of colored people travel North to Freedom. As the group continues, they become a brigade of diversity. The group shows a united world, in the fact that they all have different backgrounds, yet they work together to survive. Butler seems to create the visionary racial dream of the 20^th century in her group, but it isn’t race that is important, it is the bonds that form and the stability in the group.

The idea of an African girl becoming the source of hope is also evident in the movie Children of Men. In the movie, Kee is the first person on Earth to become pregnant in this dystopian society in years. In the movie, as Butler’s novel, Kee is also trying to get to safety, the Human Project, via Theo, an ex-member of the Fishes, the resistance movement. In 28 Days Later, Selina, a strong African woman is also the leader and bringer of moral strength. Like in Children of Men, the people have been stripped of a government, and a black woman is the source of hope. While Lauren and Selina are smart and resourceful, Kee is helpless. She is the symbol of hope because she is still able to reproduce, unlike others.

Jayna Brown raises the idea that Kee is the savior because African women are symbolically related to sexuality and animals. However, Brown says that Kee becomes the savior because of what her body can do and not because of her own spirit. Brown also raises the point of women as solely sexual beings when discussing 28 Days Later where the military wants to use the surviving women as tools for breeding, and nothing else. However, I disagree with this statement. I think Kee’s color has more to do with the characteristic strength associated with black women. While this may seem stereotypical, the heroines of the novel and two movies all show the characteristic strength and willingness to endure and believe. While Kee may be the weakest of the three women, she is still strong and willing to survive. In both cases, the color of the skin isn’t the key factor in why they are the hope. It is the job that they set out to do. Ironically, all three women are outsiders, not due to the color of their skin, but due to the way they interact with society, being a sharer, pregnant, or a woman with only a will to survive. These women show that people can overcome their hardships and that we can and will survive in the most unlikely dystopian societies.