Parable of the Sower by NL

ninalake10 — 2018-02-23 13:26:02 UTC

Juxtaposition
Past/Present/Futuristic
Inner wall/ Outside
Characters - Lauren and her Dad
Ideologies -Teachings
Setting
Keith's Character

ninalake10 — 2018-02-23 13:30:58 UTC

Symbolism
Fire is symbolic of destruction.
Fire drove them out of the society

The Wall
Safe Haven
A clear divide between order and chaos
privileged/ impoverished
order/ lawlessness

Suspense

ninalake10 — 2018-02-23 13:55:54 UTC

The writer's constant use of dialogue throughout the novel.

Setting

ninalake10 — 2018-02-23 13:56:38 UTC

Imagery
Dystopia and apocalyptic environments - Descriptive features that represents these two states

Dualism/Duality

ninalake10 — 2018-02-23 14:11:33 UTC

It divides, it is either one thing or the other.
Black or white
good or evil
right or wrong
It does this through judgement, separating things and creating conflict.

Thematic Issues

ninalake10 — 2018-02-23 14:19:33 UTC

Religion
Inclusion vs exclusion
destruction
Rebirth
Change

Difference, adaptability, change, and survival are thematic threads co nnecting Butler's books as tightly as a pattern.

Intertextuality

ninalake10 — 2018-02-23 14:26:54 UTC

Harriet Tubman

After Lauren’s family is murdered, she has to create a new family for herself. So, she gathers together a prototypical new community from a crosssection of people of different races, ages, genders and classes. Then in a kind of Harriet Tubman-like Underground Railroad, she leads the group to northern California.

Narrative Style and Structure

ninalake10 — 2018-02-23 14:29:14 UTC

*Journal entries

Dystopian fiction is regularly classified broadly as science fiction and a sub-genre of speculative fiction because dystopian fictions are frequently set in a future projected virtual time and space involving technological novelties.

Butler’s troubling dystopia, written in the form of Laurens’ memoir entries, is at once an adventure story and a challenging exploration of some pessimistic trends in American society. Madhu Dubey writes that the dystopia presented in the Parable of the Sower is a close extrapolation of current trends, that it produces an alarming familiarity rather than rupture.

Butler used dystopia efficiently to express her ideas of a frightening future in all her novels.Butler’s dystopian novels are different in one way from the dystopian works of other writers as she tries to bring in a ray of hope in all her works. They are a combination of utopia and dystopia. In the midst of the narration, there exists a very frightening atmosphere; still the seeds of hope at the same time.

Lauren’s vision of Acorn, a self-reliant community built from scratch on a few hundred acres of farmland, in which the new, enlightened religion of Earthseed is to take root, is a utopian vision. It is still in the future, and there is no guarantee that it will succeed, but the verses from Lauren’s “Earthseed: The Books of the Living,” which appear as epigraphs to each chapter, are constant reminders that within this miserable dystopia a utopia is ready to spring up.

LAUREN OLAMINA

ninalake10 — 2019-02-08 01:52:05 UTC

In an interview with Rebecca O. Johnson, published in Sojourner: The Women’s Forum, Butler commented on her character Lauren, but in a way that some readers might find surprising. She says she found it hard to write the book “because I knew I would have to write about a character who was power-seeking. I didn’t realize how much I had absorbed the notion that power-seekers were evil.” Butler thus found herself out of sympathy with her main character. She got around the problem by deciding that “power can be a tool. . . . [M]oney, knowledge, religion, whatever is common among human beings, can be beneficial or harmful to the individual and is judged by how it is being used.”

ninalake10 — 2019-02-08 02:07:02 UTC

EITHER

“The exploration of conflict hinges on the writer’s choice of narrative strategies.”

With reference to ONE British, American, OR Postcolonial work of fiction which you have studied, discuss the extent to which you agree with this statement.

Total 40 marks

“Writers carefully craft their narratives to explore social ills.”

With reference to ONE British, American, OR Postcolonial work of fiction which you have studied, discuss the extent to which you agree with this statement.

Total 40 marks

ninalake10 — 2019-02-14 01:42:58 UTC

Dystopias: Definition and Characteristics

celena_espinoza — 2019-02-23 16:54:22 UTC

Utopia: A place, state, or condition that is ideally perfect in respect of politics, laws, customs, and conditions.

Dystopia: A futuristic, imagined universe in which oppressive societal control and the illusion of a perfect society are maintained through corporate, bureaucratic, technological, moral, or totalitarian control. Dystopias, through an exaggerated worst-case scenario, make a criticism about a current trend, societal norm, or political system.

Characteristics of a Dystopian Society:

• Propaganda is used to control the citizens of society.

• Information, independent thought, and freedom are restricted.

• A figurehead or concept is worshipped by the citizens of the society.

• Citizens are perceived to be under constant surveillance.

• Citizens have a fear of the outside world.

• Citizens live in a dehumanized state.

• The natural world is banished and distrusted.

• Citizens conform to uniform expectations. Individuality and dissent are bad.

• The society is an illusion of a perfect utopian world.

Types of Dystopian Controls

Most dystopian works present a world in which oppressive societal control and the illusion of a perfect society are maintained through one or more of the following types of controls:

Corporate control:
One or more large corporations control society through products, advertising, and/or the media. Examples include Minority Report and Running Man.

Bureaucratic control:
Society is controlled by a mindless bureaucracy through a tangle of red tape, relentless regulations, and incompetent government officials. Examples in film include Brazil.

Technological control:
Society is controlled by technology—through computers, robots, and/or scientific means. Examples include The Matrix, The Terminator, and I, Robot.

Philosophical/religious control:
Society is controlled by philosophical or religious ideology often enforced through a dictatorship or theocratic government.

The Dystopian Protagonist
• often feels trapped and is struggling to escape.

• questions the existing social and political systems.

• believes or feels that something is terribly wrong with the society in which he or she lives.

• helps the audience recognizes the negative aspects of the dystopian world through his or her perspective.

kristalanchortassoo — 2019-02-25 22:27:41 UTC

Critique on it

kristalanchortassoo — 2019-02-25 22:31:20 UTC

2021-03-11 19:44:12 UTC