Remaining Questions

It is no surprise that the ending of the book leaves many things unanswered. The Parable books were supposed to be a series but ultimately were unfinished by the time of Octavia Butler's death. Luckily, some drafts and notes that were held in a private library have been read and posted about on the internet! Here are some questions that I will attempt to answer.

What happens in the second book? Basically, Lauren's daughter (living in the Earthseed community) reads her mother's journals. And by the way (SPOILER!!), a ship to "Mars" is actually launched at the end.

What was the third book going to be about? Butler apparently wrote many beginnings to this book staring a new female main character living on the new planet (called Bow). It's also pretty grim.

In fact: Butler had plans to write three MORE books in this series. You can read more about this in an article here (fair warning, it is a decently long post).

What was the point of hyperempathy syndrome? I do think it has a bit more importance when Lauren meets other "sharers" and realizes it may get passed down to offspring. However, I'm not sure if Butler had plans to further this idea in the subsequent books. Apparently on her working manuscript of Parable of the Sower she wrote notes such as "More Sharing; More Sickness; More Death; More Racism; More Hispanics; More High Tech." Whether these ideas made it into the book, I don't know.

How did (almost) the whole party manage to survive the whole journey while literally every other settlement got burned to the ground? See above notes from Butler. Also, I'm sure she had many more depressing and bleak deaths in store for the next few books. She needed to end at least somewhat with hope.

Why did it end so abruptly? As a standalone book I think Parable of the Sower works up until the last chapter or so. The ending clearly sets up for something and Butler leaves threads unwoven which creates a sense of dissatisfaction in the reader. In the context of a six-book series, PotS makes a lot more sense. Lauren is supposed to be compelling, but not permanent because the narrative reaches much larger than her and the group (so logistically they need to survive and Butler doesn't care when or how they end up dying). Additionally, PotS sets the groundwork of ideals and themes moving forward instead of concluding its own thoughts. If I were Butler writing this novel, I think I would be realizing how big and unsolvable the problems and premise I just laid forward are. After such a conclusion, trying to wrap things up in a couple chapters is pretty much impossible.

So what can we get from this book when the series isn't finished? It's still a fairly enjoyable read. The entire book itself is more of a 300+ page question that Butler has posed to us. We feel uneasy because she has not answered everything, but that is totally the point. PotS isn't suggesting how to fix things because if it were that simple, Lauren would not have tried to create her own religion and literally leave Earth behind. Instead, maybe we should focus on what went wrong in her world, and how we can prevent ourselves from going down the same path.