The Parable of the Sower Chapters 13-16

Chapters 13-16

The priest who had performed Lauren's baptism performed her father's funeral, for they had been forced to conclude that he had died. Nothing would have kept him away from his family for so long if he had been alive. The insurance company refused to give out the insured sum since his body had not been found, and it was said they could hold it for up to 7 years. Joanne has moved to Olivar with the rest of the Garfields. An arbor truck had come to pick them up, and one of the guards had been a black man. Cory saw that as a sign that Olivar might be more accepting of other races. Lauren worries about the condition of her family, she tells Curtis so when they sneak away into their private corner of the neighborhood. They make love, and Curtis tells her that he wants to travel north and that she should marry him. Lauren tells Curtis that she wants to marry him and that she is happy he doesn't want to live in the neighborhood. However, they decide to wait until Lauren's family has gotten back on their feet, and until Lauren has worked up the courage to tell Curtis about her 'sharing' and Earthseed.

The Payne and Parrish house is burned, and while the neighbors are trying to put out the fire, robbers break into some of the houses including the Olamina house. All of the occupants of the Parrish and Payne are killed in the fire, all but old Wardell Parrish. The thieves don't manage to steal much from the Olamina house, they get none of the money that they had hidden away, none but a small sum of money stored in the kitchen for emergencies.

Cory manages to secure a part of her husband's old job at the college by begging, pleading, and cajoling everyone she thought could help. Lauren takes over the school with the help of some of the neighbors. One night Lauren wakes up to the smell of fire, she rouses everyone in the house, and they all run out to find the neighborhood overrun with people. The sound of gunfire erupts from everywhere. Cory leads the boys out into the darkness, while Lauren runs back to put on some clothes and get her emergency pack. The gates to the neighborhood lie open and destroyed, the pyro addicts had used an old truck to break the gates. Now, one of them attacks Lauren. She had just picked up a gun from the body of a dead neighbor, and she uses it to kill her attacker as he pounces on her. Feeling a piercing pain shoot through her abdomen, Lauren shoots him a second to ensure the kill. She lies there awhile letting the pain of her attacker work through her as he dies, she stumbles up and runs North, towards the hills. She stops in a dark street and considers turning back to find Cory and her brothers, but decides that she needs to hide for tonight. Lauren finds rubble of a house, with a mostly intact garage wall, and spends the night lying hidden behind the rubble. The night is long and terrible, Lauren jumps at the smallest noise, and when morning lights the sky, Lauren decides that she needs to return to the neighborhood. She needs to go and see once, if anyone had survived, it was a danger to be sure but she needed to take it.

The neighborhood is full of the homeless poor, all of the houses in the compound have been burned to some degree, some more than others. Bodies lie everywhere, and the homeless scavenge from the houses and the bodies all the same. Lauren looks quite grimy as well as homeless, and the visible gun at her side keeps most people away. She makes her way towards her home and on its porch finds a woman, a pyro addict, lying dead. As she moves towards the addict, another woman approaches and tries to shield the painted body from being scavenged, claiming that she had died for them.

Her house is full of people, digging through her family's belongings. A lot of it has been burned, and what remains is being riffled through. Lauren scavenges the house with them and takes whatever useful things she can find. She nearly loses all her composure as she sees the state of Cory's once carefully tended garden. The trees have been stripped of fruit, and the small crops have been trampled. In the pretense of retrieving some fruit, Lauren recovers the packet of money her father had buried in the garden. She then leaves, unwilling to remain any longer in that place of death and ruin, but she can't be seen to run or hurry away. She is forced to look at the corpses that line the road as she walks out. She sees many of the neighborhood girls dead and marked by obvious signs of rape. As she exits the neighborhood and makes her way up a street, she hears her name. Harry Baiter, and Zahra Moss, are walking up to her. Harry looks like he has been beaten while Zahra looks a little better, but she isn't carrying her baby. They sit down on the curb and Zahra says that everyone is dead, Lauren asks about her mother and brother. Zahra regretfully tells her that she was forced to watch Lauren's family being killed as the men raped her. Lauren stands up, overcome with a desire to go back to her little garage, when Harry follows her example, he throws up and tells them that he is feeling unwell. Zahra tells Lauren that Harry had rescued her from the men that were raping her, he had gotten her away but they had hurt him. Slowly they manage to reach the garage and rest.

Harry had sustained a concussion when he had rescued Zahra from the painted men. Zahra had watched as one of those addicts had mowed down people with a gun, he had shot her baby in her arms. Then another painted attacker had taken the baby and thrown her into a burning house. They had then taken her down, but Harry had soon arrived, he had rescued her from the men, and had been severely beaten in the process. Lauren and Zahra take turns keeping watch and checking on Harry, the day of Sunday they spend on recovery. Lauren reveals to Zahra that she had seen the dead body of her husband, Peter Moss, as she had exited the neighborhood. Zahra is anguished at the loss of her husband and tells her how Peter Moss had bought Zahra at 15 from her homeless mother. He had never hit her and had made sure she was fed, she had loved him in her way. Lauren also tells Harry about seeing the dead bodies of his relatives, and Harry retreats into himself to process his loss.

They later begin discussing their plans, none of them have any relatives that still have a home. Harry has the option of going to Olivar, given his skin color, and his connection with the Garfields. He could easily find a place in their community. Harry doesn't want to go to Olivar, instead, he also wants to head North like Lauren. Zahra scoffs at their plans and tells them that they are children who have never experienced life on the streets. She points out that an interracial couple would attract hatred, even if Lauren were to cut her hair and pretend to be a man, which she intended to do. Zahra and Lauren could then be the couple traveling with a white friend, Lauren concludes, nudging Zahra to accompany them. Lauren expresses to them the only goal that she has in her mind, and that is to survive. Once Harry has recovered, Zahra leads them to a store complex, the biggest and most secure in Robledo. They go in turns and make purchases for their journey north, Harry has a little money but Zahra doesn't have any. Lauren has more money than she has ever carried before in her life, but she understands that there is no such thing as enough money for survival outside walls. They head west on the freeway and find a large number of people walking west. The freeways have peddlers, prostitutes, and even thieves living on their edges. Everyone appears grimy, and only a few people are armed, they watch as a chubby man eating nuts is suddenly robbed by young children, dooming him to a slow death without supplies. They walk throughout the day, stopping rarely and drinking water sparingly. They decide to set up a campfire before taking turns to sleep, and their fire attracts a lot of poor and young helpless people. Zahra and Lauren are adamant in refusing them all, but Harry is kind and trusting. He wants to help the people that come to their fire, Lauren and Zahra then try to explain to Harry why they couldn't afford to be so trusting. Lauren warns him that even a small injury outside could mean death by infection, and Zahra cautions him with her explanation. She tells them that she used to steal from travelers by using her innocent appearance as a child. Harry remains reluctant to adopt such a harsh approach and sarcastically comments about Lauren's ability to talk like a man. Lauren nearly hits him, she warns him to always be careful when speaking about her gender, as by revealing Lauren's real gender, Harry weakened his group.

A particularly hostile pair of men stand close to the fire, they eye the beautiful Zahra and finger their knives, Lauren stands upright and pulls her gun on the men. They are surprised by the weapon and more by Lauren's seeming willingness to use it, and so they run away. Harry realizes the danger that lurks, and Lauren realizes that Harry likes Zahra. Lauren takes the first watch, Zahra sits close by her and watches as Lauren writes in her diary. She asks Laura to teach her how to read and write, Lauren is extremely willing to teach her. Zahra dozes off to sleep, and Lauren hears many things in the dark environs of the hills, the exchange of fire, people running through the hills, and sees silhouettes of dogs roaming on the ridges. She finishes her watch and wakes Harry.

She wakes to a shout, and a series of single-shot sounds, a body then falls on her knocking the air out of her. The man on her is dead, but another is battling Harry, and Harry seems to be losing. Lauren takes a large rock and caves in the man's head, she goes down with him and falls unconscious. She wakes with Zahra's touch and discovers the intruder incapacitated but alive, seeing him as a threat she asks Harry for the gun so that she can kill him, but Harry doesn't comply. Still dazed from her sharing the pain of the rock hit, Lauren pulls out her knife and slits the man's throat. She tells them to strip the bodies of valuables and to dispose of the bodies. They relocate their camp, but Lauren understands that she has some explaining to do and that she may have pushed them away from her by killing the man. She decides to reveal to them her disease of sharing and tells them of her mother's drug abuse. Zahra comforts her by telling her of all the terrible deformities she had witnessed in children born to addicts and assures Lauren that she is normal. Lauren is overcome with her acceptance, but Harry remains cold. He is displeased with the callousness bordering on cruelty that Lauren has displayed, he worries that she would kill people simply to stop her pain. Lauren does her best to explain herself to him, but he finally demands that she had read something from her diary. He wants to know the real her and thinks that the private things she writes down would help him understand her. Lauren gladly agrees and lets him read the first verse of the Book of the Living.

“All that you touch
You Change.
All that you Change
Changes you.
The only lasting truth
Is Change.
God
Is Change.”
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Analysis

Before the destruction of the cul-de-sac, we see heavy foreshadowing in the preceding sections. The number of break-ins increase and the Parrish-Payne house is burned down leaving a lone survivor, Wardell Parrish. This foreshadows the destruction of Lauren's home and that she will be the only survivor of the tragedy. One of the major themes in the novel is that of change and adaptation, and none of the characters embody that as much as Lauren. Her religion is built around the inevitability of change, and it encourages the practitioner to be prepared for it. Lauren's readiness is demonstrated when both Zahra and Harry have made it out of the burning neighborhood, but unlike Lauren, they have no supplies. Lauren had prepared for the eventuality of an attack early in the book and so can survive the attack as well as its aftermath.

Fire is a recurring destructive force in the novel, wielded by a frenzied and nihilistic group called the pyro addicts. Early on in the novel, Keith, a merciless criminal, had himself been perplexed at the addicts' fascination with fire. When Lauren moves towards the body of one of the pyro addicts, she is stopped by one of the homeless scavengers. The scavenger claims that the woman had 'died for us', reminiscent of the bible and Jesus who died for the sins of humanity. There are references to the cult of the pyro's throughout the novel, but the characters never learn the agenda or the purpose of this seeming cult. This dearth of information is common, the infrastructure of this dystopian world is broken, and the characters have to make decisions without having access to information. Lauren and her family have to conclude that their father is dead because they are unable to recover any information about him.

Another important theme in the novel is that of exploitation, throughout the book, we come across many important institutions of civil life, but all of them have been severely corrupted in this dystopian world. The police don't prevent crime, but instead, extort people for money and rob them. Insurance companies collect a premium but refuse to give out the money when Lauren's father disappears. In the world of the Parable of the Sower, all characters, besides those that are included in the Earthseed community, exploit the weak with whatever power they possess.