On Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Talents

On Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Talents

Parable of the Talents brings to mind the hypocrisy of the religious colonizer.  Religion, for many, becomes a source of morality and the scope through which others are judged.  Ironically, religion also becomes the justification for imposition on others and the use of horrible, terroristic acts in order to artificially persuade others into granting room for or even share belief.  Likewise, religion acts to grant an artificial superiority, authority, and entitlement which hold no accountability or introspective evaluation.  This arrogance can lead one to justify the rape, torture, obscenity, enslavement, psychological breaking, judgment, lies, blame shifting, and other various horrendous behaviors seen in Parable of the Talents, the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, and in religion (The Crusades, witch hunts, The Spanish Inquisition,  etc.).  Long term exposure to such psychopathy leads to an acceptance and as the mind breaks it seeks to find and justifies any action that deflects the psychopath onto another with the victims continuing the methods inflicted by the psychopath.  Thus loyalty is broken and friend betrays friend, each seeking favor through exposure of the “indiscretion” of another, and the psychopath triggers the ensnared, pitting them against each other and delighting in their terror and punishment.  The only “escape” from such treatment is to leave completely, which is what the persecuted Puritans, Shakers, Amish, Mennonite, and Quakers did; although they were unable to shake the deep seated shame that reinforces strict religious belief.  

Furthermore, religion functions as an unfortunate tool for the manipulation of the uneducated, weak minded, and those in need of hope.  Many of the “teachers” were in fact regular people who, emboldened by power and authority, finally had an “explanation” for the hardships that they faced as well as a plan of action to correct their woes.  This action spirals into the abuse of power, the abuse of those that they have been told are the cause of their woes.  The scapegoat is tormented and projected upon, as the manipulated masses fall further into depravity, drunk on power and the frustrations supporting a false cure that bears no fruit.  The empowered individual begins to supplicant real change with the ability to abuse and terrorize, equating the right to harm others with payment for societal inflicted pain.  Likewise, the mind is able to accept and justify atrocious acts because the assimilated individual has their own assigned scapegoat which society affirms, and thus an interdependent ecosystem of sustainment in terror through terror is maintained at the cost of a vulnerable class whom all press to the bottom of the pecking order, lest they lose their own spot.  In imitation of the real world, the demagogue weaponizes exploits societal problems through false agency and scapegoating which slows true progress.

Lastly we see Lauren’s brother Mark, an individual who suffered severe abuses and sought to reestablish his self esteem by rising through preaching and rising through the ranks in the church.  Upon rescue from slavery by Lauren he is brought to Acorn where he is nursed back to health, yet in spite of the kindness, safety, and welcome that he is shown he is unable to tolerate the community members’ right to not believe in the Christian God.  He is unable to live in peace with those who would give him peaceful sanctuary even though they did not require that he join or believe as they did; he was merely asked to respect the community beliefs.  Mark strictly upholds the Christian standard in spite of the fact that he is gay, a lifestyle that the doctrine that he supports condemns.  The indoctrination was so extreme that Mark refused to believe his sister in spite of overwhelming evidence of the church’s wrong doing and the fact that he had those same injustices levied against him, which is the very thing that broke him.  Additionally, Mark lied to Lauren and kept her daughter from her while cultivating his own relationship with her although he knew that Asha was kidnapped, and that Lauren had gone to extreme lengths to look for her daughter.  This hypocrisy evidences a deep brokenness; a brokenness born in a rigid inability to change, which is the antithesis of the earth seed message.  At the end of it all, Lauren’s relationship with Asha was irrevocably damaged through the actions of her brother Mark, a brother whom she personally saved and restored to health.  This is reflective of the Christian church that receives resources from its members, yet when church members and society at large are left to fend for themselves, with the church making meager demonstrations of help while hoarding large cashes of wealth and resource for its own edification.  The church judges those who come, defining who is holy and worthy of salvation based on the presentation of its accepted image with no self reflection, much like Mark.  Subsequently, Mark acts as a parallel for the supposedly acceptable, loving, non-fanatical church, which gives the image of community yet it is still damaging.