Parable of the Talents

Throughout the novel, writing is an important motif, as characters write to spread their beliefs, process their emotions, and endure terrible situations. Both Lauren and Marcus spread their ideas through written texts that can be disseminated to their followers; a key turning point in the popularity of Earthseed occurs when Lauren disseminates her writings over the net so that more people can access them. After these writings are made available, Lauren acknowledges that “I’ve begun to reach people” (390). Even when Lauren teaches basic literacy, she uses simplified Earthseed texts to subtly disseminate the teachings.

In addition to using writing to publicly share beliefs and values, characters also keep records such as journals and write more private documents as ways of processing and coping. Larkin notes that “I suspect that somehow it helped her just to do it [writing], whether she was able to keep it or not” (236). Lauren writes journals during the horrible experience of being enslaved in Camp Christian as a way to maintain her composure, and both Lauren and Larkin express a need to write when surprising or significant events occur in their lives. For example, after Lauren unexpectedly reunites with her brother Marcus, she writes about the event in her journal and notes that “writing about it helps. Somehow, writing always helps” (90). Because of the precarity of the dystopian world in which Butler sets her novel, many characters cannot be vulnerable and openly share their emotions. Writing gives them a place to work through what is going inside themselves with a lower risk. By telling their stories and potentially sharing them with others, characters can hang on to a key aspect of their agency and humanity.

Dreamasks are a form of artificial intelligence device that allow individuals to experience immersive scenarios. They become popular among more wealthy and privileged individuals as a form of escapism and nostalgia. Dreamasks symbolize how entertainment can numb individuals to catastrophes happening around them and allow authoritarian regimes to maintain control. Many individuals retreat into Dreamask scenarios, which encourages them not to pay attention to what is happening around them. Len describes how her mother retreated into a particularly sophisticated version known as a “v-room”: “her own private fantasy universe. That room could take her anywhere, so why should she ever come out?” (342). Dreamasks not only encourage political disengagement but can also be used to promote specific ideological agendas.

However, Dreamasks also symbolize the resilience of human curiosity and creativity. While they ostensibly promote a rigid set of traditional values, the popularity of the character Asha Vere shows that people never fully lose their desire for more diverse stories and representations. As Larkin notes, “there was such a hunger for interesting female characters that, silly as the Asha Vere stories were, people liked them” (218). The ostensibly conservative scenarios are also quickly modified to serve other agendas, such that Larkin recalls, “I had my first pleasurable sexual experience wearing a deliberately mislabeled Dreamask” (276). By the time Larkin is an adult, Dreamasks are no longer strictly tools to maintain Christian America, and she ends up writing scenarios for them. This transition in the function of Dreamasks over time symbolizes how human creativity and desire for free expression ultimately tends to triumph over repression and censorship.