Furthermore, being an African American girl, both her gender and race force her into enduring greater hardships than those a Caucasian male would encounter, so she is better equipped to relate to those who suffer. Author Gregory Smithsimon points out that “race makes power visible by assigning it to physical bodies” (2018). Therefore, Lauren is able to take in the world around her with a vision that questions everything around her and to not take anything for granted. The Portrayal of Lauren Olaminaīutler’s choice of character development within the protagonist is very appropriate because her youth provides fresh new perspectives than those of her father who have different memories of how the United States was and how not to question Lauren’s wish to go back to “the good old days” (Butler 10).
Furthermore, Lauren has been a witness to the evidence of violence in the faces of many desperate individuals in her community. She writes, “My stepmother says she and my father stopped to help an injured woman once, and the guys who had injured her jumped out from a wall and almost killed them” (Butler 10).
The paranoia that Lauren exhibits have been built on experience and what she observes around the community. This fear among the community has also caused members to become more vigilant, because if they ever let their guard down, Lauren explains: “I think if there were only one of us, or if they couldn’t see our guns, they might try to pull us down and steal our bikes, our clothes, our shoes, whatever. Her neighborhood, as she describes it, is a walled community that protects its members from the “outside where things are so dangerous and crazy” (Butler 7). To introduce a world where chaos upholds environmental and social disasters, Octavia Butler’s novel Parable of the Sower introduces protagonist Lauren Olamina who is caught between the realities of her society and the impacts it has on the way she lives.
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