Parable of the Sower

Lauren decides to call her new belief system Earthseed, but she doesn’t necessarily think she’s making anything up—to her it’s all very real: “It feels like the truest thing I’ve ever written” (88). She has made a small survival pack for herself that includes tools, pots, money, water containers, matches, clothes, and other things she might need on the road. Her father warns her that such a pack would be a gift for a burglar and will not allow her to keep a weapon with it. She suspects he’s concerned her brothers, Greg, Ben, and Keith, would get at it. They discuss where they would go if the worst happens, and Lauren expresses the idea that going north would be safer. Her father disagrees, to which she writes in verse: “A tree cannot grow in its parents’ shadow” (92).

The latest news is that the cosmological station on the moon has found more planets orbiting nearby stars. Lauren believes life might be on these planets: “I find it … more exciting and encouraging than I can explain, more important than I can explain. There is life out there” (93). She thinks a living world would make it easier for humans to adapt, if they could get out there—out of the shadow of their parent world.