Parable of the Sower

A storm in the Pacific provides free water to the residents of Lauren’s community. It’s a rare event, but it presages a tragedy: Amy Dunn dies after being hit by stray bullets coming in through the big metal gate. The event causes Lauren to talk with her friend Joanne about the future and what it portends—things look bleak with the proliferation of disease, violence, and natural disasters as well as the rise of pyro, a drug that makes people want to start fires. Joanne doesn’t want to talk about serious things because there’s nothing they can do. Lauren disagrees and suggests that they can be ready for what’s going to happen.

Lauren expresses her belief that someone will smash the wall in eventually, saying, “[I]f we’re not ready, it will be like Jericho” (65). She talks about how things are changing, even though the adults are mired in the past—even her father, whom she calls “the best person I know” (67). She says she’s been reading books on survival, medicine, guns, and living off the land. Joanne isn’t taking her seriously, so Lauren lends her a book on how Indigenous people in California lived off plants. The rain stops, and Lauren wonders when it will rain again.

Joanne relates her conversation with Lauren to her mother, Phillida, who then tells Lauren’s father. Lauren feels betrayed and thinks she’ll never tell Joanne anything important again. Her father has a talk with her, saying that she doesn’t really understand what’s going on. He advises her: “These things frighten people. It’s best not to talk about them” (73). He wants her to promise not to talk about the topic anymore.

Her father maintains that she’s going about it wrong: “It’s better to teach people than to scare them, Lauren” (75). He tells her she should focus her efforts on her young students. He does admit that her idea of creating emergency packs is a good one, and he brings her in on some of his emergency plans.

Thieves enter the community, stealing fruit and trampling the spring planting. Lauren’s father believes the neighborhood must set up a watch. He takes a second shift, and he and Cory have a discussion about it that Lauren overhears. She finds it disturbing that he would have no trouble killing a thief, quoting the Ten Commandments—“Thou shalt not kill.” He responds with a verse so quickly that Lauren thinks they must have had the same discussion before. The verse is from Nehemiah 4:14, and it exhorts people to fight for their families and their homes.

The neighborhood watch becomes a regular thing, and classes are set up to help people develop self-defense skills. Nevertheless, thieves return. This time, they go after Richard Moss’s rabbits but fail to take them. Still, the experience drains Lauren’s father, and they all realize that they can’t keep this up forever.