Dr. Elham Mohammadi Achachelooei
University of Malaya, Malaysia
This article explores Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower (2007) and Parable of the Talents (2007) by applying Daphne Hampson’s post-Biblical perspective. Focusing on the activities of a black heroine who appears as a reformer or saviour and revives her dead society, the novels reflect a post-Biblical aspect of renovation by discarding past as a paralysing obsession. It is done through assuming and practicing a kind of discontinuity in their religious belief, substituting it with a new doctrine of thought. The introduction of this new belief or religion that is called Earthseed, confronts the dominant Christianity as a religion with roots in past, violating the entire religious and related sexual, racial, and classist dimensions of the life based on belief in Christianity. It establishes a new way of life in which obsession with past memories and struggling to revive past norms and values is shown as futile and the value of life as a dynamic, ongoing reality is highlighted. The aim of this article is to investigate the different aspects of the confrontation and the new social order resulted from it.
The above abstract is a part of the article which was accepted at The Second International Conference on Current Issues of Languages, Dialects and Linguistics (WWW.TLLL.IR), 1-2 February 2018, Ahwaz.
