Andrew Voss, Class of 2024

Resilience: Persevering Through the Unwanted

Persevering through the things you might not always want to do. Parable of the Sower, by Octavia Butler, challenged me to keep working hard at school even though I’m on break. It taught me to be more open-minded and optimistic. It was a unique and interesting story that also really challenged me. Reading and listening to Parable of the Sower challenged me to stay on task because, even though it was pretty interesting, there were parts that were also dry, and the thought that I was on March break really dragged me down, and I put my guard down and didn’t really focus and understand what the book was trying to say. Which led me to look back at the book summary now when writing this essay. The main thing I did get out of this book is to step outside your comfort zone and do what you think is right, even though it might put you in danger.

The main character is named Lauren. She is a 15-year-old girl who lives in Los Angeles, where she lives with a very religious family that is Christian’s. The thing is, Lauren doesn’t like any of the religions she has seen, so she makes a new one, which is called Earth Seed. This religion is just to spread kindness around the world and to plant different plants around the world to try to prevent global warming. In 2024, which is when this story takes place, many things happen to Lauren, including many tragedies. One of the most important is her brother dying at the pyros; it was one of the saddest moments of her life. After she experienced those heartbreaking moments, she decided to leave the country and go towards Sacramento to find a warm and welcoming community to help her with her friends Harry and Zahra, which turned out very well for them.

The writing piece didn’t really make me that happy. One of the main reasons is that I didn’t pay as much attention as I should have. An exciting part was reading and treating parts of the story. The boring part was reading the parts of the story with no action and just a lot of nothing really happening, and the dull part was writing those reading logs because even though I didn’t do a lot of them, it was still pretty boring. This made me feel sad for Lauren since she had to suffer through many differences and traumas.

I didn’t really relate to any of the story since there was a lot of stepping outside of your comfort zone for many big things, which I didn’t quite often or have the opportunity to do yet. This did challenge me to think in a different way; it made me think about Lauren and what she had to go through after running away with her friends and meeting new people. This didn’t really change anything about my worldview and just shows that there are many bad parts of the world that are dangerous. This didn’t really give me any memories about any other books; it just felt like it was its own unique book.

When we first started this book, I wasn’t that excited about it, and I’ll be honest, as time went on, I still wasn’t that excited, and now, when I look back at my experience, it wasn’t the best, but I realized that it was my fault I didn’t get the best out of it and I didn’t keep an open mind, but now I know what to do next time. Something tells me I will be reading The Parable of the Sower once again, and this time I’ll make sure I pay attention.