Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower as the Pyro Epidemic Novel

Abstract

Drug addiction is one of the major social evils. A large number of people, irrespective of their age are falling prey to drugs because of various factors. Many works have been written on the substance abuse and their resultant crimes. The Crack Epidemic of the United States remains one of the major incidents related to drug consumption and addiction in the nation’s history. Octavia Estelle Butler’s novel Parable of the Sower deals with drug addiction as one of its sub-themes in the future Earth. Parable of the Sower is widely acknowledged because of its relevance in today’s time. Butler presents a dystopic future where environmental and climactic changes wreak havoc in the lives of people. In addition to this, the humans butcher each other because of the addiction of pyro drug, which makes them enjoy fire literally. The aim of this paper is to analyze Butler’s Parable of the Sower as the pyro epidemic novel, which highly resembles the crack epidemic of the United States in the later part of the twentieth century.