School of Education, Culture and Communication Character Narrators, the Implied Author, and the Authorial Audience: A Rhetorical and Ethical Reading of Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Talents Linda Melkner Moser Supervisor: Karin Molander Danielsson Advanced Essay in English Studies HEN401 Spring Term 2020 Abstract This essay considers the interplay between character narrators, the implied author, and the authorial audience in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Talents. The aim of the study was to investigate how narrators, the implied author, and readers position themselves in relation to each other and in relation to the novel’s ethical dimensions. The theoretical framework is based on James Phelan’s theories on the rhetorical and ethical aspects of fiction. The essay argues that the implied author’s communication to the authorial audience is one of the reasons that the novel, like its prequel Parable of the Sower, often succeeds to function as warnings to the audience of dangers ahead. This is especially true regarding one of the implied author’s most consistent messages to the audience throughout the Parable novels: every choice has consequences, and those consequences need to be considered when we decide how to act and react in different circumstances, both as individuals and as a society. Keywords: Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower, Parable of the Talents, James Phelan, the implied author, character narrators, narrators, authorial audience, rhetorical narrative theory, rhetoric/ethics, ethics, rhetoric, rhetoric of character narration, Lauren Olamina, Olamina, Earthseed, epistolary novels, narrative theory. Table of Contents 1. Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………1 2. Literature Review………………………………………………………………………….. 3 3. Theoretical Framework……………………………………………………………………..5 4. Analysis…………………………………………………………………………………….7 4.1. Synopsis Relevant to the Analysis………………………………………………..7 4.2. The Narrating Situation of Parable of the Sower…………………………………8 4.3. The Narrating Situation in Parable of the Talents……………………………….. 8 4.4. Ethical Positions and Narrative Judgments Regarding Olamina’s Choice Not to Leave Acorn………………………………………………………………………….. 9 4.5. Asha’s Choice Not to Forgive Olamina………………….. ……………………..17 4.5.1. The Narrative Situation and Asha’s Narration in the Epilogue………..17 4.5.2. Ethical Positions, Judgments, and Reliability the Epilogue………….. 18 5. Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………26 Works Cited…………………………………………………………………………………..28 Melkner Moser 1 1. Introduction At the end of the Cold War in the late 20th century, the United States emerged as the world’s sole superpower. It was a time when many people in the West imagined a prosperous, peaceful, and bright future. However, in 1993 Octavia E. Butler published Parable of the Sower, a novel where she postulates a future that is anything but bright. On the contrary, in Butler’s imagined United States of 2024 climate change has made water a scarcity, fires ravage the dry landscape, and socioeconomic gaps have widened into gulfs. Drug use is rampant, families and communities are disintegrating, and every day is a fight for survival. In Parable of the Talents, the sequel published in 1998, Butler continues her bleak and violent narrative on the same note. The novels can be—and often are—read as a critique of political priorities and choices made in the United States in the late 20th century, and as a warning of what the consequences may be if the country remains on its current path (Stillman 15). Both novels center on Lauren Olamina, an African American teenager from Los Angeles, who grows up to champion an alternative to contemporary ways of life as the founder and leader of a new belief system: Earthseed. According to Lauren Olamina, God is not a deity in the traditional sense; God is change. Earthseed teaches that to survive in a chaotic and unpredictable world, humans need to adapt to the changes they encounter. In Parable of the Talents, several characters go by multiple names. To limit confusion for my own reader, I consistently refer to characters by only one name. Lauren Olamina is called Olamina, Olamina’s brother is called Marc, Olamina’s husband is called Bankole, and Olamina’s daughter is called Asha. The Parable novels are epistolary novels. Parable of the Sower is narrated through journal entries, and through Earthseed: The Books of the Living, a collection of verses similar in style to Bible verses. Both are authored by character narrator Olamina. However, in Parable of the Talents, Butler introduces multiple narrators, the most important of whom is Olamina’s adult daughter, Asha. Butler has positioned Asha’s narration as a frame narrative; Asha is the narrator of both the prologue and most of the epilogue. Asha’s narration also introduces and comments on journal entries from Olamina, Marc, and Bankole. Asha’s narration repeatedly undermines Olamina’s, something that I will investigate further in my analysis. Melkner Moser 2 In this thesis, I focus solely on Parable of the Talents as I explore the ethics that underpin the novel. The theoretical framework is based on James Phelan’s rhetorical theory of narrative and ethics. The approach takes an interest in the mechanics behind our response to fiction. Ethical readings consider questions such as why do we not always hope that a fictional murderer is captured, but instead get a thrill when he escapes justice? How does the author accomplish this response in the reader? How do readers respond to different ethical dilemmas in a work? A central theoretical construct in the essay is the implied author, defined by James Phelan as: “a streamlined version of the real author, an actual or purported subset of the real author’s capacities, traits, attitudes, beliefs, values, and other properties that play an active role in the construction of the particular text” (Living to Tell about It, 45). I also use Phelan’s term for an author’s ideal reader: the authorial audience. The questions guiding the research are: how does the introduction of character narrator Asha affect the ethical distance between narrators, implied author, and authorial audience in Parable of the Talents? Can a difference in the implied author’s ethical distance to the character narrator Olamina be identified in different parts of the novel? How does the introduction of multiple narrators in Talents affect the authorial audience’s judgment of characters, narrators, and implied author? Does the ethical distance between the audience and the implied author change throughout the novel? What ethical dimensions to the novel are revealed through the identified ethical positions and judgments? The essay begins with a brief literature review that reveals that while critics have taken an interest in the novels since their publication, ethical readings of the Parable novels are not common. The next section introduces the theoretical framework, followed by the analysis where I do two close readings from Parable of the Talents to investigate the ethical positions and narrative judgments of the narrators, the implied author, and the authorial audience. In the conclusion, I argue that in Parable of the Talents, the distance between the implied author’s ethical positions and those of character narrator Asha is shorter at the beginning of the novel and larger at the end, while the opposite is true for the implied author and Olamina. The effect of the implied author’s communication to the authorial audience, and her guidance of the same, is that the audience remains largely aligned with Butler throughout the novel; from an ethical perspective it positions itself closer to Asha at the beginning of the novel and closer to Olamina toward the end. The most significant implication of these ethical Melkner Moser 3 alignments is that the audience is likely to remain receptive to the implied author’s communication regarding the novels’ overarching ethical dimensions. This in turn indicates that the implied author’s communication to the authorial audience is one of the reasons that the novels often succeed to function as warnings to the audience of dangers ahead. This is especially true regarding one of the implied author’s most consistent messages to the audience throughout the Parable novels: every choice has consequences, and those consequences need to be considered when we decide how to act and react in different circumstances, both as individuals and as a society. 2. Literature Review Octavia Butler and her works have interested scholars for decades and there is no sign of that interest waning. Previous research often centers on three common themes: race, gender, and/or religion, which is not surprising considering that these are also recurrent themes in Butler’s works in general (see for instance Dawn and Kindred). Although the ethical dimensions of the Parable novels have interested scholars, readings that apply a rhetorical approach to exploring the novels’ ethics are rare. While that is an indication of the relevance of my own project, it means that such research is missing from this review. Instead, the overview presents articles that exemplify the thematic focus that is most common in research on Butler’s work, along with research that has proven particularly useful for my understanding of ethical components of Butler’s works in general. In the oft-cited article “Dystopian Critiques, Utopian Possibilities, and Human Purposes in Octavia Butler’s Parables,” Peter G. Stillman explores the nature of Butler’s dystopian world creation. He argues that Butler’s setting functions as a warning of what may happen if late 20th century society remains on its current path (16). In addition, he provides a thorough overview of the mechanics of the world that Butler has created, highlighting connections between Butler’s opinions about Reagan-era politics and her novels’ setting. Like Stillman, Justin Louis Mann also argues that there are strong connections between Butler’s own present and her futuristic settings. In his article “Pessimistic Futurism: Survival and Reproduction in Octavia Butler’s Dawn,” he exemplifies this by tracing how Reagan-era United States and the setting of Butler’s novel Dawn are connected.