Final Reflective Essay: An analysis of the Parable of the Sower and how it concludes our course on Expulsion and the Housing Crisis

By Maggie Kiernan

Throughout this semester we have been learning and adapting the meaning of expulsion and how it relates to each text we were required to read. The conventional definition of expulsion is the action of depriving someone of membership in an organization. From this foundation, we were able to find and adapt our expectations of expulsion throughout the semester. The act of expulsion not only was found in the multiple texts we were reading but it also became increasingly apparent in my life as a college senior. The rapid start and end of my final fall semester as an undergraduate student has been something that I’m sure most people have tried to run away from. This essay will find examples of expulsion and other course concepts from Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower and connect them to my unexpected expulsion as a college senior, who is unsure of what awaits my life beyond college as well as the other texts read in this course. 

Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower is set in an apocalyptic future where goods, money, and safety are almost impossible to come by. It follows the life of a young woman named Lauren Olamina who grew up in a walled community, separated from, but not unaware of the world that awaited her outside of the community. Lauren suffers from an illness called Hyperempathy, which is an illness that allows her to share the pleasure and pain of others. This illness can often be debilitating and living at a time like this, it is a serious risk to not only herself but others as well. Her hyperempathy came from her mother, while her mother was pregnant she abused prescription drugs, which consequently altered the chemistry in Lauren’s brain and led to her diagnosis of hyperempathy.  Growing up Lauren’s father taught her how to hide her illness because if her illness was known, people could use it against her.

 Like Florens in Toni Morrison’s novel A Mercy and Steve Eisman from The Big Sort, Lauren is extremely aware of her surroundings and feels the pressure from outside of her community starting to rise as they start to get more and more desperate. Like Steve Eisman, She prepares for the worst before the worst comes. Eisman looked for corporate companies acting in bad faith and found how they were giving out false information to the public. Lauren’s mind works in the same way, she knows that the people within the walls will not be safe like this forever, prices for food and water continue to rise and the people outside of the wall are becoming increasingly desperate. Lauren, like Eisman seems to be the only one who has woken up to smell the roses. This has in both cases, made them outsiders because what they saw as inevitable, others thought as impossible.

 I guess I could also relate this to my inevitable expulsion from college. I am unlike Steve Eisman and Lauren Olamina because I was unaware of how fast the expiration date on my undergraduate experience had come. I am sure that more than some of my peers are alike Eisman and Olamina, they are people who have prepared for the life ahead of them whereas I was planning my life one week at a time. 

Floating back to Florens from Toni Morrison’s novel A Mercy, Florens relied heavily on her observations to make sense of what was happening around her. In A Mercy, Florens was defined by her original expulsion from her mother. Her mother’s choice of sending her away and keeping her brother had left a wound that never healed. Just like Florens, Lauren’s first expulsion from her birth mother had defined her existence. Their shared expulsion from their mothers defined their existence through how they had to navigate a world where they always risked expulsion. 

Liquidity is a concept with multiple definitions, the Investopedia definition of liquidity is as follows; Liquidity refers to the efficiency or ease with which an asset or security can be converted into ready cash without affecting its market price. Liquidity is a major theme in Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower not only relating to money but also in relation to water. As Lauren and her family are living in this apocalyptic world they need to be able to keep their money in a place where they know it is safe and easily accessible. Without cash, you have nothing, and without water, you’ll die. We can relate this to The Big Short where the CDOs that were being bought by investment companies were seen as major investments. These major investments unfortunately turned out to be worthless which forced major banks to foreclose. The foreclosure of these major banks reinstates the ideal that without money you essentially have nothing. 

The scavengers who live outside of Lauren’s community have nothing, which is why they will do anything to anyone to survive. Lauren can see that the people living outside of the community are an example of the fate that can await her family if they lose their ability to make money or lose their homes to a fire. Because Lauren understands that her role within the community and the community itself cannot last forever, she decides to prepare an emergency bag for when she may need to evacuate. Unlike others, Lauren’s ability to be liquid saved her when the painted heads and scavengers tore their way into her community. 

With the destruction of Lauren’s community, there wasn’t anything left to distinguish it from the homes on the other side of the wall. The foreclosure of the place she once called home forced her to live as a scavenger. She was quick to notice that not only were communities like hers foreclosed upon, but the people were also experiencing a sense of social foreclosure. Inside her community, Lauren was able to live free of worry, she had a community, and she was able to teach, go to church, and learn. She works hard to attract as little attention as possible. We can relate this to A Mercy when Florens took the attention away from the Widow’s daughter Jane because she was black “They look at you and forget about me” (Morrison pg. 135). This also relates to the Global financial crisis, although the foreclosure seen in the Parable of the Sower is considerably more severe than the foreclosure that was seen during the global financial crisis. Due to the addition of gangs, government instability, and a real-life sense of anarchy throughout the country, we can say that the state of the country in Parable of the Sower is an extreme version of the global financial crisis. The global financial crisis led to a mass foreclosure of homes, homes that were expertly sold to people who did not know that they wouldn’t be able to afford them. Homelessness rose around the country and the world for many people was left in an arguably apocalyptic state. Massive long-time corporations went bankrupt, Banks went millions of dollars in debt and homeowners were terrified of not being able to make their next mortgage payments. 

The theme of expulsion, as explored in Parable of the Sower and the other texts we’ve engaged with this semester, offers a powerful lens through which to view both the personal and societal challenges of transition. Lauren Olamina’s journey, defined by her hyperempathy and the collapse of her community, mirrors the existential uncertainty I’ve faced as I near the end of my undergraduate career. Much like Lauren, I find myself on the edge of a world that is shifting beyond my control—unprepared, yet acutely aware that the walls I’ve relied on for the past four years are disappearing. The sense of social and financial instability that defines Lauren’s world echoes the foreclosures and displacements of real-world crises like the global financial collapse, where the promises of security and community dissolve, leaving individuals scrambling for survival. In the end, the concept of expulsion transcends mere physical removal—it is about the existential rupture that forces a reckoning with the world as it is, and the person one must become to navigate what comes next. Just as Lauren learns to adapt to a new reality, I too must confront my uncertainties, understanding that the act of being expelled, while painful, can also be a powerful catalyst for growth and change.