Parallels in: Octavia Butler's "Parable of the Sower," Eugene Thacker's "In the Dust of this Planet," and Pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon England

Introduction: Literature as a Mirror of History

Similarities and parallels exist in all walks of life, sometimes in areas we do not expect. The middle-ages are often referred to as "the dark ages," but it was in fact an era of pioneers and progress. Many concepts and ideas we come across in modern day society actually have their roots in the medieval period. The Anglo-Saxon's were avid record keepers, they recorded most events in historiographical texts such as The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The Chronicle was a series of manuscripts which detailed events from 60 BC until the mid-1100s. The Chronicle is a very interesting text because its initial purpose was to keep a record of the years - by noting the main events - in order to correctly calculate the date of Easter each year. The various manuscripts are almost identical up until the reign of King Alfred, they were compiled from a now missing text known as the 'common stock.' After Alfred's reign the manuscripts were added to in a number of continuations which varied from each other depending on the area or era they were written in. Moreover, the chroniclers had no qualms about changing history to benefit the king they were aligned with. The Chronicle entries were often written with a bias; unfavourable elements were disregarded completely or sometimes later chroniclers even rewrote previous entries with the benefit of hindsight in order to manipulate the facts. The Anglo-Saxons could even be considered the pioneers of (our supposedly modern conception) alternative facts. 

Shortly after settling in England, the Anglo-Saxons were converted from Paganism to Christianity roughly between the years 500-600 AD. Themes of religion and conversion stretch across history and reach into every genre in literature: they are reoccurring themes in human society. This study will explore the parallels between ideals in pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon England, Octavia Butler's novel Parable of the Sower, and Eugene Thacker's philosophical work In the Dust of this Planet. The connections drawn between these three vastly different areas will prove that some themes will always be important and have relevance in society no matter how many times they are revisited. Religion is and has always been a central part of societies in all corners of the world; despite many clashes between different religions, such as Paganism and Christianity, or Christianity and Octavia Butler's Earthseed, these differing religions often have a surprising number of similarities between them, more than one might first assume.   

This page has paths:

Contents of this path:

This page has tags: