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Lauren's Survival

      To be perfectly honest, I didn't expect that this is where the book would have headed. I expected some sort of journey of self-awakening, and maybe Lauren eventually choosing to go off on her own, and to develop a utopia that rivals Olivar, and helps her live up to her father's legacy. I did not expect that a little over halfway in, and already her entire family is dead.     However, I think that this really had to happen in order to get the book moving. Lauren was very focused on her goal of creating her own religion, and escaping with Curtis, but not as invested in actually going anywhere. While this was very surprising and terrifying, I feel like something along these lines was necessary to force her to jumpstart her religion. I also think it's interesting the she wasn't able to go with Curtis. After all the planning they did, she has to leave his presumed dead body, and attempt to fulfill her wish with two completely different people.

Utopiatopia

      At this point in the book, there a lot of different views being shown, and everyone seems to have their ideology that they stick with. In addition, places like Olivar seem to be made up of tons of people, all trying to make the perfect society. Even Lauren is trying to push her Earthseed concept, by planning on running away and sharing it with the world. There are many different ideas being thrown at the wall, and all of them seem very different.     I think that the purpose of all this is to show a precursor to a Utopian/Dystopian story. It has the perfect setup: ruined, chaotic world, people desperate for help, big corporation planning on saving them all by uniting them under a monopoly, they're very clearly setting up for the "Utopian" lifestyle. I think that what's happening with Lauren and her family is that they're going to avoid going there as much as possible, and in Lauren's case, create her own world, and attempt to live in that one. I also thi...

Utopia vs. Youtopia

      At this point in PotS, the it seems as if everything is going wrong. Thieves are breaking in, people are dying on a daily basis, and natural disasters are raging over the world. Lauren has coped with this be creating her very own religion: Earthseed. It's not exactly clear what she intends to do with this religion, but it seems like she wants to run away and start her own society, and somehow make it to space. However, this brings up a few questions.     The entire community acts as one, and anytime something goes bad for one family, all the others deal with the consequences. However, those same ties mean that whenever something needs to happen, the entire town can deal with it. They have this very strong bond with each other, and it is shown time and time again that they are all in this together. In addition, Lauren herself appears to be a very important part of the community, being someone who has very radical and informative thoughts. And as the da...

Parable of the Sower First Impressions

       Parable of the Sower  throws a lot at you when you start reading it, and there isn't really a plot in this first reading. Instead, it consists mainly of worldbuilding that will help the reader understand the motives behind the characters' actions. From what is shown in the book, you can already start to see the ideas of the main character, and that a considerable part of the ideas questioned are based on religion. I feel like this will be a main part of the book, and that we're going to see these kinds of questions pop up fairly often as we continues to read.     Another thing that seems to be very prominent is the lack of emotion people feel for each other. While there are people that like each other, there are more people who don't like one another, or that seem to hate the other people in their community. I'm expecting that this will come into play later, and perhaps result in them fixing their relationships, but at the current time...