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The City and Community in Parable of the Sowe
A dystopian fiction,Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower narrates how the protagonist Lauren in the apocalyptic America escapes from the destructed communities and moves towards the road of building a utopian community. Explored from the political, social and historical frameworks of Fredric Jameson’s The Political Unconscious,it is concluded that the falling apart of the communities of Robledo is the starting point of the narration of desire, and the surviving Olivar city is a symbolic solution to the contradictions of Late capitalism, repressing the history of the relentless reification and enslavement of the proletariat. In addition, the city and community of Robledo is rife with the ideologeme of fear generated by the class antagonism while the blueprinted utopian community of “seed of the earth” is the wish fulfillment and daydream, heralding the new direction of the cultural revolution.
YANG Fan, XU Dejin . The City and Community in Parable of the Sowe[J]. Contemporary Foreign Languages Studies, 2022 , 22(6) : 148 -156 . DOI: 10.3969/j.issn.1674-8921.2022.06.018
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