Shakespeare and Octavia Butler on Prophesy and Resilience

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January 18, 2025
Shakespeare and Octavia Butler on Prophesy and Resilience
Jamie Litton
Shakespeare Now

Octavia Butler, the prolific Black American writer who passed away in 2006, is once again entering popular conversation due to the eerily accurate depictions of a dystopian future in her novels Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents. Parable of the Sower, published in 1993, begins in 2024 and follows the journey of Lauren Olamina, a smart, philosophical, and resilient Black teenage girl, as she struggles to survive in a country ravaged by climate change, economic collapse, and a rising fascist regime. Lauren grows up in the walled city of Robledo, just 20 miles from Los Angeles, where she learns to hide her hyperempathy–a dangerously visceral sensitivity to the feelings of others–and begins privately constructing a new spirituality based on the premise that “God is change.” The novels are presented as journal entries, with Lauren recording on February 1, 2025, “We had a fire today” — foreshadowing the total incineration of her community that forces her to leave home.

Following the devastating fires in Los Angeles earlier this month, which experts attribute in part to climate change-induced heat and drought, several news outlets are pointing once again to the prophecies of Octavia Butler, who was born in the Los Angeles area. An AP article titled, “Octavia Butler imagined LA ravaged by fires. Her Altadena cemetery survived” quotes Gerry Caravan, an associate professor at Marquette University and co-editor of Butler’s work for the Library of America, who remarks, “She seems to have seen the real future coming in a way few other writers did. It’s hard not to read the books and think ‘How did she know?’” A Rolling Stone article, titled “Prophecy?: Octavia Butler wanted to prevent disaster in Los Angeles. Instead, she predicted it”, argues that what some call prophecy is actually Butler’s remarkable ability to observe the human condition and foresee one possible trajectory for America. In Parable of the Talents, released in 1998, Lauren, now an adult, reports on the political climate in the year 2032. “The Donner Administration has written off science,” she says. “But a more immediate threat lurks: a violent movement is being whipped up by a new Presidential candidate, Andrew Steele Jarret, a Texas senator and religious zealot who is running on a platform to ‘make America great again’.” 

You read that right. Writing in the late 1990s, Butler depicts a charismatic and inflammatory politician who preys on the desperation of destitute citizens by stoking fear and placing blame on the most marginalized communities, all while promising to “Make America Great Again.” The following passage from Parable of the Talents feels especially poignant:

Jarret insists on being a throwback to some earlier, “simpler” time. Now does not suit him. The current state of the country does not suit him. He wants to take us all back to some magical time when everyone believed in the same God, worshiped him in the same way, and understood that their safety in the universe depended on completing the same religious rituals and stomping anyone who was different. There was never such a time in this country. But these days when more than half the people in the country can’t read at all, history is just one more vast unknown to them.

Butler herself attempted to shut down inquiries about her ability to prophesize America’s future long before many of her plot lines came to pass. According to The New Yorker, she once delivered remarks at M.I.T. saying, “[Parable of the Talents] was not a book about prophecy. This was a cautionary tale, although people have told me it was prophecy. All I have to say to that is: I certainly hope not.” This has not stopped many of her modern-day readers from finding a spiritual experience in her stories, convinced they are reading the words of an oracle. An episode of the The Missing Witches podcast, hosted by Amy Torok and Risa Dickens, describes Octavia Butler as “Prophet. World builder. Door opener. Progenitor of the magic that is Afrofuturism. Novelist. Writer of books that make portals.” Whether you believe that Butler was somehow channeling a prophesy to prepare us for what is to come, or that she was a brilliant observationalist who sought to warn us of the possibilities of the future so that we may choose a different path, putting Butler’s work in conversation with Shakespeare can help us understand the role of prophesy and resilience in relation to Butler’s dystopia and our current times.     

 

On the Prophecies of Witches

The prophecy of the Weird Sisters in Macbeth creates a paradox that generates one of the most interesting questions about the play: Did the witches deliver the prophecy because they could see the future, or did their choice to deliver the prophecy create the future they foretold? The witches’ prophecy leads Macbeth to envision himself on the throne, which puts into action a series of events motivated by blind ambition, desperation, and paranoia. But what if there is a third possibility? What if, like Octavia Butler, the witches are astute observers of social and political dynamics, able to predict the likely outcome of a veiled but desperate ambition that already exists in Macbeth at the start of the play? Viewed in this light, one could argue that the witches are actually warning Macbeth to be wary of his darker desires, as Butler sought to warn us against scapegoating and ecocide.

It is significant that Macbeth’s prophecies come from witches — an archetype that has long been used to demonize those who challenge the status quo. Butler also draws attention to this historical pattern, weaving a resurgence of witchhunts into the world of the Parable novels. “Jarret supporters have been known, now and then, to form mobs and burn people at the stake for being witches,” Lauren journals in Parable of the Talents. In her research on witch hunts throughout history, feminist scholar Sylvia Federici writes that, “the witch was the communist and terrorist of her time,” a figure who “resisted their impoverishment and social exclusion” and “made nuisances of themselves” (2018). While marginalized groups in Butler’s dystopia are branded witches by religious zealots, her protagonists embody Federici’s definition of “witch” through dogged resistance to their oppressive circumstances. Lauren’s prophetic vision for humanity and ability to shape the world around her makes her a large thorn in the sides of the most powerful people and institutions in the country. The Missing Witches podcast hosts argue that Butler and her protagonists fulfill their definition of the term, saying, “Witch, as in one who sees cause and effect quickly and at a distance…these Black women narrators are watching the things they foretold come to pass and noticing how the right words change the outcomes.” 

It is this belief in our own ability to observe our current situation and create change that Butler urges us towards. In the face of dire warnings about our future, both Butler and Shakespeare ask us to consider the role of free will in the determination of our fate. In what ways do prophecies, predictions, and warnings shape our actions? In Hamlet, the ghost of Hamlet’s father appears with a direct call to action, and yet Hamlet remains paralyzed by indecision for the rest of the play, which ends in tragedy. Like Hamlet’s ghost, the spirit of Octavia Butler continues to call us to collective action so that we may take control of our destiny rather than fall into complacency and ruin. 

 

On Resilience and Community Building

Both Shakespeare and Butler craft troubled and complex characters who survive tragic circumstances through impressive resilience. However, while Butler emphasizes collective care and community building as essential for surviving and thriving through adversity, Shakespeare tends to explore individual and internal resilience, while a lack of external support frequently leads to his characters’ demise. In the Parable novels, Lauren understands from an early age that her own survival and the survival of humanity as a whole depends on the ability to adapt to change while building community. By identifying individuals and families who share her vulnerabilities as well as her hopes for the future, Lauren not only creates a stronger sense of safety, but she also cultivates spaces where friendship, love, play, and creativity can once again exist. Lauren’s visionary approach to collaboration can be juxtaposed with Macbeth’s individualistic power grab, which eventually isolates him to the point of self-destruction. 

Butler’s vision of collective care mirrors the rise of mutual aid networks that have emerged in response to the growing crises of homelessness, food costs, and climate disasters. An article following the Los Angeles wildfires documents the incredible collaboration among LA residents, saying, “In the midst of mass devastation and government neglect, Angelenos have rapidly mobilized to help each other.” The article argues that mutual aid should not only exist in response to immediate crises, but must be woven into the fabric of our society so that everyone, regardless of wealth or social status, has a safety net of community support in times of need. Law professor and activist Dean Spade writes, “Mutual aid is inherently antiauthoritarian, demonstrating how we can do things together in ways we were told not to imagine” (2020). In the Parable novels, Octavia Butler makes a similar pitch for the power of collective imagination, pointing to networks of community care as our only savior when governments and institutions let us down. Conversely, Shakespeare demonstrates the folly of isolation and individualism through characters like Hamlet and Macbeth, who erode the relationships around them that could have provided them with strength and support. 

 

What to Do With a Prophesy

Through the warnings of the Weird Sisters and the visionary foresight of Lauren Olamina, Shakespeare and Butler both show us that prophecy is not necessarily fate. It is how we respond to prophecy, the actions we take after receiving a warning or glimpsing one possible outcome, that determine how events unfold. There is no denying that Butler’s work feels prophetic, and like many of Shakespeare’s characters, we must now decide what to do with that prophecy. If we choose isolation or inaction, we may be in a tragic play of our own making. However, if we can imagine new ways to build solidarity and cultivate community care, we can move intentionally towards the future we want to create. In her 2000 essay, “A Few Rules for Predicting the Future,”  Butler writes, “Making predictions is one way to give warning when we see ourselves drifting in dangerous directions. Because prediction is a useful way of pointing out safer, wiser courses. Because, most of all, our tomorrow is the child of our today…Best to try to shape it into something good. Best to do that for any child.”

 

Sources:

Butler, Octavia. Parable of the Sower. New York: Seven Stories Press, 1993.

Butler, Octavia. Parable of the Talents. New York: Seven Stories Press, 1998.

Federici, Sylvia. Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women. Oakland: PM Press, 2018.

Spade, Dean. Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next). Brooklyn: Verso, 2020.