Parable of the Sower 2024 Past Paper PDF

FINAL EXAM FORMAT Passage identifications (5): author and title of source text Keywords (3) – define key concepts from class (e.g. “wilderness dualism”) Short Answers (5)– answer simple questions about concepts and texts discussed in lecture (some may be multiple choice) Long Answers (2)– wri...

FINAL EXAM FORMAT Passage identifications (5): author and title of source text Keywords (3) – define key concepts from class (e.g. “wilderness dualism”) Short Answers (5)– answer simple questions about concepts and texts discussed in lecture (some may be multiple choice) Long Answers (2)– write a paragraph in response to a question about a course text Essay (1) – Choose one of three possible prompts to write a 5-paragraph essay. Key passages will be provided for each prompt. Only texts and concepts/issues discussed in class will be tested (i.e., not every text on the syllabus). For each section, you will have choices. You will be given blue-books to write in. Bring your own pen or pencil. No mobile devices, books, or papers allowed. In the study of speculative fiction – but also video games, comics, films, etc. – we speak of “world-building,” of the way an author or artist constructs a full, plausible, immersive setting for the unfolding of their fictional story. What are some of the descriptive details of Octavia Butler’s 1993 vision of neighborhood life in the 2020’s that convey the most about the world she envisions? What is the relation between this 1993 fiction and the reality of 2024? What do you think made this reality knowable/predictable in 1993? 2 “[The idea] is to  Anthropogenic climate change (esp. drought, sea-level rise) look at where we  Pervasive homelessness are now, what we are doing now, and  Refugee / immigration crisis, displaced people pouring through California, seeking 0 to consider where some of our current behaviors and unattended the means of survival  Huge disparities of wealth and poverty: castle-like gated and securitized enclaves 2 and shanty-towns, precarity/disintegration of everything in-between problems might take us.”  Drug addiction crisis unravelling social contract and familial fabric --“A Conversation [now: Fentanyl/opioids ; then: crack cocaine] 4 with Octavia E. Butler” (343)  Political discourse promises “return to normalcy” or “the good old days” [ Donner: elimination of labor and environmental protections]  Resurgence of Patriarchy, Racism, Authoritarianism  Corporations ready to profit from the situation; privatization of public space and The public government (Olivar) Novel’s  New forms of indentured servitude, debt slavery, trafficking and enslavement Dystopia,  Collapse of public education Our  Inflation, esp. food prices Reality  The catastrophic threat of FIRE I. STRUCTURE + META-FICTION how the book is built + what it tells us about its own building/writing  The main character, Lauren, is a writer  The book, Ecotopia-like, purports to be constructed from two kinds of texts she is writing: -- Her real-time journal entries (July 20th, 2024 – October 1st, 2027) - first-person narration, told entirely through Lauren’s consciousness -- “Verses” from Earthseed: the Books of the Living … on the utility of fiction … on the purpose of the verses “Nothing is going to save us. If we don’t save ourselves, “I’m going to go through my old journals and gather we’re dead. Now use your imagination. Any kind of the verses I’ve written into one volume … Then, survival information from encyclopedias, biographies, someday, when people are able to pay more attention anything that helps you learn to live off the land and to what I say than how old I am, I’ll use these verses defend ourselves. Even some fiction might be useful. to pry them loose from the rotting past, and maybe She gave me a sidelong glance. “I’ll bet,” she said. push them into saving themselves and building a future that makes sense.” (79) ON WRITING: as naming, titling… Sometimes naming a thing—giving it a name or discovering its name—helps one begin to understand it. Knowing the name of a thing and knowing what that thing is for gives me even more of a handle on it. The particular God-is-Change belief system that seems right to me will be called Earthseed. I’ve tried to name it before. Failing that, I’ve tried to leave it unnamed. Neither effort has made me comfortable. Name plus purpose equals focus for me. Well, today, I found the name, found it while I was weeding the back garden and thinking about the way plants seed themselves, windborne, animalborne, waterborne, far from their parent plants. They have no ability at all to travel great distances under their own power, and yet, they do travel. Even they don’t have to just sit in one place and wait to be wiped out. There are islands thousands of miles from anywhere—the Hawaiian Islands, for example, and Easter Island—where plants seeded themselves and grew long before any humans arrived. Earthseed. I am Earthseed. Anyone can be. Someday, I think there will be a lot of us. And I think we’ll have to seed ourselves farther and farther from this dying place. (78) Question: what is the purpose/effect of the metaphor of Earth-seed, of plant/planet propagation? UTOPIA AND OUTER SPACE: Manifest Destiny and the Colonization/terraformation of Mars and the Universe Here’s the birthday gift that came into mind mind this morning as I woke up—just two lines: The Destiny of Earthseed Is to take root among the stars. (84) I look up at the stars and the deep, black sky “Why couldn’t you see the stars?” I ask her. “Everyone can see them.” … We are all Godseed, but no more or less I’m learning to fly, to levitate myself. “City lights,” she says, “Lights, so than any other aspect of the universe, No one is teaching me. I’m just progress, growth, all those things Godseed is all there is—all that learning on my own, little by little, we’re too hot and too poor to bother dream lesson by dream lesson. Not a with anymore.” Changes. Earthseed is all that spreads very subtle image, but a persistent one … She shakes her head. “There aren’t Earthlife to new earths. The universe is … Godseed. Only we are Earthseed. And anywhere near as many [lights] as I drift toward the doorway. Cool, pale there were. Kids today have no idea the Destiny of Earthseed is to take root light glows from it. Then I slide a little what a blaze of light cities used to be among the stars. (76) to the right; and a little more. I can see —and not that long ago.” that I’m going to miss the door and hit “I’d rather have the stars,” I say. the wall beside it …The wall before me “The stars are free.” She shrugs. is burning. (4) “I’d rather have the city lights back myself, the sooner the better. But we can afford the stars.” (5-6) NAMING this TEXT: Parable of the Sower  First level: Mark 4:3-41: meta-parable and seeding The Word of God The fruitfulness of Hearken, Behold, there went out a sower to sow: And it came to pass, as he sowed, some fell by the wayside, and the fowls of the air devoured it up. And some fell on stony ground, where “the sower’s” [the evangelist’s] it had not much earth; and immediately it sprang up, because it had no depth of earth: But “seed” [words] depends on the when the sun was up, it was scorched; and because it had no root, it withered away. And some “soil” [person] that [who] receives it. fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no fruit. And other fell on good ground, and did yield fruit that sprang up and increased; and brought forth, some  Second level: thirty, and some sixty, some a hundred. A parable of parables: And he said unto them, He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. “Know ye not this parable … And when he was alone, they that were about him with the twelve asked of him the parable. how then will ye know all parables?” And he said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God; but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables: That seeing they may see, A parable that defines parables as coded, protective and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest at any time they should double language that speaks to some and not others: be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them. “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” And he said unto them, Know ye not his parable? And how then will ye know all parables? The sower soweth the word. And these are they by the wayside, where the word is sown; but when they have heard, Satan cometh immediately, and taketh away the word that was sown in -- Differentiates between those that are ready/ their hearts. And these are they likewise which are sown on stony ground; who, when they receptive and those who are not have heard the word, immediately receive it with gladness; And have no root in themselves, and so endure for but a time … And these are they which are sown among thorns; such as -- But also, between insiders and outsiders: hear the word, and the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful. And these are they which “unto those that are without, all these things are done are sown on good ground; such as hear the word, and receive it, and bring forth fruit, some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some a hundred. (349-350) in parables" What the “Earthseed verses” are (metafiction, continued …) “I’ve never felt that I was making any of this up—not the name, Earthseed, not any of it. I mean, I’ve never felt that it was anything other than real: discovery rather than invention, exploration rather than creation. I wish I could believe it was all supernatural and that I’m getting messages from God. But then, I don’t believe in that kind of God. All I do is observe and take notes, trying to put things down in ways that are as powerful, as simple, and as direct as I feel them. I can never do that. I keep trying, but I can’t. I’m not good enough as a writer or poet or whatever it is I need to be. I don’t know what to do about that. It drives me frantic sometimes. I’m getting better, but so slowly.” (78) II. THE UNCHOSEN (ECO)ANARCHISM of the DYSTOPIAN PRESENT/FUTURE (2024): … MUTUAL AID in the vacuum left by a once-functioning state.  Forms of assistance / cooperation / community organization/ self-determination /self-sufficiency … that arise by necessity rather than by choice (but have their appeal) “This is a small community,” my father said. We all know each other here. We depend on each other.” (35) - provision of education (homeschooling, informal classes, knowledge-sharing) - provision of safety: full-community volunteer fire brigade, neighborhood night patrol, gun training - provision of insurance against catastrophe: theft assistance, fire assistance - raising fruit trees, gardens, rabbits - revival of indigenous knowledge (acorn bread) - pooling of resources (not for free, but for barter and in case of need) - plenty of internal disagreement, dissent, drama … and interdependence and trust - sharing of technology, TV’s, radios … - playing sports, music - no more cars, no more bright lights, you can see the stars!  But a walled oasis, under siege from the outside: “I mean, I love it. It’s home. These are my people. But I hate it. It’s like an island surrounded by sharks …It’s just a matter of how long it takes for them to get hungry enough.” (50) Mutual Aid as COOPERATIVE EVOLUTION (in Kropotkin’s eco-anarchist terms)? PLASTICITY: Intentional, effortful “Lamarckian” evolution through the force of habit? All successful life is Civilization is to groups what intelligence is I could have been killed. If Adaptable, to individuals. It is a means of combining the I had thought about what I Opportunistic, intelligence of many to achieve ongoing group was doing, if I had had to Tenacious adaptation. think, no doubt I would Interconnected, and Civilization, like intelligence, may serve well, have been killed. I reacted Fecund. serve adequately, or fail to serve its adaptive the way I had trained Understand this. function. When civilization fails to serve, it must myself to react…my self- Use it. disintegrate unless it is acted upon by unifying administered training had Shape God. (125) internal or external forces. (100) worked. (161) “[I preached] the parable of the importunate widow. It’s one I’ve always We are Earthseed liked. A widow is so persistent in her demands for justice that she overcomes The life that perceives itself the resistance of a judge who fears neither God nor man. She wears him Changing. (127) down. Moral: The weak can overcome the strong if the weak persist. Persisting isn’t always safe, but it’s often necessary.” (134) APOCALYPSE vs. COLLAPSE: which world, whose world is ending? When apparent stability disintegrates, generational conflict: As it must— God is Change— “They [the adults] never miss a chance to People tend to give in relive the good old days or to tell kids how To fear and depression, great it is going to be when the country gets To need and greed. back on its feet and good times come back. When no influence is strong enough Yeah.” (8) To unify people They divide. They struggle, “Do you think our world is coming to an end?” One against one, Dad asked, and with no warning at all, I almost Group against group, started crying. I had all I could do to hold it back. For survival, position, power. What I thought was, “No, I think your world is They remember old hates and generate new ones, coming to an end, and maybe you with it.” That They create chaos and nurture it. was terrible. I hadn’t thought about it in such a They kill and kill and kill, personal way before. I turned and looked out a Until they are exhausted and destroyed, window until I felt calmer. When I faced him Until they are are conquered by outside forces, Or until one of them becomes again, I said. “Yes. Don’t you?” (62) A leader Most will follow, “I intend to survive.” (Lauren to Joanne, 58.) Or a tyrant Most fear. (104) … whose/which worlds have ended already? “[Zahra’s] alien past again. It distracted me for a moment. I had been waiting to ask her how much a person costs these days. And she had been sold by her mother to a man who couldn’t have been much more than a stranger. He could have been a maniac, a monster. And my father used to worry about future slavery or debt slavery. Had he known? He couldn’t have.”  The privilege of fearing future catastrophe  The novel’s thick, heterogenous, patchy and plural description of collapse  The Orbis Hypothesis (1610, Colonization of the New World): colonization of the “new” world, indigenous genocide, African enslavement/transshipment, the redistribution of the world’s animals, plants, and peoples … and Parable of the Sower’s dystopian/utopian knife-edge “Did you ever read about the bubonic plague in medieval Europe?” I asked. [Joanne] nodded … “A lot of the continent was depopulated,” she said. “Some survivors thought the world was coming to an end.” “Yes, but once they realized it wasn’t, they also realized there was a lot of vacant land available for the taking, and if they had a trade, they realized they could demand better pay for their work. A lot of things changed for the survivors.” “What’s your point” “The changes.” I thought for a moment … “it took a plague to make some of the people realize that things could change.” Parable of the Sower and the dystopian/utopian cusp:  During a collapse, during the end of a world, not all destructions are to be mourned (by all), because not all structures were beneficial (for all).  Change is neither wholly good nor wholly bad; it is both destructive and potentially generative, revolutionary  What light is glimpsed through the cracks of a crumbling civilization? To Bankole, as they discuss marriage and his “rival,” Earthseed: “You could help me,” I repeated. “This world is falling apart. You could help me begin something purposeful and constructive.” (275)  How far will people go to patch the walls rather than venture into the unknown? {Lauren’s dream] What are the harms caused by their denial and retrograde fantasies? b “My mother could be right about Donner. He really could do some good.” “No. No, Donner’s just a kind of human bannister.” “A what?” “I mean he’s like … like a symbol of the past for us to hold on to as we’re pushed into the future. He’s nothing. No substance. But having him there, the latest in a two-and-a-half c entury long line of American Presidents make people feel that the country, the culture they grew up with is III. THE DIFFERENCE hyperempathy MAKES “Worse for me, they [the “street poor”] often have things wrong with them. They cut off each other’s ears, arms, legs. …They carry untreated diseases and festering wounds. They have no money to spend on water to wash with so even the unwounded have sores. They don’t get enough to eat so they are malnourished—or they eat bad food and poison themselves. As I rode, I tried not to look around at them, but I couldn’t help seeing—collecting—some of their general misery. I can take a lot of pain without falling apart. I’ve had to learn to do that. But it was hard, today, to keep peddling and keep up with the others when just about everything I saw made me feel worse and worse. My father glanced back at me every now and then. He tells me, “You can beat this thing. You don’t have to give in to it.” He has always pretended, or perhaps believed, that my hyperempathy syndrome was something I could shake off and forget about. The sharing isn’t real, after all. It isn’t some magic or ESP that allows me to share the pain or the pleasure of other people. It’s delusional. Even I admit that.” (11)  Where in this paragraph do we realize that a disability is at stake?  Is the “ability” to inure ourselves against the suffering of others normal/healthy?  Is it something we all do/relate to as we move through/past the “street poor”?  How are we “de-sensitized” to everyday violence/misery; do we have hypo-empathy syndrome?  “I hadn’t cried at all … I hated Keith at least as much as I loved him …he messed up our family, broke it into something less than a family. Still, I would never have wished him dead. I would never wish anyone dead in that horrible way… It’s beyond me how one human being could do that to another. If hyperempathy syndrome were a more common complaint, people couldn’t do such things. They could kill if they had to, and bear the pain of it or be destroyed by it. But if everyone could feel everyone else’s pain, who would torture? Who would cause anyone unnecessary pain? I’ve never thought of my problem as something that might do some good before, but the way things are, I think it would help. I wish I could give it to people. A biological conscience is better than no conscience at all.” But as for me crying, if I were going to cry, I think I would have done it back when Dad beat Keith—when the beating was over and Dad saw what he had done, and we all saw how both Keith and Cory looked at him. I knew that neither of them would ever forgive him. Not ever. That was the end of something precious in the family. (115)” Q: How does hyperempathy change the story and the (potential) status/quality of Lauren as a leader? How does it inflect her understanding of the violence in her family and in society? What do you make of the phrase “biological conscience”? CONSEQUENCES OF HYPER-EMPATHY – Lauren’s “biological conscience”  Doing only as well as the least well-off in her community (within perceptual/visual limits)  Every act of violence is a self-inflicted wound.  Interestingly, the resultant ethos is not non-violence; but violence as a last resort.  Every act of aggressive heroism is also an act of radical vulnerability (passing out, going limp, playing/feeling dead)  Fearlessness (has “died” multiple times, has practiced and survived “dying”)  Possible moral weakness: pain is worse than death … so a willingness to inflict death  Hyper-empathy and enslavement {categories merge in the “oddness” of the new additions to the community; all are formerly enslaved and empaths, “feelers”)  Hyper-empathy as a narrative tactic: a “sharing” of other’s experiences (shifting into different POV’s) within first person, single-consciousness narration. IV. On the Road IN THE INTERSTICES OF CATASTROPHE/dystopia: simplicity, luxury, beauty, hope Resting at the San Luis Reservoir “Then, with hours of daylight left, we rested in enormous comfort and laziness, knowing we had the rest of today and all of tomorrow to do almost nothing.” (259-260) “I stared down the hill from our camp where just a glint of water was visible in the distance through the trees and bushes. The world is full of painful stories. Sometimes it seems as though there aren’t any other kind and I found myself thinking how beautiful that glint of water was through the trees.” (263)  The glint of water / the shimmer of hope On first seeing the Pacific Ocean. “Late today we came within sight of the ocean. None of us have ever seen it before, and we had to go closer, look at it, camp within sight and sound and smell of it … Sometimes we just stood and stared at it: the Pacific Ocean—the largest, deepest body of water on earth, almost half-a-world of water.” (204) / SWIMMING (206) At the beach in Santa Barbara : “If you turn your back on the burned portion which is baren and ugly, this is a beautiful place … now we lounged in the shade of pines and sycamores, enjoyed the sea breeze, rested, and talked. I wrote, fleshing out my journal notes for the week” (215-217)  A PRACTICE OF KEEPING SABBATH BY/WITH THE WATER {the sweetness of an interspersed day of re “Earthseed is being born right here on Highway 101 – on that portion of 101 that was once El Camino Real, the royal highway of California’s Spanish past. Now it’s a highway, a river of the poor. A river flooding north. I’ve come to think that I should be fishing that river even as a follow it’s current.” (223) ENTWINEMENT of human and environmental causation  POSITIVE: the ocean imparts peacefulness, perspective, diminution of mistrust/violence NEGATIVE: earthquake (and fire) compound/unleash social disintegration “Almost all of the smaller communities we’d passed were burning and swarming with scavengers. It was as though the quake had given yesterday’s quiet, plodding paupers permission to go animal and prey on anyone who still lives in a house.” (240)  IV. On the Road: An Archipelago of Minor Utopian Moments … Oases of Time, not just Place  Place clearly matters. Public shoreline is everything!  But what we get in the “sabbath-structure” is the heightened sweetness of an intermittent pause / rest / recreation in a context of exhausting labor and hyper-vigilance.  Our first temporal utopia, one that points us to the heterogenous character of experiential time. V. SETTLEMENT of ACORN: an isolated oasis {small, remote site of water in a desicated context Lauren: “We can build a community here,” I repeated. “It’s dangerous, sure, but hell, its dangerous everywhere, and the more people are packed together in cities, the more danger there is. This is a ridiculous place to build a community. It’s isolated, miles from everywhere with no decent road leading here, but for us, for now, it’s perfect.” (319) ACORN: the intentional community ECO-PRIMITIVIST, back to the land, privileging subsistence agriculture + handicraft over wage work Bankole: “I think, though that any serious money we make here will come from the land. Food is gold these days, and we can grow food here. We have guns to protect ourselves, so we can sell our crops in nearby towns or on the highway.” (320) Harry: “But there’s no work here!” “There’s nothing but work here, boy. Work, and a lot of cheap land. How cheap do you think the land will be up where you and the rest of the world are heading.” (322) Lauren: “There are no guarantees anywhere … But if we’re willing to work, our chances are good here. I’ve got some seed in my pack. We can buy more. What we have to do at this point is more like gardening than farming. Everything will have to be done by hand—composting, watering, weeding…” (321) Allie: “I didn’t think I would be dumb enough to say this, but yeah, I’ll stay. I want to build something, too. I never had a chance to build anything before.” (322) COMMUNITY RITUALS THAT ORGANIZE TIME: SYMBOLICALLY BURYING all their DEAD, an acorn for each “life commemorating life” A WEEKLY “BIBLE STUDY”: ”We read some verses and talked about Earthseed for a while this morning. It was a calming thing to do—almost like church… Even the new people joined in, asking questions, thinking aloud applying the verses to their experiences. (295) “So we become the crew of a modern underground railroad,” I said. Slavery again—even worse than my father thought, or at least sooner. He thought it would take a while.” (292) “Things are breaking down more and more.” I paused. “I’ll tell you, though, if we can convince ex-slaves that they can have freedom with us, no one will fight harder to keep it.” (292-3) WHO MAKES UP THE COMMUNITY: Interracial couples, mixed and/or orphaned children, ex-slaves, sharers, chosen kin ACORN as a destination for fugitives from American market “freedom” FINAL “QUIZ” / reflection (Part 1) What episode, moment, or conversation from Parable of the Sower is sticking with you? What idea and or question/problem will you be taking away from this novel? FINAL “QUIZ”/REFLECTION, Part II: Reflecting on what you’ve written above, write one short verse – like an “Earthseed” verse - that expresses your takeaway. [Bankole] nodded. “All right. But tell me, what do people have to do to be good members of an Earthseed Community.” A nice, door-opening question. “The essentials,” I answered, “are to learn to shape God with forethought, care, and work; to educate and benefit their community, their families, and themselves, and to contribute to the fulfillment of the Destiny.” “And why should people bother about the Destiny, farfetched as it is? What’s in it for them?” “A unifying, purposeful life here on Earth, and the hope of heaven for themselves and their children. A real heaven, not mythology or philosophy. A heaven that will be theirs to shape.” “Or a hell,” he said. His mouth twitched. “Human beings are good at creating hells for themselves even out of richness.” (261-262) BLACK PANTHER + IMPERIUM IN IMPERIO Each work stages a fundamental conflict between two rival leaders: two rival models of Black leadership and Black liberation…  EARTHSEED THEOLOGY, cont. A lot of people seem to believe in a big-daddy-God or a big-cop-God or a big- king-God. They believe in a kind of super-person. A few believe God is just another word for nature. And nature turns out to mean just about anything they happen not to understand or feel in control of. Some people say God is a spirit, a force, an ultimate reality. Ask seven people what all of that means and you’ll get seven different answers. So what is God? Just another name for whatever makes you feel special and protected? (15) … But what if that is all wrong? What if God is something else entirely? (16) … We do not worship God. We perceive and attend God. With forethought and work, We shape God. In the end, we yield to God. We adapt and endure, For we are Earthseed And God is Change. (17) “For whatever it’s worth, here’s what I believe. It took me a lot of time to understand it, then a lot more time with a dictionary and a thesaurus to say it just right—just the way it has to be. In the past year, it’s gone through twenty-five or thirty lumpy, incoherent rewrites. This is the right one, the true one. This is the one I keep coming back to: God is Power— Infinite, Irresistible, Inexorable, Indifferent. And yet, God is Pliable— Trickster, Teacher, Chaos, Clay. God exists to be shaped. God is Change. This is the literal truth. God can’t be resisted or stopped, but can be shaped and focused. This means that God is not to be prayed to. Prayers only … strengthen and focus [a] person’s resolve. If they’re used that way, they can help us in our only real relationship with God. They help us to shape God and to accept and work with the shapes that God imposes on us. God is power, and in the end, God prevails. But we can rig the game in our own favor if we understand that God exists to be shaped, and will be shaped, with or without our forethought, with our without our intent.” (25)  EARTHSEED THEOLOGY, cont. A victim of God may, We are all Godseed, but no more or Through learning adaption, less Become a partner of God, So than any other aspect of the All that you touch, A victim of God may, universe, You Change. Through forethought and Godseed is all there is—all that planning, Changes. Earthseed is all that All that you Change, Become a shaper of God. spreads Changes you. Or a victim of God may, Earthlife to new earths. The Through shortsightedness universe is The only lasting truth and fear, Godseed. Only we are Earthseed. Is Change. Remain God’s victim, And God’s plaything, Whytheis the universe? Destiny of God. Earthseed is to take God God’s prey. (31) To shape All successful life is root among Is Change. (79) the stars. (77- last phrase repeats 84, Adaptable, Why is God? Opportunistic, 85) To shape the universe. Tenacious, Interconnected, and (79 --“the only paradox, or bit of Fecund. illogic or circular reasoning – I can’t Understand this. get rid of it”) Use it. Shape God. (125) … and the exhilaration/triumph of SURVIVAL It’s been a horrible week. “We’ve taken both today and yesterday as rest days. We might take tomorrow as well. I need it whether the others do or not. We’re all sore and sick, in mourning and exhausted–yet triumphant. Odd to be triumphant. I think it’s because most of us are still alive. We are a harvest of survivors. But then, that’s what we’ve always been.” (295)