Cycles and Chaos: Differing Treatments of Violence and Death in Eden Robinson's Monkey Beach and Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower
This 8-page undergraduate paper compares the way violence and death is treated in Eden Robinson's Monkey Beach, and Octave E. Butler's Parable of the Sower. This essay uses the two primary sources, to examine the way the themes are incorporated into the novels and the ways in which the themes of violence and death inform the content and structures of the two texts. This essay concludes that both Eden Robinson's Monkey Beach and Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower present the twin themes of violence and death in fascinating ways. In both texts, violence and death are closely related, as numerous violent deaths in both texts suggest that death is a form of violence in the lives of both Lisa and Lauren. Robinsons text, however, includes loss as an essential component of a cycle, which includes loss, violence, and death in a repeated pattern throughout the life of Lisa, the protagonist and narrator of Robinsons text. In contrast, Butler presents a bleak vision of violence, in which random acts of cruelty are chaotic and largely unpredictable. There seems to be little pattern in the violence, which occurs in Laurens reality. These essential differences in depictions of violence and death inform the ways that narrative structure is addressed in both texts. That is, since Lisas narrative presents violence and death as a cycle, then her narrative takes on the form of a personal history. Simply, Lisa must re-examine and revisit the violence and deaths in her past to deal with her current loss of her brother. In contrast, Laurens focus on violence as random and chaotic creates a narrative based on a journey forward. Rather than a re-exploration of the past, her narrative is a reaching forward, or the building of an order out of chaos. Further, just as different approaches to violence and death inform narrative structure, the differences in the treatment of the theme also inform ideas about the origin of violence. That is, just as Lisas vision of violence and death is cyclical, like the seasons, so she seems to associate violence with natural causes. That is, she sees the earth and the sea as main causes of violence. Lauren, on the other hand, sees chaotic and random violence as stemming from the individuals living outside walled communities, and thus she associated violence with human greed and the unpredictable nature of human wants.
