Undergraduate Fellowship in Digital Humanities (UFDH)

The purpose of this project is to make Parable of the Sower accessible to an audience in a different medium, while also bring together the element of actual California fires. Using spatial storytelling with the Knight Labs StoryMaps tool, 20 fires from both archival California data and the novel were compiled; text and visual elements were included. Further analysis on Parable was conducted, synthesizing the discourse on the genres under which the novel falls under and underscoring the environmental themes found in the novel. While the StoryMap does not offer a significant comparison between actual fires and Parable, it fulfills its purpose as a spatial retelling of the novel. Traditional literary analysis reveals how Butler's environmental themes work as both the foreground and the backdrop to Lauren's journey, underscoring the relationship between humans and nature.