Upon reflection, the Earthseed verses scattered throughout Parable of the Sower remind me of the Tao te Ching. Rhetorically they’re very similar, although the content is extremely different. The Tao te Ching is a religious text that was (debatably) written by Lao Tzu in the 6th century B.C. that influenced Buddhism and Chinese religion in general. Its subject is the Way that exists but doesn’t and it details how one should attempt to achieve enlightenment and reach understanding and knowledge, but not. It’s very dense and packed with contradictory and confusing terms. I think that Lauren refers to God, a term she uses interchangably with Change, in a similar manner that Lao Tzu refers to the Way.
The Tao te Ching is separated into eighty-one sections that highlight different but related aspects of the concept. Likewise, Earthseed is separated into different verses throughout the novel that also speak to various concepts of the religion. In both texts the phrases tend to be short and to the point. They are designed to introduce an idea, say what it is, and sometimes say what it isn’t. Earthseed is less novel because it uses terms and aspects of a popular religion and alters them a bit to conform to her own ideas. The diction in Lauren’s verses is adament and almost desperate; they repeat points time after time. Lao Tzu’s text simply states its observations and leaves it for the reader to decide what to take away from it, whereas Lauren tries to persuade the reader. Although they are inherently different, Earthseed’s relationship to the Tao te Ching is notable because of the similarities and Butler’s confession in the interview at the end of the novel that Buddhism influenced the concepts and that she drew on the simplistic form of the Tao te Ching (something I read as I composed this last sentence).