Chapters 1-4

 The first four chapters in Parable of the Sower give us a sense of the setting and characters by describing a few events through Lauren’s eyes. She also suffers from hyperempathy, which makes things interesting in the dystopia they live in, where unrest has made it dangerous to travel unarmed in unprotected areas. Luckily, Lauren lives in a walled neighborhood, which is generally safe from crazy people. Additionally, most people are religious and make dangerous trips to church, so religion will obviously be a major theme in this book. At the start of every chapter, we see “verses”, which talk a lot about change and peoples’ relationships to God. The walled community that Lauren lives in does not experience that much change, so maybe something bad will happen and some of Laurens’ neighbors will become a “victim of God” and others will become a “shaper of God”.

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