Chapters 22-25 Summary

Bankole reveals that he’s traveling to his sister’s land in Northern California. Lauren suggests they begin the first Earthseed community there.

Four more members join the group. Emery Solis, a young woman of multiracial heritage, escaped debt slavery to an agricultural corporation with her nine-year-old daughter, Tori. Grayson Mora, a Latino man who was also a slave, joins with his small daughter Doe. Lauren learns that Emery, Tori, Grayson and Doe all have hyperempathy syndrome as well. Emery says that bosses prefer slaves who have the condition.

Crises continue on the road. When the group is attacked by pyro addicts, Jill dies saving Tori. The travelers almost suffocate from the smoke of a nearby fire.

By September 26, 2027, they’ve arrived at Bankole’s land, but the buildings have been burned down and Bankole’s sister and her family are dead. The group debates whether to stay, worried the arsonists will return. Each member agrees to remain as part of Lauren’s Earthseed community, though some, like Harry and Bankole, have doubts.

To honor Bankole’s family and others the group members have lost, they plant trees with acorns Lauren brought on the journey. They decide to call the new community Acorn.

The book ends with a parable, or brief moral story, from the biblical Gospel according to Luke. Called the “Parable of the Sower,” the story describes a sower who planted seed in several places. Some seeds were eaten by birds, some died without water, and some were choked by thorns. But other seeds grew, thrived and bore fruit.

Chapters 22-25 Analysis

Unique vulnerabilities among individuals are shown to strengthen a community in important ways. Emery and Grayson have survived extreme circumstances, and their fear fuels determination and resilience. The children represent a future for the community: Lauren recognizes children as the most valuable resource in the Earthseed compound.

But since characters with hyperempathy can be easily wounded, they’re easier to control and exploit. As Lauren and Emery notice, their condition makes them valuable to employers who treat workers as commodities. The industrialization of food production and the impersonal labor practices of profit-driven corporations combine to create a return to debt slavery.

Black characters immediately recognize the parallels to slavery in pre-Civil War America. But American debt slavery continued unofficially for decades after the Civil War, well into the 1940s. In the system known as sharecropping, Black farmers borrowed land and property from white landowners, who charged so much rent that the farmers rarely profited. If farmers fell into debt, they weren’t permitted to leave.

In a world where people in power can’t be trusted, Lauren makes self-sufficiency a priority at Acorn. This means trial and error. Acorn is an experiment, and the final chapter leaves the community’s fate open-ended. But its creation on recently burned property implies a cycle of creation and rebirth after destruction. The name Acorn signals the community members’ hope that they can sustain life after loss and devastation, like the oak trees that grow acorns.