Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [2072]

Mora stepped aside. He didn’t touch me or offer help. Sweet guy. … I left Mora, went over to Allie, and walked with her for a while. Her grief and resentment were like a wall against me—against everyone, I suppose, but I was the one bothering her at the moment. And I was alive and her sister was dead, and her sister was the only family she had left, and why didn’t I just get the hell out of her face? — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 2072

Note

Butler renders empathy as something invasive rather than noble: Lauren feels Allie’s hostility as a physical barrier and then slides into Allie’s own interior voice, adopting her accusatory second person (‘why didn’t I just get the hell out of her face?’). The compressed three-beat ‘and’ chain mimics the way grief’s logic piles up without punctuation for breath. Lauren’s reach for empathy is involuntary, which is exactly what makes it costly.