Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [2202]

“Harry,” I said, “I’ve known you all my life. You’re the closest thing to a brother that I have left. You aren’t really thinking about leaving, are you?” It wasn’t the world’s best argument. He had been both cousin and lover to Joanne, and he’d let her go when he could have gone with her. — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 2202

Note

The narrator undercuts her own appeal in the same breath she makes it: Lauren’s guilt-tripping (‘the closest thing to a brother’) is flagged by her own retrospective verdict — ‘It wasn’t the world’s best argument’ — and then explained by a fact that indicts her tactic. The self-auditing afterthought is the craft move: it makes her unreliable about her own rhetoric while leaving the plea standing.