Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [251]

We hear so much gunfire, day and night, single shots and odd bursts of automatic weapons fire, even occasional blasts from heavy artillery or explosions from grenades or bigger bombs. We worry most about those last things, but they’re rare. … The thing is, we hear gunfire so much that we don’t hear it. A couple of the Baiter kids said they heard shooting, but as usual, they paid no attention to it. It was outside, beyond the wall, after all. Most of us heard nothing except the rain. — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 251

Note

The sentence ‘we hear gunfire so much that we don’t hear it’ states the chapter’s real horror: not the violence but the adaptation to it. The closing image — ‘Most of us heard nothing except the rain’ — swaps the gunfire for weather, and the calm register is what makes it devastating.