Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [253]

I mean, I love it. It’s home. These are my people. But I hate it. It’s like an island surrounded by sharks—except that sharks don’t bother you unless you go in the water. But our land sharks are on their way in. It’s just a matter of how long it takes for them to get hungry enough. — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 253

Note

The shark simile gets dismantled and rebuilt in three moves: the received image, the correction (‘sharks don’t bother you unless you go in the water’), then the inversion that turns the walled neighborhood from island-sanctuary into bait. ‘Land sharks’ is a grim little coinage, and hunger as the clock is the book’s whole economics in one image.