Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [353]

“Do you think our world is coming to an end?” Dad asked, and with no warning at all, I almost started crying. I had all I could do to hold it back. What I thought was, “No, I think your world is coming to an end, and maybe you with it.” That was terrible. I hadn’t thought about it in such a personal way before. I turned and looked out a window until I felt calmer. When I faced him again, I said. “Yes. Don’t you?” — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 353

Note

A turn built on the pronoun. The minister’s ‘our world’ is met, silently, by the daughter’s separation of ‘your world’ from hers — and the realization that the pronoun does personal damage is what nearly breaks her. The staging is exact: she buys composure by looking out a window, the same gesture of looking outward that structures the whole chapter, then returns a one-word answer and a counter-question that refuses his framing without repeating her heretical version of it.