Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [381]

I thought he would yell at me or punish me. His voice had had that warning edge to it that my brothers and I had come to call the rattle—as in a rattlesnake’s warning sound. If you pushed him past the rattle, you were in trouble. If he called you “son” or “daughter” you were close to trouble. — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 381

Note

A family private code rendered so compactly that it doubles as characterization: the father is dangerous precisely in the way a rattlesnake is — by warning first. The escalation is staged in three moves (rattle, then ‘son’/‘daughter’, then trouble), and the metaphor is earned by the physical sound rather than asserted.