Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [383]

“Why not. Get them started on the right foot. You could even put together a class for older kids and adults. Something like Mr. Ibarra’s wood carving class, Mrs. Baiter’s needlework classes, and young Robert Hsu’s astronomy lectures. People are bored. They wouldn’t mind another informal class now that they’ve lost the Yannis television. If you can think of ways to entertain them and teach them at the same time, you’ll get your information out. And all without making anyone look down.” — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 383

Note

An abstract problem (how to warn people without frightening them) gets solved by a concrete inventory of the community’s actual life — named neighbors, named crafts, a lost TV. The accumulation of specific classes is what makes the strategy credible; the sentence ‘People are bored’ does the persuasive work in two words.