Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [39]

Keith looked around more than anyone as we rode. His ambition, if you could call it that, is to get out of the neighborhood and go to Los Angeles. He’s never too clear about what he’ll do there. He just wants to go to the big city and make big money. According to my father, the big city is a carcass covered with too many maggots. I think he’s right, though not all the maggots are in LA. They’re here, too. — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 39

Note

The chapter’s closing move: a borrowed metaphor (the father’s carcass-and-maggots) adopted, then turned inward, so that the judgment lands on the neighborhood rather than the city. Lauren’s correction — ‘They’re here, too’ — reclassifies home as part of the same rot, which is the bleakest sentence she has written yet and she writes it without emphasis.