Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [457]

That was the end of their talk. I lay in the dark for a long time, thinking about what they had said. Cory was right again. Dad might get hurt. He might get killed. I don’t know how to think about that. I can write about it, but I don’t feel it. On some deep level, I don’t believe it. I guess I’m as good at denial as anyone. … So Cory is right, but it doesn’t matter. And Dad is right, but he doesn’t go far enough. God is Change, and in the end, God prevails. But God exists to be shaped. It isn’t enough for us to just survive, limping along, playing business as usual while things get worse and worse. If that’s the shape we give to God, then someday we must become too weak—too poor, too hungry, too sick—to defend ourselves. Then we’ll be wiped out. — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 457

Note

The chapter’s real turn is here, and it happens as a dialectical move the narrator performs on her own parents: both are right and both are insufficient. Her private theology — ‘God exists to be shaped’ — is derived directly from the argument she just overheard, converting domestic fear into doctrine. Note the honesty of ‘I can write about it, but I don’t feel it,’ a self-diagnosis of numbness that the reader has to hold against the grief she can only render in writing.