Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [521]

Most upsetting to me, though, there were a few more rag, stick, cardboard, and palm frond shacks along the way into the hills along River Street. There always seem to be more. They’ve never bothered us beyond begging and cursing, but they always stare so. It gets harder to ride past them. They’re living skeletons, some of them. Skin and bones and a few teeth. They eat whatever they can find up there. — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 521

Note

The list of building materials (rag, stick, cardboard, palm frond) does the work of description without a single adjective of judgment; the drift into fragments — ‘Skin and bones and a few teeth’ — mimics a gaze that can’t stop looking. ‘They’ve never bothered us beyond begging and cursing’ registers the narrator’s residual guilt at her own fear, and ‘They eat whatever they can find up there’ ends on a clause that avoids saying the obvious.