Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [542]

Keith answered and answered and answered, but the answers never seemed to make much sense to Dad. “I ain’t no baby no more,” he wept. Or, “I wanted to show you. Just wanted to show you! You always let Lauren do stuff!” Or, “I’m a man! I shouldn’t be hiding in the house, hiding in the wall; I’m a man!” — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 542

Note

The triple ‘answered and answered and answered’ makes a loop of the interrogation, and the quoted fragments are all the same sentence wearing different clothes — each one an insistence on manhood staged as defiance of a mother’s lesson. Keith’s need to be seen is finally aimed at Lauren, the sibling he resents for being trusted; the boy’s whole tragedy is compressed into ‘hiding in the wall.’