Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [577]

I never liked my brother much. I hate him now for what he’s doing to the family—for what he’s doing to my father. I hate him. Damn, I hate him. — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 577

Note

Worth keeping for how the rhetoric degrades on purpose: the sentence repeats its own verb and cannot advance past it, and the final ‘Damn, I hate him’ is a breakdown rather than a conclusion. The dash-intrusion specifying the father is the emotional center — the hate is not for the theft, the gun, or the beatings, but for the damage to Dad, who sleeps in his office. It also marks a shift in Lauren’s usual analytic voice into something she can’t frame or manage.