105 pages • 3 hours read
Dawn
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BetaPart 1, Chapters 4-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “Womb”
Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary
Jdahya begins to move around the room, rather than just staying still in one corner as he had when Lilith first encountered him. At one point, Jdahya goes into the bathroom and comes out carrying a ripe banana, the first recognizable food Lilith has seen: “It was literally the best food she had tasted in two hundred and fifty years” (27).
Jdahya removes his jacket, and Lilith sees there are tentacles all over his body. To her surprise, she gets used to the sight quickly and merely thinks they make him look even more like a bizarre sea creature. Lilith asks if any of the tentacles can sting; Jdahya replies that all of them can though he would never sting her. Jdahya has been in isolation rooms before with humans, some of whom tried to attack him, but he did not sting them, either: His job is to keep the humans alive. Only the ooloi can sting without killing.
Jdahya gives Lilith an orange, which she breaks into pieces to share with him. They sit close together and eat the orange. Lilith realizes that some of Jdahya’s tentacles are touching her. She jumps but does not move away.
Lilith is finally taken out of the room by Jdahya so she can meet his family.
Part 1, Chapter 5 Summary
Jdahya touches one of his tentacles to the wall of the room, and a dark spot appears, widening until it becomes a door. The hole in the wall looks like the writhing skin of a living creature, making Lilith ask what it is. Jdahya answers, “Flesh. More like mine than yours. […] It’s…the ship.” (30) Lilith thus learns that the ship is alive.
They step out of the room, and Lilith is amazed by the large expanse she sees. There are trees with fruit hanging from them, open fields, far-off hills, animal-like creatures in the distance. Lilith is so startled that she steps back into her room. Jdahya urges her out and leads her away; the hole closes back up. Lilith can now see that she had been held in a tiny part of an enormous tree. Everything in her room was alive, Jdahya tells her. The food she ate had been produced from a branch growing from the tree. Lilith mentions that the food had been tasteless; Jdahya replies, “But it’s kept you very healthy” (31). In fact, it has kept her from developing cancer, to which she is genetically predisposed.
Lilith asks when she will be returned to Earth; Jdahya replies that she is not ready. Her group will be the first humans to return once they’re taught how to survive. Lilith will live with Jdahya’s family and learn how to survive without modern technology; in turn, she will Awaken other humans and pass on these survival skills.
Jdahya tells Lilith that his people have increased humans’ natural immunities. Lilith remarks that she doesn’t like having things done to her that she does not understand. Jdahya says it has all been done to ensure humans’ survival on Earth.
As they walk along, Jdahya says that his people grew the ship and are in the process of growing another: “We’re like asexual animals in that way, but we divide into three: Dinso to stay on Earth until it is ready to leave generations form now; Toaht to leave in this ship; and Akjai to leave in the new ship” (35). Jdahya and his family are Dinso and will therefore stay on Earth.
Lilith sees many groups of Oankali, but no humans. None of the Oankali wear clothing, so Lilith assumes Jdahya wore his for her benefit. Lilith asks if Jdahya can return to his home world; he replies that it no longer exists. Lilith remarks that humans had wanted to travel through space, and Jdahya tells her that that would never have happened, that the human race was fatally flawed: Humans’ fatally “mismatched” characteristics are intelligence and hierarchical behavior, which together caused the destruction of the Earth.
The pair arrives at Jdahya’s home, and Lilith realizes how dependent she has become on Jdahya. She feels angry and wants to know what the Oankali want from humans, in exchange for having saved them. He replies that they will trade genetic material through what humans would call genetic engineering. The Oankali, to survive, must continually renew themselves through evolution: The ooloi—the Oankali’s third gender—possess special organs to mix Oankali genes between individuals. The ooloi see great potential for mixing human genes with Oankali to improve their species. Thus, human offspring will be born with Oankali genes and vice versa. Lilith is horrified by this.
Jdahya offers—though it profoundly goes against his species’ norms—to let Lilith die by suicide by touching his stinging tentacles since she is so adamant that she does not want to take part in this genetic exchange. She tries to touch him, but cannot bring herself to do so.
Part 1, Chapters 4-5 Analysis
In these chapters, Lilith is freed from her confinement and learns about the true nature of her surroundings. At first, it is too much of a change: “She was retreating into her cage—like a zoo animal that had been shut up for so long that the cage had become home” (30). Lilith is overwhelmed and fascinated by what is outside her room. It’s clear that this is not Earth, but the explanations of where she is are puzzling to her. Lilith learns of the ship’s intelligence and its symbiotic relationship with the Oankali. She thus learns that because the ship can no longer survive on their planet, neither can the Oankali.
These chapters show the developing relationship between Lilith and Jdahya and Otherness as a Social Construct. Lilith has changed considerably in her attitude toward Jdahya. When he removes his jacket so that she can see there are tentacles all over his body, she is not horrified: “To her surprise, she got used to these quickly. They were merely ugly” (28). As they move through groups of other Oankali, Lilith finds herself keeping close to Jdahya, seeking comfort in him holding her hand. This foreshadows her relationship with Nikanj and her hybrid procreation later in the novel.
In these chapters, Lilith learns that her purpose on the ship is to teach other humans to coexist with the Oankali, highlighting the theme of Women of Color in Leadership Roles. Human men will challenge her authority as a representative for humanity throughout the novel, unable to shed the stereotypes that led to sexism and racism before Earth’s nuclear war. It is now 215 years later, and Earth has changed considerably. Without technology, humans will need to build a new civilization with only rudimentary tools. For the human race to survive, they will also need to accept the Oankali, as Lilith is learning to do. It is her capacity for tolerance and open-mindedness rather than her desire to dominate that makes her the best choice for leading humanity in this new era.
The Human Desire for Freedom is central to this section, as Lilith discovers the nature of the Oankali and why they value humans enough to save them. The very characteristics that doomed humanity to nuclear war and self-destruction, the combination of intelligence and hierarchical thinking, are seen as valuable to the Oankali, who are not naturally hierarchical. To prevent their species from dying out, the Oankali have always incorporated the genetic material from primitive species in “trades”: “We acquire new life—seek it, investigate it, manipulate it, sort it, use it. We carry the drive to do this in […] every cell of our bodies” (41). The ooloi are interested in the human ability to grow cancers, as they see the potential for using that genetic code to make desirable changes to the Oankali.
Lilith is completely outraged at the idea of humans mixing their genes with Oankali, creating mutant humans. She cannot bear the thought, causing Jdahya to offer to kill her so that she will not have to participate in this evolution of the human species. This directly shows how Jdahya has come to care deeply for Lilith, as this offer goes against his ingrained objection to taking a life, in order to spare her suffering.
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