Dawn

Our hierarchical tendencies are older and all too often, they drive our intelligence – that is, they drive us to use our intelligence to try to dominate one another... Tolerance, like any aspect of peace, is forever a work in progress, never completed, and, if we're as intelligent as we like to think we are, never abandoned.

-Octavia E. Butler, "Essay On Racism." 

Text

Dawn by Octavia E. Butler is the first novel in the three-part Xenogenesis series, also known as Lilith’s Brood. The novel was first published in 1987. The text is available at the Internet Archive for those with print disabilities https://archive.org/details/dawn0000butl

Overview

If they had been able to perceive and solve their problem, they might have been able to avoid destruction. Of course, they too would have to remember to reexamine themselves periodically.

-Jdhaya, an Oankali.

Atomic Effects at Hiroshima

Butler came from a Christian background, Baptist to be specific, during President Reagan’s term. Both of those influences are clear in Dawn. Butler tells the story of Lilith, akin to her biblical namesake, who is isolated from the human community in part because of a nuclear disaster—a real threat in the 1980s when the book was written. Inspired by the political affairs of Butler’s time, this speculative fiction hypothesizes how human folly (social hierarchy and a willingness to kill) could result in the annihilation of the human race. The threat of nuclear war is not unknown to the present and real world. Lilith struggles to find a sense of belonging with both humans and Oankali, creating the theme of isolation and community in the book. Dawn also presented subthemes such as consent, which humans were denied; transformation, the catalyst for the book’s conflict; violence, which starts and ends the book; power, which the Oankali held; and the chance for a new beginning, the Oankali’s gift to humanity. The story, foretelling a possible future for humanity, sans the alien intervention of course, warns that unless we make changes, we will destroy ourselves.

Analysis

Dawn tells the story, following the destruction of the Earth, of a woman saved by an alien species, the Oankali, for the purpose of ensuring both the aliens’ and humanity’s survival. The Oankali rely on interspecies breeding, through genetic manipulation, for the continuation of their people. They were overdue for such a transaction when they came upon the humans who needed help restoring the Earth that they had made inhabitable through nuclear warfare.

The protagonist's name, Lilith, refers to a prominent character in the Judeo-Christian creation story. Lilith was the first woman created and refused to submit to and procreate with the first man, Adam. Her nature is debated. Some scholars present her as angelic for her strength, autonomy and marriage to an archangel, while others think she was demonic for refusing Adam to instead produce demon heirs with a fallen angel and hating the children of Adam and Eve – humans. A reader can argue which version they think the protagonist alludes to in Dawn. Like Pentateuch-Lilith, she consorts with and will produce children with non-humans – the aliens. Both representations of Lilith are locked out of Eden (in the case of Dawn, the new Earth and home of the humans), and she becomes the mother of a non-human species. One can likewise argue whether the Oankali (aliens) are evil or not. Some readers may interpret them as demons because they take humans hostage, deny them their God-given free will and seduce them from what is natural to them. Other readers may see them as angels because they save humanity and give them back their Earth. I find both to be true in part. The Oankali are not entirely altruistic in that they provided aid because they need something in return. They did, however, save humanity from genocide. They provide a trade: doing to humans what we have historically done to other humans and animals, i.e., eugenics, lab testing and the involuntary detainment of the “insane.”

The theme of isolation and community is prominent in the story. Lilith is first isolated by the loss of her human family on Earth and then completely isolated in her first alien quarters. It almost drives her mad because humans are social beings, as Lilith tries to explain to the Oankali on numerous occasions. Lilith is then welcomed into the Oankali society and given a new community, but she is still isolated from humans, resulting in new distress. When she is given her desire of a human community, she is then separated physically from the Oankali and emotionally from the humans. She is no longer quite human, but neither is she Oankali. She fits nowhere.

Community is further presented when the awakened humans immediately form cliques based on shared politics. By the end of the book, Lilith is forcefully impregnated by the Oankali with another human’s sperm. The biological father of her baby is named Joseph, one of the humans that Lilith guided through orientation for a return to Earth and the Oankali’s second choice to be leader of the awakened humans. He later became her lover, ally and the second human, after Lilith, to undergo genetic modification. This pregnancy might give her the opportunity to create a new family/community in which her genetic uniqueness does not isolate her, as the child would be genetically and biologically similar to her. At the very least, the child would be more like her than either Oankali or humans could ever be and, growing up in this new world, will be much better assimilated with the Oankali than Lilith is.

Xenophobia and xenophilia are reoccurring subthemes in Dawn that cause both segregation and creation of community. Fear of “the other” (xenophobia) has been a major cause of segregation amongst humans. This prejudice is demonstrated in the awakened humans’ visceral reaction of terror towards the Oankali. Here is a preliminary interaction between Joseph, a human, and Nikanj, an Oankali:  

I don’t understand why the sight of you should scare me so,” Joseph said. He did not sound frightened. “You don’t look that threatening. Just… very different.” “Different is threatening to most species,” Nikanj answered. “Different is dangerous. It might kill you. That was true to your animal ancestors and your nearest animal relatives. And it’s true for you.                                                        

For all their social superiority and mission to find and interbreed with beings who are “other,” even the Oankali demonstrate xenophobia through their initial fear of humans. This might suggest that segregation of human communities as a result of racism will be a difficult issue for the real world to overcome. Xenophilia is likewise present throughout the book in the humans’ eventual however reluctant desire for intimacy with the aliens and the Oankali’s primary motive being interspecies breeding for the creation of a single human-Oankali species.

Humans are portrayed as being both a cancer to the Earth and themselves. Butler, through the Oankali, points out that, in order for our species to survive, we must evolve away from social hierarchy and to come together, both culturally and biologically. To that end, is it not interesting that the Oankali choose a Black femme to restart the world, one of the lowest strati of the present social hierarchy of today’s society?

Lillith by John Collier. The artist depicts her, as do most artists’ renditions, as white.

Further, Lilith is also queer because she has sexual relations with a non-human being that is neither male nor female (gender-neutral). A leader of humanity who is queer, a person of color, and female would certainly be a social reset. I think the Oankali focused on minority individuals such as Lilith and Joseph to lead the new race of humanity because having the rescued humans look towards such characters as their leader might prevent the Caucasian history of racial prejudice to continue. The Oankali chose Lilith, not just because of her will to live and ability to adapt, but because she would be less likely to perpetuate intolerance towards minorities and people who are “other”—white male supremacy.

This then presents another important subtheme of the text, transformation. That is, transformation into a single community where there is no more alien versus human, or nation against nation but one new cohesive species. The premise of the book is that humanity, because of a genetic predisposition towards hierarchical separation and willingness to kill, destroys itself. This acts as catalyst for the Oankali to rescue the surviving humans with the intention of modifying both themselves and humans to create something new. The only way for either species to survive was to merge and become a new people. As the Oankali Jdahya tells her, “[y]our people will change. Your young will be more like ours and ours more like you.” Throughout the book, Lilith and later Joseph undergo genetic adjustments to make them into something less like their original selves, creating a small and therefore very isolated and shunned set of people. The Oankali explain to Lilith that there were characteristics intrinsic to human nature that ensured their demise and that the only way to prevent another apocalypse is to move beyond this instinct. This lesson seems to be the Octavia Butler’s inspiration for writing the book. Dawn tells of an end to humanity if it continues its current path of war and segregation created by intolerance. The only recourse, then, is evolution. Jdaya promises Lilith, "You'll begin again. We'll put you in areas that are clean of radioactivity and history. You will become something other than you were.” The Oankali-human alliance would leave their new species free of the human hierarchical tendencies that lead to strife between peoples.

Critical thinking questions

• How does the presentation of themes like xenophobia in this book relate to racism and other kinds of separatism and animosity between groups of people in the real world? Does this make you view the effects of prejudice with new perspective?

• The novel acknowledges that practices like eugenics, involuntary sterilization of and genetic testing on people of color have been practiced by humans, and yet the awakened were horrified when the Oankali decided to do the same to them. How do you think that our othering of minority groups allows us to validate practices like these?

• As in most of her books, Octavia Butler pushes boundaries of sexuality and gender, longstanding causes of ostracism. When Butler wrote Dawn, ideas like gender non-conformity (GNC) and gender non-binarism were neither well known nor widely accepted in our predominantly heteronormative society. In Dawn, Octavia presents the gender neutral Ooloi and presents the humans with a new world where they must accept this gender diversity as a part of their new social order. As gender non-conformity and gender fluidity become more noticeable in the 21^st century, how has the book impacted the way you interact with people of non-normative genders and sexuality and whether you welcome or ostracize them?
• Octavia Butler does an amazing job at creating complex characters. Do you perceive the Oankali as savior or jailer, good or evil? Do you think that creating community is always the best goal? For example, were the feelings of animosity and betrayal expressed by the characters that rejected Lilith justifiable or understandable? What kind of barriers might exist in creating a positive, healthy community?
• In terms of social norms, human and Oankoli society are polar opposites. While the Oaskoli are not perfect, their society is built on harmony, empathy and equality. Does their culture present any solutions for the human condition?
• In the book, humans were locked up in solitary confinement, in their pods and cells during interrogation, and in “gen pop”. Later they will be further controlled by the Oankali on Earth, for their own good. In all of these cases, the Oankloli were in charge, which created a divide of controlled captive and jailer. How has the human response to this captivity made you think of incarceration and the prison system where “criminals” are held apart from the rest of society? What, if anything, does this isolation and rigid control suggest about the potential impact of the prison system and the relationship it creates between prisoners, law enforcement officers and the rest of the public without proper rehabilitation of released prisoners?

• Without the intervention of aliens, how can humanity overcome its inclination to isolate themselves into individual communities based on every difference we can find between us? How might we create a cohesive and cooperative community? How do we overcome intolerance of the “other” – xenophobia?

Extension activity

Choose one of the following:

1. Identify marginalized people within your community and find ways to make them feel involved with and cared for by the wider community. An easy place to start could be volunteering for engagement activities in a nursing home or at a food pantry within your immediate community
2. Become an activist through outreach. People in detention facilities and prisons are isolated from the rest of society. Consider participating in efforts that help individuals like these feel less alone. Black and Pink is one prison abolition group with a focus on LGTBQ and HIV-positive inmates that enables volunteers to become pen pals to the incarcerated, offering emotional support.

Other novels in the Xenogenesis series

Adulthood Rites

In this sequel to Dawn, humanity’s future intertwines with that of the alien Oankali through Akin, the first true human-Oankali hybrid. Born with extraordinary abilities, Akin must navigate his unique identity and decide the fate of both species as they coexist on a transformed Earth.

Imago

The final book in the series follows Jodahs, a human-Oankali hybrid who matures into the first ooloi (a third gender of the alien Oankali species, capable of manipulating genetic material to create hybrids and ensure genetic diversity). As Jodahs seeks to find mates among human resisters, he faces the challenge of bridging the gap between species and ensuring the survival of both humanity and the Oankali.

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