WEEK TWELVE: Dawn

Week Twelve: Dawn

For week twelve, I read Octavia Butler’s Dawn. The story opens with near total destruction of the human race, caused by a nuclear war. An alien race known as the Oankali have picked up the few humans left alive and keep them safe while they rebuild the human’s world. Lilith, the protagonist of the story, has been chosen as a leader-type by the Oankali to guide the other people into a new frontier. The alien beings, however, demand that in return for the rebuilding of Earth, the humans inter-breed with them in order to create a stronger species fit to survive in the new setting.

Butler makes us question our place in the present on a scale much larger than just here on Earth. The reader comes to realize that should other beings come into contact with us, there will be a give and take. The relationships that will form between life forms of different backgrounds will be far more complicated than we might imagine, yet Butler provides us with some thoughts. In Dawn, if we (the humans) are going to survive through this end times, then we have to agree to the terms of the Oankali, despite how repulsive and complicated that process may seem. 

The novel also forces us far out of our comfort zone when it comes to how we think about life in general. Relationships, sexual orientations, and ways of life as we know it mean nothing to the Oankali. The juxtaposition of the two life forms interacting puts things into perspective. I think Butler may have been trying to make a statement to the audience about how meaningless the labels we cast on each other are in the greater scheme of things. 

Butler covers a lot of ground in this one story, and doesn’t hesitate to discuss allegorically issues that we are facing today. These issues include sexism, bigotry, homophobia, rape, slavery, and war (only to name a few). While the humans have problems, so too do the Oankali, and becomes up to the beings to decide if they can come together so that both can survive.