WOW, I really enjoyed reading Octavia Butler’s Dawn (1987). Of all the novels we’ve read for this course, Dawn has the most compelling narrative voice and feels the most current, though it was written over thirty years ago and is predicated on nuclear winter. Perhaps this is because the novel primarily deals with themes as broad as all of humanity.
Continuing my thoughts from last week, I’ve found that the theme of humanity’s dominance threatened by the Oankali has only grown with the addition of Lilith’s “nursery.” In the isolation of the nursery, separated from the Oankali, the remaining humans build coalitions against the unseen captor and, by extension, Lilith. They don’t want to recognize that there might be something greater than themselves, something that could help them, indeed something without which they will not survive. Fed by the narrative of human exceptionalism, it’s almost impossible to acknowledge the existence or superiority of another intelligent species that surpasses our own in many ways. This is a factor that the Oankali seem unable to grasp, though Lilith warns that the humans will kill her and reject the Oankali. Joseph’s murder at the end of the novel is a fulfilling of this prophecy; he is different, inhuman, and therefore a threat to the notion of masculine and human superiority.
Curt saw the flesh healing. He believed Joe wasn’t human… I’m more different than he was… Why didn’t Curt kill me?
Dawn by Octavia Butler
Feminist Science Fictions 