Octavia Butler’s “Dawn” was all in all, a great read. It’s a story about humanity being saved and given a second chance at life thanks to, as the book’s blurb describes it, a “seemingly benevolent alien race”. It was well written, interesting, and fun to follow along. As much as I enjoyed it though, there were definitely things that unsettled me from the human perspective. I remember being particularly intrigued and concerned (more so concerned) with Lilith’s treatment at the very beginning of the story. She stated that she would slowly drift into and out of consciousness in a ‘small, dimly lit, doorless and windowless cubicle’ devoid of any outside contact except for a faceless voice that wouldn’t interact or communicate with her unless it needed an answer to a question. While Lilith was there, she was kept in the dark (both literally and figuratively) and the only thing she was aware of was the fact that her family was dead, there was a terrible war amongst humanity, and that her ‘captors’ kept on putting her to sleep at seemingly random intervals.
Later on in the story though, her ‘captors’ would be soon identified as humanities saviors, an extraterrestrial species known as the Oankali. A species of gene traders with living ships and advanced technology far beyond any means of our own, that excel in biological modifications. It was because of these abilities that Oankali were able to not only keep Lilith along with a handful of humans alive for over 200 years but also somewhat restore what was left of earth after humanity waged war upon itself. The Oankali that had told us all of this was named ‘Kaaltediinjdahya lel Kahguyaht aj Dinso’ or Jdahya for short. He was kind enough to inform our protagonist of most of which transpired while she was asleep, he was also the one who told Lilith on page 15 “that they believed that there was a consensus among humans to die together” and that this was the only reason why the Oankali didn’t get involved with our war in the first place. It wasn’t there place to disturb a species choice to commit mass suicide (we also find out from him that such an event has occurred before which is absolutely unthinkable to me), and that the very thought or possibility of warring with one’s own species to the point of their own extinction, was unthinkable to them. It’s also from him on page 35, that we find that while Lilith, along the rest of humanity, was put to sleep the Oolai (also Oankali) “strengthened our immune systems and increased our general resistance to diseases” and have “seen to it that we’ll have a chance to live on our earth – not just die on it”.
I find nothing wrong with how the Oankali originally saved humanity, while I may disagree with how they went about some things, they did do it to save a species that could have possibly went entirely extinct without outside intervention. What caused me to become disturbed with their actions, or find an issue was they did not tell us of any of this information when they had the chance. They didn’t know anything about us, so I do not find fault with their earlier actions because of that, but they did question us and continued to learn from us for over two centuries, so at that point I believe they should know how the possible side effects of some of their actions. One particular issue that come to mind would be with Lilith’s description of her experience in the “cubicle” they kept her in, to me it’s a wonder she stayed sane. For 200 years the humans that slept (if they experienced the pods and questioning the same way Lilith did) were constantly awoken and kept awake for questioning, they were isolated and their only form of social interaction was to answer the questions, and locked away while they were awake for feeding and any other experiment they needed to conduct in order to save humanity. Though the treatment reminds me of a much tamer version of one of our own ‘enhanced interrogation’ methods that were used at some of our CIA black sites. Human isolation was used for a reason, humans are after all social creatures, and most people can’t handle isolation like that to such an extreme. The U.S supreme court even described prisoners under the use of such treatment ending up violently insane, committing suicide, and or suffering from the partial loss of their mental activity as the most common results after enduring such treatment. So I’m not exactly surprised that the most common assumption for us was that we were held captive by the CIA, KGB, or even the FBI, or even at the amount of aggression most humans showed to their “captors”, I know after enduring such treatment, I too would be upset. I’m not sure if Butler had this in mind when she described the “cubicle”, but it was really well placed to set the tone for this story. It sent me on a wild goose chase for the first couple chapters with speculations as to whether the Oankali are good or evil.
After reading further though, I am reminded time and time again that the Oankali are not human, so they don’t think the way we do, they even have a completely different proprioception and sensories, along with necessities and even emotions. These differences in biology lead to completely different methodologies and abilities, abilities that even allow the Oankali to sense human emotions or even sometimes intentions. Using this they narrowed humanities two main characteristics, intelligence and hierarchy, which according to them are in direct conflict with one another. Even with all this understanding, they couldn’t quite handle us. Under their watch, what little is left of humanity has become divided, over 8 people have either been assaulted, wounded, or died, which while terrible doesn’t sound as bad if you’re thinking about Earth’s former population. However, considering that 8 out of the 80 people who are supposed to reclaim Earth and hopefully re-establish what’s left of us, that’s really terrifying. What troubles me the most though, even after all of this, is the question as to whether humanity will survive. Or if something that resembles a human will take its place. Humans can be both cruel and kind, but if you eliminate the choice to choose, you eliminate the thing that makes us human. So now after recent events (the situation where Nikanj ended up creating and quite literally designing the child for Lilith without her knowledge or permission is what I’m thinking of at the moment), I’m not sure whether the Oankali understand that. I don’t know anymore how this will turn out, but I hope that there may have been a misunderstanding from Lilith’s perspective. At the moment though, I’m now beginning to wonder whether Victor and Joseph’s views (dying human) may have had a point. I’m hoping for the best but will be ready to read the worst, so far, Mrs. Butler has left me really not sure what to think about this entire situation on either side, but I am sure that I’m excited to see how things may turn out in the next story.