Throughout Octavia Butler’s Dawn, I was always wondering if there wasn’t some way that humans and the Oankali could come to a compromise that benefited both peoples. However, it soon becomes apparent that everything about the relationship between them, from basic physical differences to the abhorrent but necessary act of sex between humans and ooloi, is leading them toward inevitable conflict.
Lilith’s fear of the aliens is overwhelming at first. However, while this physical revulsion never quite goes away, we do see a remarkable progression in Lilith from complete revulsion to the willingness to partake in what could only be described as a sexual experience with these aliens. There seems to be some hope for a peaceful union between the two races. For example, at the beginning, she was unable even to touch the tentacles, yet by the middle of the book she was unfazed by Nikanj’s caresses - “[it] touched her face and burrowed into her hair with its tentacles”, and by the end of the book she was “perversely eager for what it could give her”.
Lilith isn’t the only one who experiences this change. People like Curt, who initally could not even face the ooloi without being drugged, willingly take part in this sexual experience with their Ooloi mates. However, eventually, the humans attempt to escape, and Curt among others try to kill the ooloi. Why is that?
One might argue that the what the Oankali are offering something good to the humans. For example, after this genetic “trade”, Nikanj promises that Lilith’s children will be able to “regrow a limb”. It’s a much more mutualistic relationship compared to the violent parasitic relationship exhibited in the film Alien, where the only thing awaiting a human who served as a host for an alien young was a violent death. Shouldn’t the reaction of the humans be different in Dawn, as opposed to in Alien? Why do both approaches, one violent and parasitic, the other supposedly benevolent and mutualistic, meet with revulsion and violence from humans?
The reason would be that so many facets of the Oankali approach to creating this harmonious trade between themselves and the humans were wrong. For one, there are the basic differences between the two species that can never, ever be surmounted. This is seen in Lilith’s need to speak to another human - “only another human could reassure her, or at least understand her fear”. Even the Oankali, who are themselves advocating the joining and genetic “trade” between the humans and Oankali, tell Lilith “Your children will know us....you never will”. That, obviously, because Lilith’s children will be Oankali, and as it is repeated time and again in this book, no amount of time spent together can quite take the place of actual racial commonality.
The second aspect would be control. How could humans ever take on the role of an animal, modified and reared at the whim of an alien overlord? When Lilith ruefully reflects that the way the Oankali were rearing and taking care of their captive humans’ immune systems was similar to the way “[humans] used to treat animals”, we see a recipe for disaster. The humans may have been told that they were participants in a “trade” but that implies equality, and the way their bodies were tampered with, for example their inability to conceive without an Oankali, definitely had more in common with slavery. To borrow a phrase from Hortense Spiller, the humans were like captives, their bodies embodying “sheer physical powerlessness”. Frighteningly, the Oankali seemed to believe it was totally within their rights to “fix” these shortcomings. From that moment, you realise that Lilith will never go along with the Oankali plan willingly. Right till the end, even after she faced the realization that she would “never again have a chance to be one of [the humans]”, she still harbored plans to teach a new batch of humans how to run, and how to escape the Oankali. Even an existence marred by suspicion from her own kind was preferable to a life whose path was dictated by aliens who clearly understood nothing about the human need to be in control of his or her own destiny.
The third would be the failure of the sexual aspect of the relationship between an Ooloi and its male and female human counterparts, and this is intrinsically related to the basic racial differences discussed above. Sex was necessary to the trade, but it is also a sacred and important part of every human’s identity. Even if humans could one learn to accept the Oankali from a distance, their expectation that humans would willingly make inter-special intimacy a norm, was naive. Toying with someone’s sexuality is probably one of the most humiliating things that could possibly be done to a person. In Peter’s mind, when he realised he had been having sex with an alien, he felt that his “humanity had been profaned. His manhood had been taken away”. On top of the fact that they were being given pleasure by an alien, we see very often that characters such as Paul Titus and Joseph perceive incorrectly that the Ooloi are male. So in Peter’s mind, and certainly in many of the other men’s minds (who had already been shown to be heterosexual), they were now also facing the troubling fact that they had committed a homosexual act.
It certainly feels that sometimes, race is a huge obstacle to overcome, not just because of basic differences, but also because of the difference in perceptions and beliefs, for example, the Oankali’s inability to foresee that humans would not take kindly to tampering with their, and their children’s, genetic makeup. It would be a stretch, though not a terrible one, to try and apply the lessons learnt in this book in real life. For one, not giving people a say in their own destiny is a recipe for disaster. And secondly, the need to be aware of the importance of race in any person’s decision making process.To pursue any course of action while ignoring that would be equally futile.
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