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Dawn
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BetaPart 3, Chapters 12-14Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3: “Nursery”
Part 3, Chapter 12 Summary
Lilith gains more supporters, people who believe she will win the clash with Peter’s group. The opposing group gains supporters also, as Victor joins it and his strong personality encourages newcomers. However, Curt is now the leader of Peter’s group, as Peter suffers with his broken arm and sullenly stays in his room.
After a few days, Peter wakes up and his arm is healed. He is frightened and his own people look at him with suspicion now. Lilith goes to him afterward and tells him he needs to be prepared to see the Oankali in person: “They fixed your arm while you were asleep because they didn’t want you terrified and fighting them while they tried to help you” (181). Peter looks at her with hatred and contempt.
Five days later, Lilith realizes that their evening meal has been drugged. She feels relaxed, similar to how she felt when Nikanj established a neural link with her. This realization snaps her into alertness and she looks around. People are moving into pairs, holding hands and laughing together. Joseph reaches for Lilith, who tells him that they have been drugged. He says he felt something was wrong, and he manages to shake off the effect of the drug also.
Joseph sees the Oankali entering the room and wishes Lilith had allowed him to remain drugged. Lilith counts 28 Oankali in the room, all ooloi.
The other people begin to notice the Oankali. Tate and Gabriel draw back from an Oankali who approaches them, frightened but not as terrified as they would have been if not drugged. Lilith realizes with a start that it is Kahguyaht, who speaks in a calm, compelling tone. All those who attempt to fight or run are drugged heavily by the ooloi.
Lilith watches Tate and Gabriel interact with Kahguyaht and is surprised by how gentle Kahguyaht seems. Nikanj comes up to Lilith and Joseph. Nikanj asks Joseph how he feels and tells him that he is doing very well in maintaining control. Joseph replies that he’s all right, though he has punctured his hand with his own fingernails and is dripping blood.
Nikanj reaches for Joseph’s injured hand and Joseph tries to pull away. Nikanj tranquilizes Joseph further, speaking to him softly, assuring him that it will not hurt him. Nikanj tells Joseph to let his body relax, which will reduce his fear. Joseph says that he does not understand why he fears Nikanj so deeply, since it does not look threatening, just different. Nikanj replies, “Different is threatening to most species” (186); thus, the humans naturally react strongly to the sight of the Oankali.
Lilith asks why she was not introduced to her ooloi while drugged. Nikanj answers that the Oankali intended that Lilith bond with it, and the adults decided this was best done while Nikanj was still a subadult.
Tate reaches out to Kahguyaht, but Gabriel grabs her hand and pulls her back. Lilith cannot hear what they say, but Gabriel releases Tate. When Tate puts out her hand again, Kahguyaht takes it in a coil of its sensory arm.
Lilith asks what will happen now. Nikanj replies that the ooloi will stay with the humans for several days and when the humans are ready, they will be taken to the “training floor,” the forest area on the ship. Nikanj stands up, pulling Lilith and Joseph with it, and guides them to Lilith’s room.
Joseph asks what is going on; Nikanj releases them both. It tells Joseph that this second time will be harder since he was drugged and had no choice the first time. Joseph does not consent and emphatically says that he does not want to engage in the trio sexual experience, saying, “I’d rather have the real thing!” (188). Nikanj asks if he means sex with Lilith alone and Joseph says yes. Nikanj tells Joseph that it had brought him great pleasure, but Joseph calls that an illusion. Nikanj says that what happened was real, that Joseph’s body knows it was real. Nikanj tells Joseph, “I won’t hurt you. And I offer a oneness that your people strive for, dream of, but can’t truly attain alone” (189).
Nikanj removes Joseph’s clothes and lies on the bed with him. Joseph struggles, but Nikanj holds onto him. After holding his body rigid for a while, Joseph begins to relax while Lilith watches them, and he falls asleep. Nikanj eventually rouses Joseph by touching him.
Joseph is still protesting that he does not want to do this act, but his body is aroused. Nikanj says that Joseph still has a choice about whether or not to continue. Joseph says that he simply cannot give himself permission to do this, but he does not struggle as Nikanj positions itself against his body: “Now he was ready to accept what he had wanted from the beginning” (190). Lilith takes off her clothes and joins them by the bed. For a moment, she sees Nikanj as a strange alien thing, but then the moment passes and she lies down also. Nikanj touches a sensory hand to her and they are all connected.
Part 3, Chapter 13 Summary
The humans in the room are kept drugged for days and watched over by their ooloi, who are “imprinting” them. Nikanj says that this process has to be done and that no human will be allowed to return to Earth without this chemical and social imprinting.
Nikanj says that some of the group is not heavily drugged anymore, including Tate and Joseph. Gabriel and some of the others are still heavily drugged, which Nikanj says dulls their natural fear of strangers and of difference: “We keep you from injuring or killing us or yourselves. We teach you more pleasant things to do” (191-92). Joseph protests that this is not a good enough reason to keep everyone drugged; Nikanj says that it is a beginning of what will come next.
Part 3, Chapter 14 Summary
Peter has remained peaceful and happy while drugged, even joking with Jean and his ooloi about his broken arm and the fight that caused it. However, once Peter’s ooloi reduces the influence of the drug over Peter, he feels that he has been humiliated and enslaved, forced into alien perversions.
Peter’s ooloi fails to notice that Peter’s attitude has changed, as this ooloi is not as perceptive or as intelligent as Nikanj or Kahguyaht. It does not try to stop Peter when he suddenly attacks it in his room, pummeling it with his fists. Accidentally, however, Peter manages to hit a sensitive spot on the ooloi that causes an involuntary defensive reflex. The ooloi stings Peter before it can stop itself and Peter goes into convulsions. By the time the ooloi has gotten over its own pain and tries to help, Peter is dead. His ooloi hunkers down next to his body and does not move or speak, its tentacles drawn into hard lumps.
One of the other ooloi notices Jean alone outside the room and goes to investigate, but it’s too late. They have no choice but to remove Peter’s body and send for the ooloi’s mates. Lilith tries to comfort Jean, who is still lightly drugged, but Jean backs away.
Lilith goes to Nikanj for help and it speaks to Jean, telling her that her ooloi, Tehjaht, is not dead and its mates are coming to help her as well. Curt overhears Nikanj and though he is considerably drugged, he moves over to Jean, telling Nikanj that the humans will take care of her. Nikanj tells Curt that that is impossible because Jean is too strongly bonded to her ooloi right now. Curt’s ooloi takes him by the arm and though Curt looks like he wants to pull away, he lets himself be led away. Lilith worries that Curt will remember this with anger when he is no longer drugged.
Tehjaht’s mates enter the room, moving as though in pain. They approach Jean, who is chemically tied to them, so even though she is afraid, she is relieved to have them touch her. Jean lets the Oankali pair lead her into her room, where Tehjaht sits frozen.
Joseph comes up to Lilith and angrily says that Peter was right to attack his ooloi. Joseph is drugged, but rather than relaxing him, it’s making him reckless. Lilith asks if he means that Peter was right to try and kill, was right to die. Joseph responds, “He died human! And he almost managed to take one of them with him!” (196). Lilith says that nothing can change while they are still on the ship and that they have to get down to Earth before they can change anything. Joseph says that by then it will be too late—that by then, they will no longer be human.
Part 3, Chapters 12-14 Analysis
These chapters see the next important stage in Lilith’s work to bring her human charges back to Earth: the introduction of the group to the Oankali. Lilith is given no warning when it happens and only realizes it when she feels herself slightly drugged by their evening meal. It is fascinating and bizarre to her to see other humans interacting with ooloi.
Lilith is particularly surprised when she realizes that Kahguyaht has been assigned, or assigned itself, to Tate and Gabriel. It’s a very different Kahguyaht from the condescending ooloi that Lilith disliked so thoroughly: “When it spoke, Lilith could hear none of the hectoring contempt or amused tolerance she was used to” (184). Lilith finds out from Nikanj that Kahguyaht strongly desired bonding to Tate and Gabriel, though Nikanj, from its study of all the humans, believed that Gabriel was not a good candidate for bonding. Again, this is an example of an Oankali needing humans more than the humans needing the Oankali.
Joseph struggles to understand why the Oankali are so repulsive to him, just as Lilith had. Intellectually, he knows that he should not fear Nikanj so strongly when nothing about it appears objectively dangerous. To help him understand, Nikanj answers, “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” (186). It is clear that humans have a deep-seated fear of that which looks and acts too differently from what they know and understand, highlighting Otherness as a Social Construct. This is the so-called reptilian brain controlling these impulses; ancient instincts and impulses that helped human ancestors survive, but linger in the subconscious. When Lilith is about to climb into bed with Nikanj and Joseph, she momentarily sees Nikanj as she once saw Jdahya, horribly alien, the stuff of nightmares. However, she has come to love Nikanj, so she has overcome her primal fear and loathing. Still, Lilith does not fully understand how this is possible: “She stared at it for a moment longer wondering how she had lost her horror of such a being” (191). Notably, the Oankali do not permit Lilith to leave, so her acquiescence raises the question of whether she has true agency.
Certainly, not all the humans are able to get over their horror and antipathy toward the Oankali. Once Peter’s drugs wear off, the full force of his abhorrence surfaces. He cannot fathom that such a creature had sex with him against his will: “The drug seemed to him to be […] a way of turning him against himself, causing him to demean himself in alien perversions. His humanity was profaned. His manhood was taken away” (192). Peter’s reaction is ironic given his earlier attempted rape of Lilith, and his sense of having lost his “manhood” is telling: For Peter, coercive sex is a “normal” part of being a woman but a violation when it happens to a man. Peter wants revenge for having been forced into such deviation and for his loss of control over himself, so he attempts to kill Tehjaht.
Leah, who was one of Lilith’s harshest critics, has bonded so completely that she is bereft when Peter is killed, and she believes that Tehjaht is dead also. She thinks herself completely alone. When Tehjaht’s mates come to help her, she accepts them immediately because their chemical signatures seem “right” to her, and she instinctively recognizes them as family. When Curt, another human, tries to help her instead, as he thinks is normal, she cringes.
Nikanj and Lilith coerce Joseph into having sex, despite his protestations. His body is aroused, which is a natural physiological response, and he does not struggle—both factors that do not necessarily constitute consent. He seems to have shaken the effect of the drug the second time around, and he vocalizes his dissent. There is a part of him that still does not accept the intermingling of humans and Oankali. Lilith tells him to wait until their return to Earth before he tries to work against the Oankali, but he says, “Will we want to by then? What will we be, I wonder? Not human. Not anymore” (196). This comment foreshadows the eventual hybridization that will become necessary for humans to survive.
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