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Summary
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Dawn, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Humanity, Evolution, and Genetics
Motherhood and Leadership
Consent and Autonomy
Sexuality and Gender
Summary
Analysis
Lilith Iyapo wakes up in a dimly lit room. She has Awakened many times before but is always disoriented by the process. She notices a table with bland food and a jacket and pants on it. She tries on the clothes, which haven’t been there on previous Awakenings, and finds that they fit. As she changes, she notices the scar on her stomach which she got between her second and third Awakenings but doesn’t know how. Lilith looks around for ways out of the room, but there aren’t any—she has been imprisoned through all her Awakenings by captors who never show themselves.
The novel begins in the middle of things, creating a sense of disorientation that resembles what protagonist Lilith feels when she Awakens. Although the room that Lilith is in doesn’t have bars or locks on it, many aspects of it—the bland food, for example—evoke a prison. The fact that Lilith has an unfamiliar scar on her stomach further suggests her loss of bodily autonomy.
Themes
Lilith’s captors won’t say how long she’s been imprisoned. Instead, they just ask questions. They ask her age, and Lilith thinks she’s still 26 but isn’t sure. They ask about her family, and she remembers that she was once married, but her husband (Sam) and child (Ayre) both died in a car crash. The rest of her family, including two brothers and a sister, are also dead, as far as she knows. They ask if Lilith remembers a war, and Lilith does—she remembers how a small group of people tried to “commit humanicide,” and it changed the planet. When the captors are done, they just stop talking.
Lilith’s backstory, which includes a dead son and husband, as well as the rest of her family, shows how she has undergone tragedy but remained resilient. Her uncertainty about her own age further highlights her loss of bodily autonomy. The Earth-destroying war this passage alludes to hints at the self-destructive nature of humanity, commenting in particular on the nuclear war anxieties of the Cold War era when Butler wrote the novel.
Themes
Food and water appears in the room whenever Lilith needs it, but she has nothing to pass the time with. She naps and exercises, with no concepts of day or night, and tries in vain to find a weak part of her room’s walls or ceiling. She assumes that every time she Awakens, she’s coming out of a drugged sleep.
The room that Lilith is in deprives her of many of the essential parts of humanity, like the joy of different types of food or other people to socialize with. She can’t even control when she sleeps, which highlights again her present lack of freedom.
Themes
At one point after an Awakening, Lilith lived in her room with a five-year-old boy (Sharad) who didn’t speak English. He was a little older than her own son, Ayre, had been. He hid from her in fright at first, but eventually she started to teach him English, while she learned his language. She began to grow close to him, but then one day after another Awakening the boy was gone. Lilith thinks her captors are experimenting on and observing her.
Lilith’s brief time with Sharad mirrors how her son, Ayre, was alive for only a brief time. Although Lilith and Sharad speak different languages, they find a way to communicate with each other, emphasizing what all humans have in common and showing how extreme situations, like their shared isolation in the room, can bring these similarities to the forefront.
Themes
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