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Book 3, Chapter 8
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
For a while after waking, Joseph won’t speak or take food from Lilith. She thinks he’s resentful at first before realizing that perhaps he’s just working through his feelings. At last, he speaks to her to ask if what he experienced was real. Lilith says both yes and no—she and Joseph didn’t physically touch each other at all when they were lying in bed with Nikanj, but Nikanj neurally stimulates real sensations. While Joseph admits that the process was physically pleasurable, more powerful than any drug he can imagine, he is disturbed and doesn’t want Nikanj to touch him again. Lilith expected this and doesn’t protest.
Joseph’s question of what was real during his encounter with Lilith and Nikanj is yet another question that attempts to define what sex is. Joseph wonders whether it is enough to feel the sensations associated with sex, all while lying still, and whether that still counts as “real.” He is guarded about his feelings in this passage, but his actions seem to suggest that he does not believe that sex with an Oankali is “real” by human standards, no matter what he feels during it.
Themes
Joseph asks if Lilith is addicted to the type of pleasure Nikanj gives, but Lilith doesn’t think so. Lilith is a little disturbed when Joseph insists on referring to Nikanj as male, similar to what Paul Titus did. She insists that it’s delusional to try to apply human ideas about things like gender onto the Oankali and that it’s better to try to understand them as they are.
Joseph’s insistence that Nikanj is male could hint at another reason why he reacts negatively to sex with an ooloi—latent homophobia, or a similar prejudice. Although Joseph is one of the more open-minded humans, the idea that he could have sex with a male creature or a creature of unknown gender disturbs him, showing how his masculinity affects his decision-making process.
Themes
