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Definition of Imagery
Imagery, in any sort of writing, refers to descriptive language that engages the human senses. For instance, the following lines from Robert Frost's poem "After Apple-Picking" contain imagery that engages... read full definition
Imagery, in any sort of writing, refers to descriptive language that engages the human senses. For instance, the following lines from Robert Frost's poem "After... read full definition
Imagery, in any sort of writing, refers to descriptive language that engages the human senses. For instance, the following lines... read full definition
Book 1, Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Alive Again:
When Lilith first Awakens again in her new isolation room, she is disoriented and disappointed. Her physical sensations are overwhelming, which the novel describes with sensory imagery:
Alive!
Still alive.
Alive… again.
Awakening was hard, as always. The ultimate disappointment. It was a struggle to take in enough air to drive off nightmare sensations of asphyxiation. Lilith Iyapo lay gasping, shaking with the force of her effort. Her heart beat too fast, too loud. She curled around it, fetal, helpless. Circulation began to return to her arms and legs in flurries of minute, exquisite pains.
Lilith describes Awakening again as hard, perhaps because she believes she knows the fate that awaits her, the monotony and isolation. However, Awakening is also a trial for her body. She feels as though she cannot get enough air; she can hear her heart beating inside her chest; flurries of pain crawl up her limbs. The sensations are all intensely physical, as opposed to visual. Lilith’s first thoughts are not about her surroundings, but instead about becoming “reconciled to animation.” While this physicality is warranted, given how many years Lilith may have been asleep, it is also fitting in the context of Lilith’s later desire for sexual satisfaction. These first moments—feeling “helpless,” experiencing “exquisite pains,” “gasping, shaking”—foreshadow the physical pleasure that Lilith eventually derives from being in the ooloi position with Nikanj and Joseph. Human or Oankali, sex is a universal desire and necessity. In fact, it is the driving force not only of life itself, but also of the Oankali’s ultimate crossbreeding mission.
Related Themes:
Book 1, Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—Tentacles Like Whiskers:
As Jdahya explains the purpose behind Lilith’s Awakening and her 250-year-long sleep, Lilith cannot help but focus on his extraterrestrial physicality. With a visual simile, Lilith describes the strangeness of his tentacles:
These last words touched a memory in her. “Jdahya?” she said.
The tentacles down the sides of his face wavered, looked for a moment like dark, muttonchop whiskers. […]
He said nothing for a moment, then all his tentacles stretched themselves upward. Someone spoke to him from above in the usual way and in a voice much like his own, but this time in a foreign language, choppy and fast.
Having only recently been exposed to the Oankali, Lilith struggles to both accept and become comfortable in their presence. Her first few days with Jdahya are full of animalistic descriptions of the Oankali. Faced with the otherworldly creatures, Lilith also attempts to accept them by analogizing them with more familiar human characteristics like muttonchop whiskers, a men’s facial hair trend. The only way that Lilith can comprehend the Oankali at first is by comparing their alien features to those of Earthly animals, like octopi, and to those of humans. This tendency illustrates the extent to which the Oankali are visually shocking and grotesque in the eyes of humans, helping to explain not only Lilith’s reaction, but also the reactions of her human group from the nursery. On top of the Oankali’s tentacles, they also speak their own language, one foreign to Lilith, adding to her sense of insecurity and fear.
Related Themes:
Book 1, Chapter 3
Explanation and Analysis—Smooth as Fingernails:
When Lilith indirectly reveals to Jdahya that she does not want to die, he expresses pleasure. The novel illustrates how the Oankali’s expression of pleasure changes their appearance with a visual simile:
She was able to approach him hesitantly. Even viewed from only a couple of feet away, the tentacles looked like a smooth second skin. “Do you mind if…” She stopped and began again. “I mean… may I touch you?”
“Yes.”
It was easier to do than she had expected. His skin was cool and almost too smooth to be real flesh—smooth the way her fingernails were and perhaps as tough as a fingernail.
Lilith describes Jdahya as “remarkably human” when his tentacles retreat into a “smooth second skin.” This moment marks the first time that Lilith touches an Oankali, though it is unsurprising that she is only able to do so when Jdahya looks somewhat human. She remarks that his skin is as smooth and tough as her own fingernails, once again using human characteristics to describe something alien. Throughout Dawn, it becomes clear that it is only human nature to use common and familiar terms to describe something otherworldly. Human comprehension is fragile, so Lilith and the others must do everything in their power to ground themselves in Earthly and human descriptors. Sometimes, as with Peter, Curt, and Gabriel, heavy drugs are necessary to calm humans down in the presence of such seemingly grotesque creatures as the Oankali.
Related Themes:
Book 2, Chapter 12
Explanation and Analysis—Starfish Hands:
Curious about Nikanj’s sexual maturation process, Lilith asks Kahguyaht about the Oankali’s sensory hands. Kahguyaht shows Lilith his own sensory hand, which she describes with sensory imagery and a simile comparing it to a starfish:
The semitransparent material at the end began to change, to move in circular waves away to the sides of the tip and something slender and pale emerged from the center of the tip. As she watched, the slender thing seemed to thicken and divide. There were eight fingers—or rather, eight slender tentacles arranged around a circular palm that looked wet and deeply lined. It was like a starfish—one of the brittle stars with long, slender, snakelike arms.
When Kahguyaht’s sensory hand emerges, it first takes the shape of a human phallus, but quickly subverts expectations by seeming to “thicken and divide.” This unexpected and grotesque change reinforces the alien nature of the Oankali. It is as if Lilith hopes the sensory hand will reveal something closer to human about the Oankali, but at the last second, the slender emergence spreads into eight tentacle-like fingers that appear wet and like a starfish. Once again, though, Lilith uses an animal from Earth to illustrate and help comprehend the Oankali. This starfish simile also keeps in line with the extended sea creature comparison that Lilith maintains about Oankali with their tentacles. Interestingly, similar to Oankali, starfish can quickly heal from injuries and even go so far as to regenerate their limbs.
Related Themes:
Book 4, Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—The Training Room:
After the entire group is Awakened and acclimated to the presence of extraterrestrial creatures, the Oankali sends them to the training room. The Oankali have designed the so-called room to mirror the Amazonian rainforest on Earth, which the novel illustrates with intense visual imagery:
The training room was brown and green and blue. Brown, muddy ground was visible through thin, scattered leaf litter. Brown, muddy water flowed past the land, glittering in the light of what seemed to be the sun. The water was too laden with sediment to appear blue, though above it, the ceiling—the sky—was a deep, intense blue. There was no smoke, no smog, only a few clouds—remains of a recent rain. Across the wide river, there was the illusion of a line of trees on the opposite bank. A line of green. Away from the river, the predominant color was green.
When the group transitions from the nursery to the training room, the setting shift is sudden and intense. Up to this point in the novel, the reader has only seen the Oankali-designed spaces in the ship. The rooms have been bare, providing only the necessities. Freedom, especially, has been constrained while humans were in individual isolation and the nursery. Now, in the training room, the group is uncaged, free to explore and do as they please. This freedom is reflected in the vastness of the forest’s description: the sky is a “deep, intense blue,” the river is wide, and there is green for as far as the eye can see. Of course, these descriptors are qualified, recognized as mere illusions at the hands of the Oankali. For even the group’s freedom is an illusion.
The visual imagery is also not beautiful, as one might expect an Earth-like environment to appear to a group of human refugees. The water is described as “brown, muddy,” the foliage “thin, scattered.” The water does not appear blue, and the trees are simply a “line of green.” The imagery feels muted, tinted with disappointment perhaps, as Lilith knows that the training room is just an illusion.
Related Themes:
