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Food is both necessity for life and also an expression of human culture, and in Dawn it symbolizes the things that the alien Oankali don’t understand about humans. Initially, the food that Lilith gets in her isolation room is gray and tasteless. As she later learns, the food is healthy and even prevents her from developing cancer, but she still resents having to eat it. The Oankali view food in distant, analytical terms. They don’t understand that one of the reasons many of their captive humans are unhappy or even suicidal is the lack of basic pleasures like food. Furthermore, the food that Lilith receives in her prison-like isolation room reinforces the idea that the Oankali have robbed her of agency, removing her ability to choose food and only giving her what she needs instead of what she wants.
The improved quality and variety of food that Lilith receives after leaving her isolation room with Jdahya reflects how the Oankali have begun to permit her more agency, which in turn allows her to enjoy the pleasures of life again. She begins to form a genuine connection with Jdahya and his family members like Nikanj. However, just as Lilith eventually comes to realize that, even outside her isolation room, the Oankali restrict her movement, she also comes to see how they control her food—for example, mysteriously refilling a supply closet that determines what she and the other humans can eat. Lilith later bonds with her fellow humans by hunting and acquiring turtle meat and fish, food items that the Oankali have denied them. By hunting, the humans return to the roots of their species and take back agency from the Oankali by becoming self-sufficient with food, showing how food is not just a source of pleasure, but a means by which human community is sustained.
Food Quotes in Dawn
The Dawn quotes below all refer to the symbol of Food. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Book 2, Chapter 1
Quotes
“What do you think you’ve eaten each time we’ve Awakened you?” the ooloi asked.
“I don’t know,” she said coldly. “No one would tell me what it was.”
Kahguyaht missed or ignored the anger in her voice. “It was one of our foods—slightly altered to meet your special needs,” it said.
Thought of her “special needs” made her realize that this might be Jdahya’s “relative” who had cured her cancer. She had somehow not thought of this until now. She got up and filled one of her small bowls with nuts—roasted, but not salted—and wondered wearily whether she had to be grateful to Kahguyaht. Automatically she filled with the same nuts, the bowl Tediin had thrust forward to her.
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Book 2, Chapter 2
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“Before we found these plants,” Kahguyaht said, “they used to capture living animals and keep them alive for a long while, using their carbon dioxide and supplying them with oxygen while slowly digesting nonessential parts of their bodies: limbs, skin, sensory organs. The plants even passed some of their own substance through their prey to nourish the prey and keep it alive as long as possible. And the plants were enriched by the prey’s waste products. They gave a very, very long death.
Lilith swallowed. “Did the prey feel what was being done to it?”
“No. That would have hastened death. The prey … slept.”
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Book 2, Chapter 4
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When Nikanj went into the apartment to get food for them both, she got up and walked away. She wandered, freer than she ever had before through the parklike area outside the living quarters—the pseudotrees. Oankali saw her, but seemed to pay no more than momentary attention to her. She had become absorbed in looking around when abruptly Nikanj was beside her.
“You must stay with me,” it said in a tone that reminded her of a human mother speaking to her five-year-old. That, she thought, was about right for her rank in its family.
After that incident she slipped away whenever she could. Either she would be stopped, punished, and/or confined, or she would not be.
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Book 3, Chapter 1
Quotes
The food, she had been told, would be replaced as it was used—replaced by the ship itself which drew on its own substance to make print reconstructions of whatever each cabinet had been taught to produce.
The long wall opposite the bathrooms concealed eighty sleeping human beings—healthy, under fifty, English-speaking, and frighteningly ignorant of what was in store for them.
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Book 3, Chapter 5
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He sat down next to her. “She’s telling people you’re a man. She says only a man can fight that way.”
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Get the entire Dawn LitChart as a printable PDF.
Food Symbol Timeline in Dawn
The timeline below shows where the symbol Food appears in Dawn. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Book 1, Chapter 1
...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...
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Food and water appears in the room whenever Lilith needs it, but she has nothing to...
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Book 1, Chapter 5
...the most advanced technology from Earth, but they’ll be able to use simple tools for food and shelter. The humans are not fully immune to diseases but have strengthened immune systems.
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Book 2, Chapter 1
...three of Jdahya’s relatives in a daze before going to sleep. She wakes and finds food ready for her that is much more flavorful than anything she had in captivity. She...
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Kahguyaht explains to Lilith that while some Oankali food is poisonous to humans, Oankali have learned to eat all human food by studying humans....
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Book 2, Chapter 4
...Nikanj turns her down, saying this is forbidden for humans. When Nikanj goes to get food, Lilith slips away. Nikanj comes to find her, but from then on, Lilith tries to...
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...helps. It scolds Lilith for traveling too far away, saying that one should only bury food waste in certain parts of the ship.
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Book 3, Chapter 1
Lilith is in a room a little larger than a football field. There are bathrooms, food, and about 80 sleeping humans in the room, all under 50 and healthy. Nikanj set...
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Book 3, Chapter 2
...but how the Earth is finally ready for human habitation again. She offers Tate real food, not the gray kind from her first awakening, and tells her name. Tate is surprised...
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Book 3, Chapter 3
...careful not to injure her. Leah and Celene both become more agreeable after eating real food, although Leah still isn’t convinced that Lilith is telling the truth about the Oankali. Lilith...
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Book 3, Chapter 9
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...
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