Dawn

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1987

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Part 4, Chapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 4: “The Training Floor”

Part 4, Chapter 4 Summary

Lilith and Joseph wait at the designated spot on the riverbank, carrying food and tools. Joseph remarks that the others may have already come and gone, but Lilith thinks that they are waiting to be sure that she has not told the Oankali about them leaving.

Joseph says that leaving is the best thing for Lilith and that Gabriel has heard people speaking out against Lilith again. Lilith replies that they are heading toward the dangerous people, not away from them. Joseph asks Lilith if she wants to go back to the camp. She answers that she does, but knows that they will not. Lilith knows how badly Joseph wants to leave. Soon Gabriel, Tate, Leah, and Wray arrive and they head upriver.

When Lilith steps away from the group to relieve herself, she returns to find them all staring at her: “‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘Are you waiting for me to desert you and go back to the Oankali? Or maybe you think I have some magic way of signaling them from here? What is it you suspect me of?’” (214).

Gabriel replies that they’re just nervous and unsure of what is about to happen and that they’re focusing their anxiety on Lilith because she has been altered by the Oankali. Joseph protests that Lilith is there with them and that she is taking the same risks. Allison asks Lilith what exactly it is that they’re risking.

Lilith replies that she’s not sure, but Allison presses her to continue. Lilith says that she thinks what is happening is a final test for them: “People leave camp when they feel ready. […] If they can sustain themselves here, they can sustain themselves on Earth” (214).

Gabriel seems impatient with her answer; Lilith tells him that he wanted her along on the trip because he thought she would be useful to their survival. Lilith says that cannot happen if everyone is expecting her to betray them.

Allison wants to know why Lilith is with them and if she believes they are on a ship. Joseph replies that Lilith is there because he wants her to be with him. Lilith says that is true. She says that she has already passed the Oankali’s test and she continues walking upriver. The others follow.

Part 4, Chapter 5 Summary

Lilith finds herself feeling more doubts as they hike through the vast forest. She announces that they should make camp and then build a boat in the morning.

Gabriel protests that they are no longer in the prison room and they do not need to take orders from her. He says he wants to keep going until they find the others who left the camp. Lilith realizes that Gabriel feels himself in competition for the leadership of the group. She has no desire to lead but worries that Gabriel will get someone killed if he does.

Lilith tells them that if they build a shelter, she will find the others tomorrow since she will not get lost. Gabriel mocks her for that statement, but Lilith says it’s because she has an eidetic memory and has spent more time in the forest. Gabriel remains suspicious of her.

They build a shelter under Lilith’s instructions and Wray manages to start a fire. They prepare food and Lilith says they can try and fish in the morning. She had learned to spear fish during the year she lived in the forest. Lilith notices some strange tension between Leah and Wray when Wray takes Leah’s hand. Lilith wonders what the trouble is.

Everyone gets into their hammocks. Lilith tries to reach out to Joseph, but he draws away. Lilith is disturbed to find that Joseph’s skin feels repellent to her now and she worries that is because they are not with Nikanj. Oankali males and females never touch each sexually without an ooloi between them, and Lilith worries that this effect will not wear off.

Part 4, Chapter 6 Summary

Curt and his group find the shelter just before dawn. Lilith is relieved at first to see Gregory and Victor because now she will not have to search for them, but then she sees Curt. Curt hits Lilith in the head with his machete and she drops to the ground. She hears screams and Joseph shouting her name, and then she is knocked unconscious.

When she wakes up, Lilith is alone. She tries to follow tracks in the mud, but she loses them. She is worried that Joseph was not allowed to stay with her. As she returns to the camp, she worries further that perhaps Joseph had chosen to go with the others.

Lilith sees several ooloi emerge from the river, including Nikanj and Kahguyaht. She asks Nikanj if it knows where the others have gone. Putting a sensory arm around her neck, it says they do. Lilith asks if Joseph is all right and is frightened when Nikanj does not answer.

The ooloi lead Lilith through the forest and stop at a huge tree lying on its side. Nikanj begins to climb to the other side and Lilith follows. On the other side is Joseph, who has been killed with an ax, his head almost severed.

Lilith demands to know if Curt did this. Nikanj softly replies, “It was us” (223). Nikanj explains that Joseph was injured when the group took him away. Curt saw Joseph’s injuries healing and thought that Joseph was not human, so Curt hacked him to death. Lilith begins to cry, devastated that she was not able to protect Joseph and that her last memory of him is the two of them flinching away from each other.

Lilith asks why Curt did not kill her. Nikanj believes that Curt did not intend to kill anyone, but when he saw Joseph’s flesh healing itself, he lashed out. Lilith demands to know why Nikanj did not come to Joseph’s aid. Nikanj replies that there is no entrance to the forest near this spot. Lilith sinks to the ground next to Joseph’s corpse, unable to think or speak.

Nikanj picks Lilith up and carries her away, but she pulls free and goes back to Joseph. She thinks he should be buried. Nikanj asks if Joseph’s body should be sent back to Earth and Lilith agrees.

Nikanj touches Lilith with a sensory arm; she angrily wishes to be left alone. Nikanj says, “No, I let you alone once, the two of you, thinking you could look after one another. I won’t let you alone now” (225). Lilith asks Nikanj not to drug her or blunt her feelings of grief. Nikanj replies that it wants to share her feelings, that Joseph belonged to it also.

Lilith asks to share what Nikanj feels, but it implies that Lilith could not understand its complex feelings. Lilith implores Nikanj to try, to trade, to give something of itself to her. Nikanj seems reluctant, especially in front of the other ooloi, but then it presses the back of her neck with a sensory hand and Lilith is flooded with indescribable sensation. What she experiences is an extraordinary feeling of something beautiful that has been extinguished.

Once the sensation recedes, Nikanj says that the feeling is all it can give her to explain what it feels. Lilith hugs Nikanj, taking comfort in their shared grief. She and Nikanj resume their trek and the other ooloi no longer walk apart from them.

Part 4, Chapters 4-6 Analysis

Once they have left the settlement, Lilith continues to endure the suspicion of the others, especially Gabriel. He says, “You shouldn’t have to take the brunt of our feelings, but…but you’re the different one. Nobody knows how different” (214). This shows how even Lilith’s allies see her as an outsider and maybe too different to be considered truly human. The theme of Otherness as a Social Construct is very apparent in this, as the humans have decided there are two sides, human and Oankali, and it is unclear to them which side Lilith is on.

This attitude angers Lilith, who thinks that Gabriel is trying to have things both ways. She believes that he sought to include her in their group not to help her escape the Oankali, but to improve his own chances in the forest:

You thought you’d eat better and be better able to survive out here. You didn’t think you were doing me a favor, you thought you were doing yourself one. It could work out that way. […] But not if everyone’s sitting around waiting for me to play Judas (215).

Lilith does not want to engage Gabriel in a power struggle, but she does want them all to survive, so she tries to compromise.

Lilith discovers that she is not the only one who has been changed by forming a connection with the ooloi. Wray touches Leah’s hand and immediately releases it. They then both look away from each other, like something felt very unwanted. Lilith feels the same way toward Joseph when she touches him later in their hammocks: “His flesh felt wrong somehow, oddly repellent. It had not been this way when he came to her before Nikanj moved in between them. […] Had that unity now become a necessary feature of their human lives?” (220). Lilith and Joseph are both extremely disturbed by this.

This irrevocable bond is shown further when Joseph is murdered. It is especially devastating to Lilith and Nikanj because Joseph’s death is the direct result of the alterations that Lilith had asked for and Nikanj had given him: “We wanted to keep him safe, you and I. He was slightly injured and unconscious when they took him away. He had fought for you. But his injuries healed. Curt saw the flesh healing. He believed Joe wasn’t human” (223).

Lilith needs to share her grief with some being who cared for Joseph, so she demands that Nikanj share its feelings with her. At first, it thinks that there is no way for her to comprehend the complexity of what it feels as an Oankali, telling her, “Move the sixteenth finger of your left strength hand” (225). Lilith rejects the idea that is an impossibility, and when Nikanj shows her what it is experiencing, she can understand its love and sense of loss. Thus it appears that Lilith has indeed managed to become something of a hybrid of human and Oankali.