Dawn

Content Warning: The guide discusses suicide, rape, and sexual assault, which are present in the source text.

“He brought her something that so surprised and delighted her that she took it from his hand without thought or hesitation: A banana, fully ripe, large, yellow, firm, very sweet.”

Lilith has eaten nothing since her rescue by the Oankali except for a gray, tasteless kind of pasty stew. Therefore, she is thrilled when Jdahya surprises her with a ripe banana. Tasting something familiar and evocative of home is the first positive experience Lilith has had since Awakening this time. It also signals the first time Lilith can be near Jdahya without terror or repulsion.

“Your Earth is still your Earth, but between the efforts of your people to destroy it and ours to restore it, it has changed.” 

Lilith learns from Jdahya that the Earth has changed over the 250 years she has been in suspended animation. The damage done by the nuclear war and the Oankali efforts to make it habitable again have rendered it a place that she will find unrecognizable.

“You are potentially one of the most intelligent species we’ve found [...] You are hierarchical. [...] It’s a terrestrial characteristic. When human intelligence served it instead of guiding it, when human intelligence did not even acknowledge it as a problem [...] That was like ignoring cancer.”

Jdahya explains to Lilith that the two dominant human characteristics of intelligence and hierarchy were a lethal combination that led to the destruction of the species. This quote shows that the human genetic propensity toward hierarchical thinking and action, aided by the power of human intelligence, destroyed human society from the inside. The simile comparing these tendencies to cancer figuratively links Jdahya’s words to Lilith, who has a hereditary predisposition to the disease. However, much as that predisposition proves advantageous in this new