Dawn

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Collins, Kiara (January 28, 2016). "Octavia Butler's personal journal shows the author literally wrote her life into existence". Blavity. From an early age, an almost paralyzing shyness made it difficult for Butler to socialize with other children. Her awkwardness, paired with a slight dyslexia [11] that made schoolwork a torment, made Butler an easy target for bullies. She believed that she was "ugly and stupid, clumsy, and socially hopeless." [12] As a result, she frequently spent her time reading at the Pasadena Central Library. [13] She also wrote extensively in her "big pink notebook". [12] The theme of agency in Dawn is closely linked to the theme of consent. The humans aboard the Oankali ship are unable to or do not give their consent to many of the things that the Oankali give to them. This is indicative of a larger truth about their life: they have no agency to decide what they do with their own lives. Lilith muses that they are treated more like animals than like equals by the Oankali. This leaves her feeling first like a "pet" and later like an "experimental animal": "She was intended to live and reproduce, not to die. Experimental animal, parent to domestic animals? Or. . . nearly extinct animal, part of a captive breeding program? Human biologists had done that before the war—used a few captive members of an endangered animal species to breed more for the wild population. Was that what she was headed for?" (58).

Lilith's initial discomfort at realizing that her captors, who turn out to be an alien race called the Oankali, have performed surgery on her body without her consent speaks to an overarching theme of Dawn. Throughout Dawn, the humans aboard the Oankali ship are forced to submit to their captors' desires. The question of consent seems to be relatively straightforward: because the humans are captive, they have no choice but to submit to the Oankali's decisions. In other words, the humans have no consent, and therefore no bodily autonomy, in the Oankali world. In "Womb," Lilith realizes this truth when she learns the Oankali have changed her genetic code and begins to see the way the Oankali treat humans as similar to the way humans used to treat animals on Earth: "This was one more thing they had done to her body without her consent and supposedly for her own good. 'We used to treat animals that way,' she muttered bitterly" (31).Bollinger, Laurel. "Placental Economy: Octavia Butler, Luce Irigaray, And Speculative Subjectivity". Lit: Literature Interpretation Theory 18.4 (2007): 325–352. doi: 10.1080/10436920701708044.

Google featured her in a Google Doodle in the United States on June 22, 2018, which would have been Butler's 71st birthday. [84] In Butler's novel, the human race almost entirely kills itself off because of a global war where human collectives (nations) fought each other rather than uniting in harmony. Likewise, on the ship, the opposing groups of humans see each other as "enemies," while individuals within a single group are seen as "allies" (174). Lilith thinks it is ridiculous that humans are organizing themselves similarly to how they did on Earth. She tells her group, "'So stupid, isn't it. It's like 'Let's play Americans against the Russians. Again'" (175). Nevertheless, there is tension aboard the ship; rather than work together cohesively, the humans choose who to ally themselves with, creating a culture of "us" vs "them."a b c d e f g h i Kilgore, De Witt Douglas, and Ranu Samantrai. "A Memorial to Octavia E. Butler." Science Fiction Studies 37.3 (November 2010): 353–361. JSTOR 25746438. Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower – An opera by Toshi Reagon and Bernice Johnson Reagon" . Retrieved June 24, 2020. Ritch, Calvin (2008). "An Octavia E. Butler Bibliography (1976–2008)". Utopian Studies. 19 (3): 485–516. doi: 10.5325/utopianstudies.19.3.0485. JSTOR 20719922. S2CID 150357898. Robyn McGee, "Octavia Butler: Soul Sister of Science Fiction", Fireweed 73. Fall 2001, pp.60 and following. Despite this, however, the Oankali imagine themselves as benevolent captors that offer the humans in their care a choice. When Lilith is finally able to leave her cell, she is apprehensive at the thought of entering Jdhaya's home. He soothes her by saying, '"No one will touch you without your consent'" (38). Lilith is comforted by his words but this comes with the awful knowledge that she has become dependent on Jdhaya: "How had she become so dependent on him? She shook her head. The answer was obvious. He wanted her dependent" (38).