100 pages 3 hours read

Octavia E. Butler

Dawn

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1987

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.

Important Quotes

Quotation Mark Icon

“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.” 


(Part 1, Chapter 4, Page 27)

Lilith has eaten nothing since her rescue by the Oankali except for a grey, 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.

Quotation Mark Icon

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


(Part 1, Chapter 5, Pages 31-32)

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.

Quotation Mark Icon

“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.” 


(Part 1, Chapter 5, Page 39)

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 towards hierarchical thinking and action was, according to Jdahya, what destroyed human society from the inside, like a cancer, aided by the power of human intelligence.