Tag Archives: alien

Journal Entry 7

An awkward event

A truly awkward event in to novel Dawn was when Jdahya performed the Onokali mating ritual on both Lilith and Joseph for the first time.

It was Joseph’s second time of ever seeing the alien creature. Jdahya presented itself to Joseph so he could get use to Jdahya’s grotesque appearance.  At this point Jdahya’s goal was to get Joseph to trust it enough to change and improve his body chemistry. In order to do so, Jdahya had to drug him which made him semi-unconscious.

During Joseph’s semi-unconscious state, for some odd reason Jdahya thought it was okay to perform the trio mating ritual with Lilith and Joseph without Joseph’s consent.   Lilith was okay with it since she had already performed this alone with Jdahya, but imagine the awkwardness Joseph must of felt when Jdahya’s sexual organs penetrated his skin.  First of all this mating ritual involves 3 sexes instead of the usual human 2.  Second, the emotional feelings Joseph was receiving were unnatural to humans. Third, this is Joseph’s second time of ever seeing the alien. He doesn’t even know Jdahya well enough to even consider this ritual as a possibility.  In a way it seemed almost as it were rape from my perspective.

Journal Entry 6

“Your children will know us, Lilith. You never will.” –  Kahguyaht   (Page 111)

When Kahguyaht said “you never will” It is implying that Lilith will never truly understand the Onakali (aliens) both physically nor mentally.  Lilith does not have the sensory organs which the aliens posses.  Their organs let them experience unimaginable sensations which we would never be able to experience nor understand. In a way it’s as trying to envision the 4th dimension.  The 4th dimension is not something you can see, hear or touch.  It is a something we cannot experience because we are bounded to own 3 dimension body and world. Scientist have an idea of what this phenomena is but, no one could truly understand the 4th dimension.

When it stated ” Your children will know us” it is implying that Lilith’s children will be genetically tampered with which will allow them to have sensory organs that are similar to the aliens.  This is foreshadowing what will be of humans in the future. They will be a hybrid creature with traits of both alien and human.  In a sense, the pureness of a human will be lost.  When Kahguyaht stated this, Lilith said nothin.  She has accepted her people’s faith and is no longer going against the aliens.  Then again she never had a choice.  It’s either agree with the aliens or be but back into suspended animation until she agrees.

Throughout the entire novel, humans never had to option to leave to Earth without being experimented on and genetically altered first.  The Onakali believe that tampering with the humans will increase their chance for survival.  The Onakali’s intensions are positive, but in doing so, it ripped the freedom right out of humanity.

-Henry Aguilar

Class Notes – 3/27/14

* Blade Runner
* From Human / Machine to Future Earth
* Dawn
* Close reading

Deckard’s attitudes towards androids in book v movie
— rachel
— more talkative
— status issue is missing in the movie
— setting — from dusty, dry — to crowded, dim, wet, dark, rainy, gritty, urban (book’s urban = desolate, empty —
— animals — missing — empathy, class division
— movie — owl. snake. unicorn

Human/Machine
Caves of Steel – DADOES — technology advances
technology advances
question of control — can we control technology as it advances

Let’s Enhance” – YouTube video

robots growing past what they were designed for — learning more

can mechanical devices evolve?
self-aware

seems like the androids are more organic than mechanical

replicants — name points to clones, copies

humans had a fear of going extinct

Future Earth

Dawn – Octavia Butler
ship — as organic material
species
Oankali —
from technology back to nature

don’t live unsustainably
don’t tear things down

SYMBIOTIC relationships

artificial/synthetic/mechanical vs. genetic modifications
Oankali — interested in genetic information
building a better race/species
cancer

Lilith’s attitudes towards Oankali

human fear of unfamiliarity
— look different
— sexes – male/female/Ooloi
— sensory organs
— sensory organs — things that allows them to see also allows can kill you
— interact w/environment in different ways
— humans fear motives of Oankali, what will happen when they are modified
— in process of stopping the extinction of humanity, they are modifying humans to not be human any more

— unknown about humankind’s future

Octavia Butler: “[my books] are stories of power [. . .] I bring together multi-racial groups of men and women who must cope with one another’s differences as well as with new, no necessarily controllable abilities within themselves.”

power
humans dealing with a species that has more power

— have Lilith’s life in their hands
— have studied her
— what’s true — untrue

Science/experiment
— cf. Oankali treat Lily as we (in our current moment) treat animals
— make decisions for them
— cf. do androids dream –> giving L. offer to kill herself
— Lilith — role — teaching other humans —
— making decisions that benefit her in long run — but she doesn’t understand how/why
— or humans to other human — parent/child — ex. taking a child to get a shot

spaying cats — ethical dimensions
are oankalis doing to humans what we have done to animals and to other humans?

process of radical inclusion — absorbing everything they run into — we are one peer species — we face being absorbed by them
— they don’t have areas — no gender separation, mixing, families

oankali — absorptive model, don’t see themselves as conquering species
— Lilith — feels that it is invasive
— BODY
— Lilith’s resistance — opposite of Oankali — of what they are — she is very strong, individual —

vast majority of them — mutations

Major topics
— Difference / differentiation
— Bodies — anatomy — tentacles, — alien bodies, human bodies
— Issues of power and resistance — who has power, how is power used, how are characters manipulated?
— ethics of scientific experimentation and observation — cf. treatment of animals by humans
— imprisonment

CLOSE READING
p. 52 “the child hesitated”
— character — touches oankali — come a long way from fear of the unknown
begins to understand imprisonment more deeply
“forest of tentacles”
— what is a forest? what is inside a forest? mystery

Group exercise in close reading:
1. Share passages
2. Focus as a group on one of the passages
3. Think about issues of meaning and language – focus on important metaphors and their meanings
4. Discuss how the passage would be different w/different language
5. Interpret the passage