**spoiler alert** This started out awesome! Lilith wakes up from a long sleep in some kind of prison, and must cooperate with her grotesque alien capt**spoiler alert** This started out awesome! Lilith wakes up from a long sleep in some kind of prison, and must cooperate with her grotesque alien captors, the Oankali, and figure out what they want from her. Turns out they want to repopulate the newly-rebuilt Earth with human alien hybrids! It had the stuff I personally love: gripping conversation between fascinating characters who are learning about each other. Despite their being no real action in the first half of Dawn, it was carried quite nicely by these conversations. Yes, I guess I am a giant nerd that way. But once Lilith begins Awakening other humans to begin teaching them how to survive on Earth once more, everything takes a huge nose-dive. Can I just say it? Most of the humans are assholes. There are about 40 of them, and Butler can't possibly characterize them all successfully in such a short time (and she does not). So the story goes from an intimate character-driven one between the fleshed-out Lilith and aliens Jdahya and Nikanj as she gets used to life with the Oankali, to a more action driven one with 40 extra assholes dumped into the mix. The humans are all cowardly, tribal, suspicious, dense, selfish, and violent. Ok, maybe not all. Joseph, Lilith's blander-than-bland love interest, is not like that, and Butler goes to great lengths to let the reader know how special he and Lilith are. But what do they get for their trouble? He dies. Killed by the most violent alpha-male of the group. And Nikanj the alien ends up keeping Lilith on the ship in the end, rather than on Earth with the humans she has trained, because it says the other humans would have definitely plotted to kill her. This fatalistic attitude about humans permeates the book and is unrelenting! But there are other, even deeper problems, with Dawn. I picked up this book because I'd heard that Octavia Butler was a highly-regarded feminist writer. As a feminist-minded reader, I seek these stories out because feminist writers are more likely to have fully realized female characters, less sexualized violence, and something interesting to say about sex and gender roles (or at least they don't tend to fall back on old gender cliches). But some of the ideas in this book are so regressive I wondered if this was written in the 60s. (Nope, 80s!) First off, Butler's men, with the exception of Joseph, are all violent and/or petulantly anxious about their masculinity. The Oankali pretty much rape all the humans, let's be honest. It's not graphically presented, and it's of the mind-sex variety, but still, it's awful. These aliens have no concept or respect for wishes of consent from their human captives. They use drugs and chemicals to "bond" the raped humans to them in a horrific version of Stockholm Syndrome. HOWEVER, only the men are driven to violence by these rapes. Peter and Curt turn murderous at being "taken like a woman" (quote from the book!). The women seem to suffer no ill effects, and indeed a few of them cling to these violent men, and it strikes me as very disturbing for a "feminist" writer to present. As if being raped was woman's natural lot, and women are not inherently violent (ha!), but rape a man and watch out! Even the kick-ass scene where Lilith saves a human woman from being raped by a human man can't override the message. I wouldn't even mind if Butler had had some commentary about this; if maybe she had condemned the underlying homophobia and misogyny, taught by culture, that drives some men to murder anything that taints their dominant masculinity. (It reminded me of the appalling "trans-panic" defense and left a bad taste in my mouth.) But she just presented it as how Things Just Are. Like the humans are just biologically like that, and not shaped by the vestiges of thousands of years of patriarchy. I'm not sure what kind of feminist Butler is, but I know *I* am not the kind that thinks all men are inherently Cavemen, and all women are cowering, helpless children. And speaking of homophobia, this book is *painfully* heteronormative. And monogamous. The Oankali are a 3 gender race: male, female, and the sexless "ooloi". Ok, but there is never any deviation from this relationship model. There are no gay Oankali, Oankali divorces, affairs, or even happily single Oankali. There are certainly no gay humans! They all pair up very quickly into straight, extremely monogamous couples (and later, 3somes with an ooloi). For someone who tries to be edgy by creating a 3 gender race, there is something that smells very traditional and conservative about the Oankali. Their sex is mind-sex, a kind of sexless, dispassionate, sanitized sex. Procreation is at the forefront of all their relationships. (Gee, this is sounding so familiar!) It is stated that the male and female Oankali never touch each other sexually, oh no! Butler even goes to great lengths to explain how Oankali are practically slaves to their chemicals and drives, and that being gay or even single is just not thought of or mentioned. And personality and compatibility isn't even a factor; just get the right chemicals flowing and the male, female and ooloi form an unbreakable bond! But with boring-ass "sex"! Biology is destiny for Butler. Isn't this a line of thinking most modern feminists are *against*? I know I am! I don't know. I'll probably read the rest of the trilogy, because I got all three for free in the same volume. I really hope Butler has something to say about all this in her next books, because if not, I'll be really disappointed!...more
I read this book a few times as a teenager, and it was one of my favorites. Now I'm 37, and decided to give it a re-read and see how it holds up againI read this book a few times as a teenager, and it was one of my favorites. Now I'm 37, and decided to give it a re-read and see how it holds up against the loving, gauzy memories of childhood.
Wangerin has a way with words seldom seen. His prose is mythical, dreamlike. He describes things in an unorthodox way, but that way is so spot on, so appropriate.
This book was much shorter than I remembered it being, and only took me a day to read once more. Wangerin has a gift of being succinct while also evoking imagery and emotions that other authors take paragraphs to labor upon.
It is a tale told as a myth, of Good and Evil. Chauntecleer the Rooster rules his coop and the surrounding land. There is a sorrowful, self-hating Dog, Mundo Cani, that comes to live with him. There is a Weasel, John Wesley. A Fox of Good Sense, Russel. There are Hens, and later, one special Hen, Pertelote, who becomes Chauntecleer's wife (although I'm not really sure how that arrangement works in Chicken-land, as his harem of Hens are still around).
Little does Chauntecleer know that a great evil lurks under the earth, Wyrm, and that Wyrm has borne a son into a neighboring animal kingdom. This son, Cockatrice, is the brutal, serpentine foil to Chauntecleer, and "rules his land unto its utter destruction". Soon, the threat starts making its way to Chauntecleer's land, and these silly, soft animals must prepare to fight or be annihilated.
Even at my cynical age, the emotional core is strong in this book and moved me just as it did at 15. The mythical style of writing does not alienate the reader from the joys the animals experience, nor the tragedies these animals suffer. The battles were fierce, and the ending surprising and heartfelt still. I realized just how many details I had forgotten through all the years.
Yet, I ended up knocking a star off the book from my previous 5 star rating. Certain things chafed my adult sensibilities, like the relatively minor distracting annoyance of the Turkeys. The Turkeys feature prominently once the battle gets into full gear, and much time was devoted to their hurt feelings and bumbling ways. I felt it interrupted the gravity of the war going on.
And then there's this: This book is very Christian. Though I am not particularly religious, I still feel that The Book of the Dun Cow can be enjoyed by all. The religious themes are not preachy and they mesh very well with the grand, mythic feel. Except in one area: the gender roles.
The Christian values of man-as-head-of-household, Lord even, reign in this book. And women are wives, mothers, and above all else, subordinate to their Lords and Masters the men. Pertelote's role is to be beautiful, and kind, and a sweet singing angel of endurance. She does eventually call Chauntecleer out on how unfair it is that she be expected to endure and do little else, but things don't really change for her. Other than random Hens with minor parts and a Widow Mouse with even less of a part, there are no real female characters to speak of. (view spoiler)[ And the death count of the women was pretty high compared to the male main characters. the Widow Mouse and Beryl the Hen both died very quickly, for that age-old-trope of being a device to motivate/effect the male characters and show their suffering. (hide spoiler)] Well, there's the Dun Cow, too, but she rarely speaks and is more a spiritual guide than a woman.
Plus it bothered me that the ants were all male. Tick-Tock should have been female, as should all his ant soldiers. And they never extolled their Queen! But there's those Christian values at work: Tick-Tock was a major player in the war, and only men should be major players.
I really couldn't "unsee" this upon my re-read, so unfortunately it dinged my rating a bit....more
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