In the second section, “Family,” Lilith lives with Jdhaya and his family as she learns more about the Oankali. However, she cannot take this opportunity-she still has an instinct to live. He tells her that if she wants to she can touch him and he will sting her with his tentacles so that she dies. Lilith is disgusted at this thought and tells Jdhaya that she wishes they just left her to die on Earth. The future humans will be human-Oankali hybrids and it will be her job to bring them into existence. Lilith realizes that the Oankali have now truly continued the human extinction that the war began. He tells her that the Oankali are traders and they expect to trade genetic material with the humans. Lilith asks Jdhaya what the Oankali want from the human race. Once Lilith is able to get used to Jdhaya, he brings her out of her cell.

The vegetation has grown and those animals which did not go extinct in the war have repopulated. In the two hundred fifty years since humans have left Earth, Earth has rejuvenated. Lilith has been awakened because she has work to do-it will be her job to wake the other humans and prepare them to return to Earth. They have several other humans in isolated confinement. Jdhaya tells Lilith that she has been sleeping on this ship for almost two hundred and fifty years.

The aliens, who refer to themselves as the Oankali, exist in a symbiotic relationship with the ship. Outside of her room is a giant alien ship built out of living material. He is there in order for Lilith to acclimate to his presence so that he can bring her out of her cell. This alien tells her that it is a man and his name is Jdhaya. She soon discovers that it is an alien being with tentacles all over its body. During this Awakening, she realizes that there is a shadowy figure with her in her room. Normally, her captors ask her questions from somewhere in the ceiling, and she never sees them. Lilith has no idea who her captors are or what they want from her. She remembers that she is twenty-six years old, she had a husband and child who died in a car crash, and that there was a deadly war that wiped out most of the human race. She knows that this is not the first time that she has been Awakened. The first section of Dawn is called “Womb.” It opens with Lilith Iyapo, who has been living in isolated confinement.

Dawn book octavia butler