Imago

The novel’s final chapters feature scenes of communication, cooperation, and compromise that explore The Nature of Autonomy and Consent in Alien/Human Relationships. The climactic scene where Jodahs is shot at by an angry elder is immediately followed by Jodahs repairing a hole in a human’s heart, symbolizing the need for compassion and love if the two species are to survive harmoniously together. Initial signs that the two species can get along develop as humans begin to take on Oankali habits and vice versa. Jodahs describes Francisco’s mannerisms, such as walking away, as “very Oankali.” Likewise, Jodahs is so excited to be reunited with its family that it forgets how humans may be repelled by another ooloi’s touch. Jodahs realizes, “I came closer than I should have to grabbing [Tino] and hugging him. Too Human a reaction” (212). Jodahs hugs Nikanj instead, and Nikanj tolerates the foreign gesture. In adopting each other’s habits, Francisco and Jodahs demonstrate an understanding of cultural differences, particularly the nuances of nonverbal communication. Their body language, one not determined by genetics, offers a form of communication that relies on an understanding of cultural contexts.

For the humans, true cooperation requires them to eliminate their vitriol and bigotry. Even when Jodahs declares it means no harm and only wants to care for its partners the way humans do, the villagers respond with epithets and fear-mongering like “Four-arms!” and “They strike like snakes!” (203), drawing similarities to racist and anti-gay slurs and taunts. Butler also implicates religion in perpetuating hate and intolerance in her depiction of the elder who shoots at Jodahs. Jodahs narrates, “The disgusted elder’s face twisted with anger and revulsion. He cursed me, called on his god to damn me. Then he fired his gun” (205). The elders, a group of resisters over a century old, are the most hateful members of the village. Jodahs only knows it has made progress with them when “they stopped spitting as we walked by, stopped muttering curses or threats at us, stopped pointing their guns at us to remind us of their power and their fear” (211). Far from connoting wisdom, the men’s old age represents an outdated and obstinate generation of segregation and xenophobia that even the ooloi’s substance can’t fully erase.

However, the younger villagers come to love the ooloi constructs and believe their stories of the Oankali that counter the rumors dictated by the elders. Aaor and Jodahs’s detention in the village becomes an opportunity to educate the villagers and demystify the stereotypes that literally demonized the Oankali. After spending months with the Jodahs and Aaor, when Javier and Paz see Oankali for the first time, they “were fascinated, but they were not afraid” (212). This first encounter contrasts sharply with the first novel in which humans felt revulsion and panic at the sight of the Oankali’s tentacles. Javier and Paz demonstrate how fear of the “other” is taught, naturalized, and reinforced, and how bias can be unlearned.

For the Oankali, love for humans remains an ambiguous venture, though Jodahs continues to exhibit awareness and sensitivity to the humans’ need for autonomy. Yet, what some of the humans want, to remain fertile and repopulate the Earth with fully human children, will never happen. The Oankali understand the humans’ need for preservation and autonomy and offer Mars as a compromise. However, the kind of love the Oankali offer humans is something more radical—the opportunity to merge with another species and live a nomadic life of continual transformation in the cosmos.

This new, fluid life is epitomized in Jodahs, a non-binary third-sex ooloi of human and Oankali construct, capable of shapeshifting and holding the diversity of life in between its two hearts. Jodahs and its body symbolize change, multiplicity, and the confounding of hierarchies, not only for the humans but also for the Oankali who still hold their reservations about the potential dangers of a new species. Jodahs reaches a compromise with the Oankali and advocates for its new community to live autonomously in the mountains where other willing Oankali mates may join them. Jodahs declares, “Watch us all you like, but don’t hinder us” (218). The declaration appeals to the theme of Reproductive and Sexual Freedom as Forms of Female Agency. Much like Akin’s proposal for human independence on Mars, Jodahs’s exile in the mountains represents survival and reproductive freedom.

Part 3’s title, “Imago,” refers to the final, adult stage of an insect’s development. The term references the stages of Jodahs’s metamorphoses and its final maturation with human and Oankali mates that will form its family, highlighting The Ethics of Genetic Engineering and Posthumanism. This last stage of Jodahs’s development also marks the beginning of a new species, a reference to the series’ original title, “Xenogenesis,” which means the creation of something new and different from the parent. Butler leaves the future of the following generations a mystery but ends the novel with the optimistic potential for a symbiotic town, grown from a single cell extracted from Jodahs’s body, that will flourish like a garden. Having scaled the steep and arduous cliffs of the mountain village, a symbol of their struggles for belonging and acceptance, Jodahs and the villagers build a new habitat in the expansive and nourishing valley. The new town’s plentiful setting functions as a contrast to the stifling and repressive village led by the elders. Jodahs states about the town, “[I]t would need the space the valley afforded it to grow and mature before it had to deal with mountains” (220). Jodahs anticipates that their future will be no less arduous and contentious but hopes that the next generations will encapsulate the best of not just both species but a multitude of possible life forms.