Imago

Part 2 is entitled “Exile,” a reference to Jodahs’s return to the forest and Aaor’s impending metamorphosis that will eventually see them both exiled on the homeship. Aaor’s condition heightens the suspense as a countdown to expulsion. Unless Jodahs finds human mates to stabilize it, Jodahs and Aaor will be forced to live on the ship, potentially forever.

Jodahs’s forest wanderings are narrated in a tone of melancholy and loss, emphasizing Jodahs’s identification with Earth as its home. Jodahs laments, “No more forests or rivers. No more wildness filled with things I had not yet tasted. The planet itself was like one of my parents” (85). The comparison of Earth to a parent is more than figurative, as the ooloi have specialized cells and an organ (yashi) to store and reproduce the innumerable organisms they have collected and inherited throughout the ages. The Oankali’s villages and ship are also organisms that all Oankali and constructs can link with through their tentacles. Home, therefore, is more than a nostalgic concept and a tangible place. It is physically a part of their bodies and identities. Such new ways of being highlight The Ethics of Genetic Engineering and Posthumanism.

Though various Oankali populations and Jodahs’s Oankali ancestors live on the homeship, Jodahs feels more at home on Earth, the only place it has known. In a conversation with its younger siblings, Jodahs asserts, “[Earth] is my place […] This world. I don’t belong on the ship—except perhaps for a visit” (90). Jodahs’s comment resembles a diasporic discussion of the homeland as the place of one’s origins or heritage while also acknowledging that one’s cultural identity is in the place of settlement. Jodahs’s sense of belonging isn’t predicated on where some of its people originally came from but on where the Oankali, humans, and constructs have chosen to build their lives.

Jodahs’s refusal to leave Earth mirrors the humans’ desire to remain on the planet, drawing sympathy for the humans’ reasons for resistance. When Nikanj advises Jodahs and Aaor to live on the ship, Jodahs defiantly retorts, “No!” and claims it would rather stay on Earth and mate with old humans that will shorten its life than live on the ship. Jodahs’s declaration echoes the rationale for why some humans reject even the Mars option. The novel’s exploration of Oankali mates and human fertility highlights the importance of Reproductive and Sexual Freedom as Forms of Female Agency. When Jodahs describes the Mars colony to João, the resister responds, “Why should the Oankali have the one world that’s ours?” (82). In a later chapter, another resister, Francisco, declares an almost identical indignation as Jodahs’s to the idea of leaving Earth. Francisco retorts, “No!” […] This is our world. Your people can go to Mars” (194). Like Jodahs, Francisco is angry to give up his home, drawing parallels between the Oankali and colonizers displacing a native population. Like the humans, Jodahs fears a loss of agency aboard the ship. The thought of being sent to the ship made it feel “caged and frantic” (91). Jodahs’s first-person perspective offers an intimate and sympathetic understanding of its desires, desperation, and impassioned plea against exile, furthering the conviction that humans deserve a more just existence.

In contrast to earlier ooloi and human interactions, Jodahs acknowledges the importance of truth and gives humans knowledge to make informed decisions. Jodahs is desperate to find human mates but recognizes that Jesusa will accept no lies, and it will have to tell her that it will inform the Oankali of her village’s existence. Jodahs considers, “She would not accept evasion. If I lied to her, she would learn the truth eventually, and I did not think she would forgive me for the lies. Would she forgive me for the truth?” (105-06). Jodahs understands what makes humans resist the Oankali: their need for agency. The Oankali’s ambiguous ethics blur the lines between truth and lies, depriving humans of the full context to frame their choices. The Oankali do not inform humans of their final plan to leave Earth as a sterile satellite, and their touch induces humans into a drug-like and pleasured state that manifests as a form of control. These two conceits do not change throughout the series, and one of the central conflicts is how to grant human agency in an imbalanced power relationship. Jodahs negotiates what it means to be in a consensual and radically interdependent relationship, highlighting The Nature of Autonomy and Consent in Alien/Human Relationships.

Jodahs practices restraint in its initial interactions with the siblings by waiting for their consent and granting them a measure of agency. Throughout the novel, Jodahs continues to be sensitive to when its touch may be considered a violation. However, Jodahs struggles to convey the truth of the villagers’ fate under the Oankali— that they will be “found” and “collected.” Those who do not choose Mars or the gene trade will be sterilized and left “to die when [the Oankali] separated and left an uninhabitable rock behind” (105). This harsh truth, described in short, curt sentences, admits that humans do not have control over their lives and only have the options the Oankali give them. The Oankali consider consent a courtesy rather than a natural right.