I thought it was interesting to analyze how Lilith interacted with Jdahya who is an extraterrestrial called Oankali. As she spends more time with Jdahya, she goes from being completely terrified of him to being able to accept him despite his differences. His appearance terrifies her the most but once she gets over that, he does not seem as scary to her.
When she first sees him, she tries to familiarize him with human attributes. He looked like a “tall, slender man…still humanoid” and also seemed to have eyes and ears (13). However, he is still very alien to her. He says he is male but points out that she assumes too much in thinking he is “a sex [she’s] familiar with (13). She soon realizes that he does not have eyes and what she perceived as hair was actually like tentacles that are a sensory organ. This scars her the most because she feels like she has been betrayed by her own senses; he is not what she perceived him to be. She frequently describes these tentacles in a negative way, as “medusa,” and “snakes,” (13). He also has no nose and “pale gray skin” (13).
She seems to talk to him very easily; she is not afraid to ask, and even demand, information from him. It is his appearance that is the hardest for her to get used to even if she tries to attribute him to something like other “life forms on Earth” (17). Being physically close to him, causes her more anxiety and she finds herself putting more distance between them. However, the more she learns about him, the more time she spends with him, she becomes more comfortable with him. It is only after he can be physically next to her, with his “tentacles actually touch[ing] her” that he deems it acceptable for her to leave the room he has kept her in (29).