Essay on the character of Q

Q hides behind other people and is afraid to show his true colors.

In the Aquatic Uncle, Q and his family live on the surface while his Uncle N'ba N'ga still lives underwater. Q's family does not like N'ba N'ga. Later on the story he falls in love with a female named lil who happens to live on the ground, but unlike Q she was born on land. Q is ashamed to tell her that his uncle lives underwater and at the end she ends up leaving him. Q is depressed: "They all had something. I know that made them somehow superior to me, sublime, something that made me, compared to them mediocre." (82) Q realizes that he should have just told lil about his uncle. Maybe telling her would have made things better. The whole time he was afraid to tell her the truth.

In The Dinosaurs, Q is the lone dinosaur left. He's been surviving many years on his own; he decides to resurface. He comes into contact with a new species called the New Ones. They do not realize that he is a dinosaur and accept him into their community. One day he encounters a young female drinking from a spring. He thinks to himself: "if I wanted to save myself, I should tear her limb from limb at once: Start it all over again... I would never imagined it was possible to talk like that with non-Dinosaurs, and I was tense and mostly silent."(98). At first Q believes that the female will fear him, but instead she calmly notices him and begins a conversation. He is amazed by how calm she is. He never thought that non-Dinosaurs would talk to him like that. Since he knows that she views him as a non-Dinosaur, he decides not to reveal his true identity. He hides behind the fact that the New Ones are accepting him.

Later on in the story Q recalls how the New Ones would tell stories about how vicious the Dinosaurs were. Q feels extremely uncomfortable with this, but he keeps his mouth shout: "I always felt like a Dinosaur in the midst of enemies, and every evening when they started telling stories of the Dinosaurs, legends handed down from generation to generation, I hung back in the shadow, my nerves on the edge."(100). Q just sat there like an imbecile while the New Ones were giving the incorrect story of the Dinosaurs. This whole time he hid behind other people, without saying anything. He was terrified to show his true self because he knew that if the New Ones were to know who he was then they would never look at him in the same way. They would forever fear him. This proves how Q hides when the situation is difficult.