Sex Quotes in Speaker for the Dead

How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)

Quote #1

So she let him draw her down to the bed, where he clung to her tightly until in only a few minutes sleep relaxed him arms… She might have been thrust out of the garden because of her ignorant sin like Eva. But, again like Eva, she could bear it, for she still had Libo, her Adao.

Novinha's comparing herself and Libo to Adam and Eve, and Pipo's death to their exile from the Garden of Eden. That connects Pipo's death to eating the fruit of the tree of life—and the piggies were trying to make Pipo into a tree for reproductive purposes. You could say the piggies are so confusing because they're familiar; the symbols seem to fit, but then they don't quite. Novinha ends up exiled from the garden because she doesn't understand, rather than because she does.

Quote #2

"'Thou art fertile ground, and I will plant a garden in thee." It was the sort of thing a poet says to his mistress, or even a husband to his wife, and the tu was intimate, not arrogant. (8.84)

Ender is saying this to Novinha. It's supposed to be about spiritual renewal, Shmoop supposes, but it's also sexual… which seems a little forward since they just met.

Quote #3

"In a way it's rather sweet of him," said Ender. "he'd rather believe that Marcao's disease was different from every other recorded case… Marcao's decay progressed like every other, testes first, and all of Novinha's children were sired by someone else." (9.67)

The doctor, Navio, can't read Novinha's sexual relationship. This is similar to the problem the colonists have with the piggies—they have all the reproductive pieces, but the piggies don't make sense to them. Sex in this book is a secret (or a bunch of secrets).