Lit in the Time of War: The Animorphs

Hello! Happy National Read a Book Day. I’ve read seven books (all in the same series) but will review only three of them, as well as provide a list of organizations to donate to in order to support Ukrainians in need.

Animorphs #19: The Departure, by K.A. Applegate

“<What reason could she [Cassie] have for giving us all up to the Yeerks [parasitic alien slugs that control humans]?> <You really don’t know, Marco?> I [Jake] asked him. <You really don’t know why someone would not want to kill? Or even stand by and let someone else kill?> <She has no choice!> Marco said. <There’s always a choice,> Tobias said. <I can’t get mad at someone not wanting to take a life. I can’t get mad at someone for thinking life is sacred. I just can’t.> It surprised me, him coming to Cassie’s defense. Tobias lives as a pure predator. For him, killing is something he has to do for breakfast. <This is a war,> Rachel said coldly. <We’re fighting for our lives. We have a right to do whatever it takes to win.> <Maybe we’ll lose, maybe we’ll win,> I said. <But if we win and someday it’s all over, you’d better hope there are still plenty of Cassies in the world. You’d better hope that not everyone has decided it’s okay to do whatever it takes to win.>

In this book series, a bunch of middle school/high school kids called the Animorphs are able to turn into animals to fight an alien invasion by slug-like creatures called Yeerks that can crawl into peoples’ ears and possess them. The kids fight for another alien race called the Andalites. They have always thought of the Andalites as noble, and have always thought of the Yeerks as parasites. But in this book, Cassie (one of the kids) gets possessed by a Yeerk, learns about their motives for invading, and comes to realize they’re much more sympathetic and relatable than previously thought.

This book is good for its characterization and for its moral complexity—instead of just saying the Yeerks are evil and leaving it at that, it gives them nuances. It also raises interesting moral questions—what’s worth winning for? And even as Jake (the leader of the Animorphs) tries to preserve a sense of morality, he finds himself willing to sacrifice a few scruples to defeat the Yeerks. That makes for some interesting reading. It also raises the question—how far will these kids go, ultimately, to win the war?

Animorphs #22: The Solution, by K.A. Applegate

“‘[…] I mean, I feel like scum because I felt kind of glad it wasn’t me [….] You know the guy who ran into him is saying Saddler just shot out into the street without looking. So I’m thinking Saddler got run over because he was stupid and careless. That’s not right either.’ ‘It’s not right but I think it’s probably normal,’ I [Rachel] said. ‘I mean, you don’t want to think it could happen to you. So you have to come up with excuses. Ways it could never happen to you. You end up blaming the person who got hurt. Because then you don’t have to think about what if it was you it happens to [….] You don’t want to go around thinking, “It could be me next. It could be my sister or mother or father.” You’re going to do anything you can not to feel that way [….] You have to cut yourself off from it, tell yourself you’re safe. Bad stuff only happens to people who are careless or stupid or evil.’”

In this book in the series, there’s a new Animorph named David who goes on to turn against the other Animorphs. Particularly, he goes after Rachel, Jake’s cousin. David could be wherever the Animorphs are when they’re making their plans (for instance, hiding as a flea). And somehow the Animorphs have to figure out a way to bring him down before he kills all of them.

Like the previous book, this book is interesting for its moral conundrums. The Animorphs don’t want to kill David, but they still have to get rid of him. How will they do it? Read the book and find out.

Though obviously about different things, this book series reminded me a little of Elie Wiesel’s Dawn for its handling of moral themes. The Animorphs think of themselves as the good guys, which seems to justify them doing certain things. At the same time, they’re trying to preserve their morality, but doing so gets harder and harder with every book. What is justified in the end and what isn’t? When Jake starts using Rachel because he knows that she’s the most violent Animorph, how justified is that? Is seeing fellow fighters as tools a form of dehumanization? Is it a form of exploitation? There’s a lot of depth here, and I definitely recommend reading this book for it.

Animorphs #53: The Answer, by K.A. Applegate

“<Jake, there are seventeen thousand, three hundred seventy-two Yeerks in this pool.> That rocked me [….] Seventeen thousand. Living creatures. Thinking creatures. How could I give this order [to kill them]? Even for victory. Even to save Rachel. How could I give this kind of order? They could have stayed home, I thought. No one had asked them to come to Earth. Not my fault. Not my fault, theirs. No more than they deserved. Aliens. Parasites. Subhuman. <Flush them,> I said.”

This is the second to last book in the Animorphs series. This is also the book where we realize that the once morally-scrupulous Jake will do anything to win, including killing seventeen-thousand three hundred seventy-two sentient Yeerks, including blackmailing allies with torture if they disobey him, including intentionally sacrificing a whole group of “auxiliary Animorphs” for the sake of a mission, including intentionally sacrificing an Animorph he loves.

This is also where “The Animorphs” becomes more than a YA series and turns into a terrifically-written moral tragedy. The Animorphs are being dehumanized by war, they are dehumanizing others in the war, and they are finally able to delude themselves into thinking it’s all justified. The psychological aspect of this book is terrific. It’s also terrific for the way that the author doesn’t draw away from Jake once he starts making these morally-egregious decisions. She stays right with him, so that even in his evil moments, we realize that we could all become like him given the right circumstances and rationalizations. That makes for tremendously powerful and important reading.

Overall, if you’re looking for a book series that is very compelling–emotionally, plot-wise, and philosophically, I would strongly recommend the Animorphs. it pretends to be a YA series, but it’s so much more, and deserves to be recognized as such.

Have you read it? Let me know in the comments below!

Now, as promised, here’s a list of organizations you can donate to in order to support Ukrainians in need:

Voices of Children—Provides psychological counseling for children and helps refugee evacuations. Donate here: https://voices.org.ua/en/

International Rescue Committee—Provides food, medical care, and emergency support services to Ukrainian refugees. Donate here: https://www.rescue.org/

World Central Kitchen—Feeds Ukrainian refugees as they flee to Poland. Donate here: https://wck.org/

Red Cross—Provides first aid, food, medicine, and evacuation help to Ukrainians. Donate here: https://www.redcross.org/donate/cm/abc.html/?subcode=abc-pub

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Lit in the Time of War: Jemisin, Brecht, and Zhadan

Hello. I’ve changed the title for today’s post. As you know, there is a horrible war in Ukraine that should not have to be fought, and this post’s title tries to honor that fact.

Now. On to the reviews.

The City We Became, by N.K. Jemisin

(Warning: Profanity)
“I sing the city. Fucking city. I stand on the rooftop of a building I don’t live in and spread my arms and tighten my middle and yell nonsense ululations at the construction site that blocks my view. I’m really singing to the cityscape beyond. The city’ll figure it out.”

This book is about a bunch of people who embody the soul of New York City, which for some reason has just been born in the 2020s. There’s Manny (Manhattan), Queens (Queens!), Bronca (the Bronx), Brooklyn (Guess), and Aislyn (Staten Island). There’s also a sleeping embodiment of the city itself. Now, the avatars of the boroughs have to get together and wake the city.

This book was action-packed (literally), while also having a lot of moments for reflection. I really enjoyed the humor and the points it made, but sometimes it felt a bit like “Action scene! Reaction/reflection scene! Action scene! Reaction/reflection scene!” which, although it was entertaining, sometimes felt like Jemisin had heard that books worked well if they had this structure and decided to go with it no matter what.

In any case, this is a good book and I would definitely recommend it. It’s also the first in a trilogy so 🙂

“Mother Courage and Her Children,”
by Bertolt Brecht, Translated by Eric Bentley

“For marching never could hurt him!
From the north to the south he will march through the land
With his knife at his side and his gun in his hand:
That’s what the soldiers told the wise woman.

Woe to you who defies the advice of the wise!
If you wade in the water, it will drown you!
Don’t ignore what I say or you’ll rue it one day,
Said the wise woman to the soldier.”

Called one of the greatest anti-war plays of our time, this is the story of a woman who’s trying to get her kids out of the war alive. However in the process she starts profiteering off the war, and finds herself sacrificing humanity and human lives for the sake of material gain. Will this catch up to her? Read the book, and reflect on how awful war is, to find out.

This play was really good. None of the characters were that sympathetic, but they got across the horror of war and that’s what seemed to matter the most to Brecht.

Also, there was a particularly striking scene near the end which involved someone playing a drum on a rooftop which got to me. I won’t spoil it, but I’ll probably keep thinking about that scene for a while.

In any case, I would definitely recommend this play, especially nowadays.

The Orphanage, by Serhiy Zhadan,
Translated by Reilly Costigan-Humes
and Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler

“[…] an incredibly young rifleman tugs on his sleeve [….] While the woman’s pouring their drinks, he roots around in his pockets, takes out a handful of small bills, scrutinizes them discontentedly, reaches into his pockets again without letting go of Pasha’s arm, and then suddenly produces a hand grenade. The woman freezes; the rifleman places the grenade on the counter and keeps rummaging through his pockets as the grenade starts rolling down the counter, rolling and rolling, very slowly. The woman can’t take her eyes off it, the cup runs over, and the other people standing around also notice the grenade, but they can’t get anything out. All they can do is watch it roll slowly, very slowly, toward the edge, pause, roll over the edge, and plunge to the floor.”

This book is set in Ukraine, and is about a guy named Pasha who needs to get his nephew Sasha out of an orphanage during the war. During the story, he meets a bunch of people and learns that trying to stay out of politics is never a good idea because politics and war eventually catch up to you anyway and force you to choose a side.

The book was very poetic. Sometimes it felt overly poetic. Sometimes, every other line felt like a comparison of one thing to another thing.

And sometimes, the author seemed to overuse certain kinds of dialogue tags—“asked skeptically” and “said, surprised” seemed to be favorites. This doesn’t really matter much in the grand scheme of things, but it did kind of make me feel like his characters were being restricted to just following a path the author laid down before them, being confined to embody what the author wanted them to embody rather than turning into fully fleshed out human beings.

In spite of this, I would still recommend this book. It’s a very good (and sometimes moving) depiction of war and its impact on civilians, and how you can’t escape it, and how bad it is, and how much wars in Ukraine (and wars in general) should just end as soon as humanly possible.