#4: The Message

So this is a pretty major book. The first book established the setting and characters, the second book explored the personal toll the invasion takes on regular people, and the third book gave us more insight into the experience of morphing, by way of showing us the consequences of staying too long in a morph. The Message is where the overarching plot of the series really starts taking off. See, there's one last member of the Animorphs team that hasn't been introduced yet. In this book, we meet him.

This is Cassie's first time narrating. Oddly enough, given that Cassie is the biggest animal lover of the group, her first book does not open with the Captain Planet antics that the last two did. Instead, we open on her standing alone in her barn - the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center - morphing a squirrel. Some predator has been sneaking in at night and eating the birds. Cassie thinks she might be able to crack the case by morphing a tiny prey animal, because, hell, Rachel made it out of her little shrew adventure alive, so why not? Oh, you kids and your suicidal plans.

Naturally, she loses control of the squirrel's strong fear instincts and almost gets killed twice - once by a fox (the culprit!) and once by Tobias, who has no idea the squirrel he's hunting is actually Cassie. Clearly, he's made a lot of progress since the last book in terms of living like a hawk. Cassie, however, recognizes that he's still a little sensitive about it. One of my favorite things about Cassie's narration is how much she tells us about the other characters' emotional states. She's so deeply empathetic, so keyed into everyone else's feelings, that Cassie's books often contain more insight into the other Animorphs than their own books. If she wasn't so clearly on her way to becoming a veterinarian like her parents (at least before she was dragged into an intergalactic war), she'd make a hell of a psychologist.

Anyway, Tobias apologizes and she says, "It's okay, my friend." Jake also called Tobias "my friend" in the last book and it made me wince. I guess they're trying to make him feel welcome, but it just makes them sound like John McCain. Cassie reveals to Tobias that she's been having weird dreams about the sea, and Tobias tells her he's been having the same dream: "a voice, calling out to you from beneath the water." Hmmm...

The next day after school, the Animorphs meet up in Rachel's room and Cassie and Tobias tell everybody about this strange, shared dream. Nobody else has had it. But Jake has a videotape: on the news last night, there was a segment about a piece of metal that washed up on the beach. There are strange symbols engraved in the metal - symbols that Jake recognizes from when he stepped into the Andalite's ship to retrieve the blue box. Upon seeing this, both Cassie and Tobias pass out and have even more vivid visions. It becomes clear that some Andalite, deep down in the ocean, is calling for help. Remembering Elfangor's kindness, the group unanimously agrees that they need to help this Andalite. Even Marco's down for it, even though he starts complaining once they actually get on the mission. Oh, Marco. As Cassie points out, "Marco is never happy unless he's complaining about something. Just like Rachel is never happy unless she has something to fight against. And Tobias is never happy, period. He thinks if he's ever happy, someone will come along and take his happiness away." See what I mean about the insight?

So that night, they walk along the beach in their regular human forms, scoping it out. But neither Cassie nor Tobias feels the pull any stronger, or gets any more visions. But of course, The Sharing is there, scoping it out too. The two male Animorphs who've narrated so far compared The Sharing to Boy Scouts; here, Cassie compares it to Girl Scouts. That's a nice little touch, although you don't really see any ranks or merit badges or focus on the outdoors in The Sharing. It's generally struck me as more akin to a Christian youth group. I can totally see a van full of Sharing kids blasting Jars of Clay as they drive down to North Carolina to rebuild houses after Hurricane Bertha.

But instead of rebuilding people's houses, they start shooting at the Animorphs. With, like, guns and shit. Because no one but Andalites takes long walks on the beach in the evening. Can you imagine if they'd actually shot one of the Animorphs? It would be such a massive scandal, this supposedly squeaky-clean organization murdering some random teenager. Unless they shot Cassie or Marco, in which case the country would just shrug and be like, "Whatever. They must've been doing something wrong." But if they shot Rachel? Holy shit, it'd be bigger than O.J. (Why yes, I am enjoying making these '90s references. Why ever do you ask?)

Anyway, the Animorphs run, hide behind some dunes, and morph fish to hide in the water. One problem: the only fish they've acquired is a freshwater fish. They manage to survive in the sea water just long enough for the Yeerks to notice their human footprints leading to the water and conclude that they're a bunch of kids going swimming. Tom's Yeerk points out that, hey, maybe these aren't Andalite bandits. Innis 226 (Chapman's Yeerk) laughs and tells him he's not going to be the fool who tells Visser Three he's wrong. Thank God for Visser Three's incompetence. The Yeerks fan out to search the whole beach, and the Animorphs escape with their lives, having learned and accomplished absolutely nothing. Another mission well done!

A few days later, Jake rides his bike to Cassie's house while she's doing chores in the barn. Cassie is always doing chores in the barn. I'm halfway convinced at this point that Cassie's parents had her just because they couldn't find an intern. Jake helps Cassie shovel manure and tells her that everyone's waiting on her to decide what to do. Cassie is shocked and very uncomfortable at the idea of having to make a decision that might get everyone killed.

"I know this is crazy," I said, "but the ocean scares me a little. I understand the land. I understand soil and things that grow out of it." I laughed. "I guess I'm just an old farm girl. You know this farm has been in my family since the Civil War?"

Jake winked. "Do I know that? Puh-leeze. I had Thanksgiving with your family last year, you may remember. Your great-grandmother gave me the complete history."

"Going all the way back to when dinosaurs ruled the earth," I said. "Grammy does tend to go on about our history, doesn't she?"

Okay, firstly, I want Cassie's great-grandmother, who I imagine to be tiny and wizened and adorable, to tell me the epic history of her family. Secondly, Jake spent Thanksgiving with Cassie's family? Holy cow. They went from awkward middle school mutual crush to practically picking out china patterns in the span of, like, thirty pages. For an author who spent almost a decade writing some very true-to-life teen romance novels, K.A. sure seems to have a hard time progressing the romances in Animorphs smoothly and consistently. Jake and Cassie, and Rachel and Tobias, pinball between "secretly like-like each other" and "seem to have been dating for a year or more," sometimes hitting both in a single book. And who lets their 12-year-old son have Thanksgiving with his girlfriend's family anyway?

But enough with the kissy stuff and on to more pressing matters: namely, the kids need to get to the bottom of the ocean. They head to The Gardens and the dolphin trainer leaves the kids alone with their dolphins, thanks to Cassie's mad connections. These dolphins are named Joey, Ross, Monica, Chandler, Phoebe, and Rachel. Oh, the '90s, I love you so. Come back to me, my precious. Let me lie in your tender, beflanneled arms. Anyway, Cassie is hesitant to morph the dolphins because they're so intelligent. As opposed to elephants or gorillas, who are clearly dumbasses.

"It will be strange morphing something so intelligent," Rachel said.

"Yes," I agreed. Strange, and... wrong, somehow. I felt a twisting in my stomach. "How is doing this any different than what the Yeerks do?"

Rachel looked surprised. "Yeerks take over humans," she said. "Besides, they don't morph, they infest. We don't take over the actual animal, we just copy his DNA pattern, create a totally new animal, and then -"

"And then control the new animal," I said.

"It's not the same," Rachel insisted. But she looked troubled.

This brings up an interesting question, namely:

Fucking Morphing, How Does it Work?
Cassie's right, in one respect: the animals they morph into wouldn't exist without them. In a sense, they are creating these new animals, with their own instincts, and the Animorphs use their superior cognition to dominate them. How exactly this all works, given that when you have the mind of, say, a tick, you shouldn't be any more intelligent than a tick, is not really explored in-depth. Z-space is the usual catchall answer to anything involving weird science. When you morph something small, where does your extra mass go? Z-space! When you morph something big, where does that extra mass come from? Z-space! How can you preserve human consciousness when your morph doesn't have the brainpower to support it? Z-space! How do spaceships get from distant worlds to Earth? Z-space! It's pure white nothingness and doesn't actually make a whole lot of sense, but then neither does anything else, really. Not that that stops us from trying to come up with elaborate scientific explanations.

Moving on. Let's assume that morphing involves creating a new copy of a currently living animal, using a mix of the morpher's mass and whatever mass can be dragged in from Z-space, and that the morpher's consciousness is psychically controlling the creature from Z-space, where it is being stored. (Whether or not this implies the existence of a soul I will leave for the readers to decide.) This is going to be controversial among the hordes of Cassie-haters, but she actually does have a point. They are not humans who look like animals; they replicate every part of the animal, including its brain. Then they take these animals into battle. We've seen that the animals they morph have instincts that they must overcome. If said animal has theory of mind (i.e., sentience), it knows that horrible things are happening and that it is in danger. It will not want to go into battle. The morpher's consciousness has to force the animal to comply. No, they're not controlling currently-existing animals as the Yeerks do. But is it really any better to create a brand-new animal that will exist for less than two hours, and in that all-too-brief existence experience extraordinary fear and pain? So unlike a lot of other Animorphs re-read bloggers, I don't think this is just Cassie overthinking things. Morphing is very similar to cloning, and this is the same ethical dilemma we face there, but now there are issues of consent and violence piled on top of it.

But Cassie is willing to put those issues aside for now, in order to save the Andalite. They acquire the dolphins (I like to think that Rachel acquired Rachel), and the next day they meet at a secluded place by a river leading into the sea. Rachel's bought Tobias a little digital watch and strapped it to his leg so he can serve as timekeeper, which is ridiculously adorable. So they morph dolphins and swim out to the sea, and are having the time of their lives because the dolphin brains just want to play and frolic and rape everything.

Playtime ends, though, when their echolocation senses a shiver of sharks (I'm not even kidding, that is an actual accepted term for a group of sharks) attacking a great one. I mean, whale. For some reason, the phrase "great one" pops into their heads, and they are deeply distressed by the idea of a great one being attacked. So distressed that they attack the sharks. They win, but not before one of the sharks bites off Marco's tail. He starts to morph back, to heal himself, but they're still deep underwater, so if he can't make it to the surface, he'll drown. Thankfully, the whale they saved lifts him up to the surface.

Then the whale communicates telepathically with Cassie. And this is where the book loses me. Because you know what? I'm fine with Andalite or Leeran telepathy because they're aliens. I'm fine with the Animorphs having telepathy in morph because they're using Andalite technology. But telepathy in whales? Don't you think if they were able to communicate telepathically, whalers would have to endure a nonstop psychic barrage of "OH GOD PLEASE DON'T KILL ME" to the point where whaling would effectively end as soon as it began? Whales are very intelligent and probably wise and, yeah, a little bit mystical-seeming. But telepathic? No. Just... just no.

And then there's the whole "great ones" thing. Dolphins are intelligent, and they do have their own complex language and cultures. I totally buy that they would call whales "great ones" and have a deep respect for them. I don't buy that these particular dolphins, who were effectively just born less than two hours ago, are aware of those words and that cultural respect. The morphs are basically infants in the bodies of full-grown animals. Nobody taught them about great ones and why they should be respected. Admittedly, that nitpick kind of pales in comparison with telepathic whales. And this will not even be the weirdest thing that happens in a Cassie book, so hold onto your hats, folks.

Anyway, Jesus Whale tells Cassie his life story (literally) and then tells her where to find the Andalite. Marco demorphs, and remorphs, and they swim back to shore to regroup and come back to find the Andalite some other time because it's not like it's urgent or anything. This whole "formulate a plan, go scope out the area, come home, formulate another plan, go back for more scoping, come home, formulate a new plan, then finally do something" thing the Animorphs do in every book is perfectly good spy/guerrilla strategy. But it makes for some really repetitive storytelling.

Back on land, Cassie visits Marco at his unbelievably depressing apartment complex to apologize for almost killing him. He tells her it's not her fault, then lets her in on two different stories he read in the newspaper: "One is about this guy who is going to be looking for some supposedly lost treasure ship off the coast. The other was this story about some big marine biologist guy who has a ship and is going to be doing some underwater exploration off our coast." Man, these kids are real news junkies. So these guys are obviously Controllers, which raises the stakes for the Animorphs to save the Andalite before the Yeerks can get to him.

The kids devise an insanely complicated plan where they morph seagulls, hide out on a container ship that's headed in the right direction, demorph, and when they get close to where Jesus Whale told Cassie the Andalite was, jump over the side and morph dolphin. Miraculously, they're in the ocean before anything goes massively wrong. The Yeerks are already there, hovering above in helicopters, but luckily they don't see the kids in spandex jumping into the ocean.

They swim very far down and find a huge glass dome that surrounds what looks like an alien park. There's an entrance, with a little hallway and an inner door leading to the dome proper, and they race inside before their lungs explode. They demorph there. But as soon as they open the inner door, the Andalite knocks them all unconscious with his tail blade.

Nice to meet you too, Ax!

Cassie wakes up to find him holding a Dracon beam in her face. Lots of people wanting to shoot Cassie lately. She explains that they're humans, that they came to help, that Prince Elfangor gave them the power to morph. The Andalite reveals that Elfangor was his brother, and that he was in the Dome part of the Dome ship when it fell apart because he was too young for battle. He's been living in the Dome, under the ocean, for weeks, sending out calls to his cousins and receiving no response. He introduces himself as Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill, and Marco cleverly shortens it to Ax. He asks, if they fight the Yeerks, who is their prince? Everybody looks at Jake, and despite his denials, Ax bows before him. This will be the first of many, many Prince Jake jokes.

So Ax gives them the grand tour of the Dome, telling them all about the alien plantlife. Rachel whispers to Cassie, "He's cute!" and winks. Rachel, you freak.

[We take our home with us into space. It angers the Yeerks,] he added grimly.

"Why do they care what you take into space?" Marco asked.

[It is a part of everything they hate and would destroy if they could. The Yeerks would take our world and make it as barren as their own. As they will to your planet unless they are stopped.]

I grabbed Ax's arm. "What... what are you saying? What do you mean about making the planet barren?"

He turned his big eyes on me. [The usual Yeerk pattern. Once a planet is under their control, they alter it to suit their own desires. They will leave enough plant and animal species to keep the host bodies fed - humans in the case of Earth - and the rest they eliminate.]

Cassie is horrified by this, because it's not like there's already a species on Earth driving a mass extinction of creatures they don't rely on to stay fed. She asks how long it will take for the Andalites to come save them. Ax gives it one or two years.

"Two years!" Jake looked stricken. I went to his side and slipped my arm through his. "Five kids against an enemy that has destroyed half the galaxy? Five of us?"

Ax gave that smile, the one he did with his eyes. [Six, my Prince,] he said.

Aww. Okay, I forgive you for knocking me unconscious and shoving a Dracon beam in my face. Anyway, with the Yeerks coming, it's time to blow this popsicle stand. Luckily, Ax already acquired a shark who swam fairly close by one day. So the Yeerks are setting off explosions and they've got Taxxons who apparently can swim really fast, and Visser Three's Blade ship is there of course, and the Animorphs swim away as fast as they can, but the Taxxons catch up with them.

They beat the crap out of the Taxxons (who are surprisingly easy to kill - "like hitting a soggy paper bag with a sledgehammer"), but just when they think they're safe enough to swim to the nearest island and demorph, we meet yet another one of Visser Three's horrifying monster morphs. This one is a Madrut, an enormous sea creature from one of the Andalite moons. Visser Three chases them until they're too exhausted to swim anymore. So even though they know it will probably be their death, they turn to face him and fight.

[Jake?] I said. [I wanted to tell you...]

[Yes. Me, too, Cassie] he said.

Ugh. Really, K.A.? Two books in a row with this sappy shit? Anyway, they're all going to die but then it's JESUS WHALE TO THE RESCUE! And he brought four of his closest whale friends! The other whales kick the crap out of Visser Three, while Jesus Whale lets the kids demorph and take a nap on his back. Then he carries them back home. And Jake and Cassie have this conversation while sitting on the whale's back:

Jake smiled his slow smile. "It's fun being a dolphin, though, isn't it? I know you were worried about it. You know, thinking maybe it wasn't right and all."

I shook my head slowly. "I'm still not sure it's right. But I guess we don't have much of a choice. The Yeerks started this fight, not us. And after what Ax said... I guess it's not just about one species, human beings. It's about all the animals. It's about all of Earth."

Jake nodded. "I think if you could ask the dolphins, they would say it's all right to use them. Since what you're trying to do is save them."

"Nah, they would just think it was all a big game. They would never understand."

We both laughed. Even if they could talk, the dolphins would never really understand what we were so upset about. We knew that better than anyone.

"I guess that's true," Jake said. "But we do understand." He met my gaze. "We do understand what's at stake. And we'll do whatever we have to do to win."

I knew what he was trying to tell me. We'd used the dolphins to save them. We'd used other animals to save them, too. And that made it okay.

So that's the heartwarming moral of this story: the ends justify the means. Remember this scene as the series continues. Specifically, remember what Jake says. Because holy hell, they are going to some seriously dark places and it is at least in part that attitude that'll take them there.

The kids get back to the secluded spot by the river. They decide to hide Ax on Cassie's farm, since it's huge and full of wide-open meadows where he can graze and dark woods where he can hide. But first, they must get him there without suspicion. So Ax acquires all of their DNA (except Tobias's, of course), then morphs into a combination of the four of them - a clever trick I really wish came up more often in the series. A few nights later, Cassie sneaks into The Gardens' dolphin tank, morphs dolphin, and plays with them. And that's the book: kinda weird, kinda mystical, generally pretty good, but I could really do without the psychic whales.

Commentary:
In my review of #2: The Visitor, I talked briefly about Cassie and Rachel's relationships with traditional gender roles and how that reflected upon/impacted their friendship. Drawing on my own experience as someone who doesn't really "get" makeup or fashion and, as a result, floundered socially when I entered middle school, I suggested that Rachel had changed herself to fit in better while Cassie stayed true to herself. Of course, I was drawing on my experience as a white girl.

About a week ago, a blogger on Tumblr made a post discussing Cassie's race and how that related to her sartorial style and her friendship with Rachel. (There's also a separate follow-up here.) White women are presumed to be at least capable of achieving mainstream beauty standards, if not outright obligated to be beautiful. If you aren't beautiful as a white woman, it's because you're just not trying hard enough. This cultural obligation that I described Rachel as falling prey to - and Cassie as rejecting - doesn't really apply to black girls. Black girls more often get the message that they are, by virtue of their race, incapable of being beautiful. For a white girl, the idea that she doesn't have to be beautiful is revolutionary. For a black girl, the idea that she can be beautiful is revolutionary. And that changes so much about the reasoning behind Cassie's sartorial choices, and her relationship dynamic with Rachel.

You know what really kills me? I read The Bluest Eye, I saw For Colored Girls, and I watched Good Hair, and I still needed all this pointed out to me specifically in the context of Animorphs before I made the connection. That may be due to my own special blend of obliviousness and forgetfulness, but I think it also says something about white privilege. The sad fact of the matter is that white people just don't have to think about this kind of thing too much, so we mostly don't. Even when we make an honest effort to listen, it takes a lot to understand the full implications of what we're hearing. Especially because we've made a lot of assumptions about the way the world works based on our privileged experience. And of course, K.A. Applegate is also white, and that undoubtedly had a great deal to do with her blindness to the implications of the black character she was writing. As sensitive as she has tried to be with regards to race, she still misses some pretty key stuff.

Come back next Monday to consider the lobster when I review Animorphs #5: The Predator!