Book 6: The Capture
Publishing Date: February 1997
Narrator: Jake
My rating:
In Animorphs Book #6: The Capture, Jake and the Animorphs find out that the Yeerks are taking over a local hospital in the hopes of infesting the future President of the United States. They decide to shut the operation (pun HA HA) down but in doing so, Jake gets infested with a Yeerk and becomes a Controller.
Jake doesn’t actually get infested until well past the half-way mark. The Yeerk who infests him is pretty damned stupid and/or arrogant and thinks he can talk his way out of being held prisoner until he starves to death. It’s a great look at exactly what being a Controller is like. We’ve heard about it in all the previous books, but never seen it first hand. Now we see through Jake’s eyes as he is a prisoner in his own body and the Yeerk digs through his memories and fantasies, and tries to convince his friends he’s not infested.
It’s a great point, so near the beginning of the series, to publish this book. Earlier in the novel Jake makes the decision to kill a hundred helpless Yeerks in a Jacuzzi being used as a mobile Yeerk pool. As a child I didn’t think this was wrong – I probably wanted it as well. As an adult, I find it distasteful. Having read the entire series it’s hard to see the Yeerks as all evil conquerors, wiping out civilisations and enslaving entire species. However, it’s true. What the Yeerks can’t conquer, they destroy. The hundred Yeerks in that pool were raised on military propaganda and all probably thought they were the rightful masters of the universe. I still find it uncomfortable and sad that helpless sentient slugs are murdered, and I think Cassie has rubbed off on me, although she doesn’t try to stop it. I still think it’s wrong, although I see why it happens. And I know that if those Yeerks aren’t killed, they’ll go on to enslave others.
It’s a hard part to digest.
The good things about this book:
~ More Tolkien references! The Big Red Eye at the end is a direct homage to Sauron.
~ The Animorphs morph flies and love it.
~ Jake getting caught behind his parent’s fridge after demorphing from a cockroach, and Cassie’s new tough position on the matter of individuals practising morphs with no one else around.
Join me for a review of Book #7: The Stranger next week!
Jake’s behind the fridge cockroach morph is probably one of my all time favourites, right behind Ax in human morph trying to walk. That said, it’s awful how bloodthirsty children are, when we happily okay genocide without considering it. I think this gets addressed better with the Aftran issue, but still, especially around book 54… Not cool, Jake. Not cool. Imagine how many of those Yeerks in the hospital may have been just wanting a peaceful hosting, to see and hear and live to the fullest. Urgh.
Socio-political guilt trips – gotta love ‘em!~
The Animorphs happily OK the genocide, I think, because at this point it’s very black and white. Yeerks are evil. End of story. (not quite.)
I have heard some fabulous debates about the ‘peaceful’ Yeerks – you have to remember that they’re a military society. They are indoctrinated like a cult and believe they are the rightful masters of the universe. Their argument that they don’t actually kill people is pretty strong – they just take away their free will. Sure, there are some that want to be peaceful but once a Yeerk’s in your head you lose control, period. The Yeerks can’t just sit there and let the host have control – which I always thought would be a good compromise. Aftran was the instigator of the peace movement so I sincerely doubt any of those one hundred Yeerks were peace lovers.
I bet a few of those seventeen thousand were, though.