Animorphs re read #19- The Departure

[buffyangellvr23.livejournal.com]

Cassie begins struggling with her feelings about the war and the killing, and decides she has had enough. She says she's leaving the group and runs into the woods where she meets a young controller named Karen and the yeerk Aftran in a meeting that we will later see having big effects.

I've been waiting for this book because I'm extremely curious about our thoughts and comments surrounding the book and its themes.
What do you think of Aftran's comparison of humans' predatory habits and yeerk's parasitic habits?
Do you think many of us would empathize with the yeerks if we were born into bodies like theirs?
hmm...how about, why do you think many yeerks don't feel anything for their hosts? Especially after so much anguish in the host's mind.
Do you think there could be a better way? (this one might be difficult though because there's a tendancy to think of the YPM and the Iskoort...)
I personally don't think it makes what they do right but Cassie and Aftran's talk definately provokes a lot of thought.

I think I can see the distinction between the Visser Three brother thing and Aftran's situation...brother in this case two grubs means born from the same parent yeerks while in Visser Three's case it was like identical twins, two from one grub. In case anyone wondered.

There's a lot of good writing fodder here. I'd love to see stories like Aftran's memory of seeing and hearing for the first time.

Remember the rules...I think it might be okay with this book to bring later stuff like the peace faction and iskoort into it but try your best to stick to this book if at all possible. Start out on topic even if you drift off topic later on. Keep it civil and respectful.

Next week: There's a new Animorph in town.
(what DID happen to our regular re-read host?)

Comments

[kletta.livejournal.com]

What do you mean by “fight for”? In #29, it becomes obvious that Cassie must fight to protect Aftran and others like her from the Yeerk Empire, but I don’t remember this book counting such a danger among Aftran’s sacrifices. Although it does show how much she has to fear from her superiors, and I’ve even wondered about how “freeing Karen” sounds like the other Yeerks will just forget about her family.

To me, the book rather sounds like Cassie wants to continue being an Animorph so she can continue interacting with Yeerks and try to make peace with them--but is that the only way to do that? Even from #29, I’m not sure exactly what Aftran thinks about it. Though all along, she did want Cassie to demorph into her usual (morph-capable) form, so that seems to follow from the characters’ intentions.