Animorphs #6: The Capture

This book is all about the last act.  There's a mission of the week that plays out in the first two acts (the gathering of intel, the mission unfolding), but all the really interesting bits come at the end.

Namely: Jake becomes a Controller!

Jake falls into a portable Yeerk pool and emerges under the control of the same Yeerk that has been infesting his brother Tom.  Will the other Animorphs figure out that he's infested?  And if so, how will they keep him holed up long enough for the Yeerk in his head to die?

All right, so this isn't a press release, it's a lit review, so we're going to wind up spoiling some bits here.  If that's not your thing, then you're going to have to look elsewhere.

Jake's reason for fighting the war against the Yeerks has always been his brother Tom, who has been infested with a Yeerk for at least the past year.  Tom's Yeerk hatches a plot to put a Yeerk into the head of the governor, which presents the Animorphs with a major problem: even if they halt the infestation without a hitch, that will mean that Tom's Yeerk will have failed Visser 3.

The Visser has a habit of slaughtering those who fail him.

This whole war is one big recurring cost/benefit analysis for the Animorphs, and it's nice to see the stakes raised to such mythological heights so very often.  If Jake's whole reason for fighting the war against the Yeerks is so that he may one day save his brother, then what's his incentive to carry out this mission?

In fact, this is the book in which Jake decides that winning the war for the whole planet may in fact take priority over rescuing Tom.  But for his previous hubris, Jake is infested with a Yeerk when the mission goes south.

Now, from here, there are several ways that the series can go.  The Yeerk in Jake's head could convince the others that he's really plain-jane Jake, and go off to report all their names and addresses to Visser 3.  That's what we'd likely classify the Worst Case Scenario.

Conversely, the Best Case Scenario would be that Jake spends three days waiting under guard for the Yeerk in his head to starve, but in order for that to happen, his friends would have to somehow magically conclude that Jake was in fact a Controller.

In fact, they do.

We could reduce what happens next to a platitude, such as "the power of friendship," and maybe the temptation would be even stronger than usual, owing to the fact that this is indeed a book for children, but this is not just a book for children: it is a book for children about war.


When Jake is ultimately saved from such a categorically powerless state by the love, dedication, and intelligence of his friends (I won't tell you how, because that part's awesome), we experience a kind of catharsis usually only brought about by the most chemically-charged religious revivals.

But Animorphs #6: The Capture is  more pragmatic than any religious tale, because it's not deus ex machina that ultimately saves the day.  Jake is spared, for no reason save that there are those that love him. We should all endeavor to be so lucky.

This represents what I believe to be the best book in the series so far, and we didn't even explore the psychology of Jake's imprisonment, or the implications inherent in a world occupied by a Yeerk-infested Arnold Schwarzenegger.*

--Serge

*KA Applegate has stated that the Animorphs are meant to be residents of California.  The set of animals available for them to acquire matches up nicely.