Author Topic: Jake/Elfangor comparison ***SPOILERS***  (Read 1463 times)

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Offline abcxyz1020

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Jake/Elfangor comparison ***SPOILERS***
« on: November 29, 2010, 02:09:11 AM »
Just reread the series for the first time in almost a decade, and was wondering if anyone had any opinions on this:

In TAC, Elfangor refuses Alloran's order to flush 10,000 helpless Yeerks into space.  This decision ultimately leads to Esplin 9466 infesting Alloran and becoming The Abomination.
In The Answer, Jake makes the decision to flush 17,000 helpless Yeerks into space.  This decision ultimately leads to Alloran being freed of Esplin 9466.

The parallelism of these two acts is apparent; my question is, what do you think the meaning is?  Given that one of the central themes of the series is "fighting the enemy without becoming the enemy," and that the morality stressed throughout the books is "take a life only when absolutely necessary, and never kill an unarmed foe," isn't it strange that Jake's ruthless action achieves a more favorable result than Elfangor's honorable action?  It almost seems as if, by completing the order that Elfangor refused, Jake closed the door on all that had happened after TAC.

This brings up another question: at Visser One's war crimes trial, Jake is accused of war crimes himself.  Not only did he kill 17,000 unarmed enemies - he made the decision that leveled half of his city, killing untold numbers of civilians, and he ordered the torture of Chapman (though no physical harm was done, psychological torture still counts).  His friends assure him that the things he did were justified.  Did Jake deserve to be tried for war crimes?


Offline estrid

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Re: Jake/Elfangor comparison ***SPOILERS***
« Reply #1 on: November 29, 2010, 02:30:52 AM »
I thought it was ridiculous to try jake for war crimes. I mean the whole series everything he did was to try and save the human race. He lost his whole family in the process. I agree the dicision he made in the end could have gone about a totally different way and still have been victorious, but I blame KA's sloppy finish rather thank Jake himself on that one :P

And am I the only one that hates how it's horrible to kill yeerks out of a host, but ok to kill an innocen host just to get to the yeerk? I think I am :-X
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Offline abcxyz1020

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Re: Jake/Elfangor comparison ***SPOILERS***
« Reply #2 on: November 29, 2010, 02:58:34 AM »
I'm still up in the air about whether Jake should have been tried.  Yes, everything he did was for the sake of saving the human race, and one of the dilemmas they struggled with throughout the series was the big picture vs. the little picture, and where to draw the line.  And while I wish it weren't true, I was dissatisfied by the abrupt change in Applegate's style from the slow, character-developing stages of the series to the fast-paced, finish-it-now pace of the last several books, I can't say that this one detail was a sloppy one.  It seems clear to me that giving Jake the exact same decision Elfangor had many years before was deliberate.  If that's true, then the choice he made was also deliberate.  I think this one is on Jake, not K.A.
But maybe that's the point.  Elfangor made the choice that most people would think that they themselves would make in the situation.  He was still young and naive, and had never really seen battle, never had to make life-and-death decisions.  Jake was also young, but had been at war for 3 years.  Maybe the point is simply that war does terrible things to people, changes them.  The Jake from The Invasion wouldn't have made that choice, but 3 years of fighting and leading his friends into potentially deadly situations made him that much more ruthless.

And to your last point, I concede.  While the Animorphs tended to show restraint when battling human-controllers (by the way, how many human-controllers had to go home and explain missing digits and gouged eyes every week?), they did seem to kill Hork-Bajir and Taxxons left and right.  Definitely a moral compromise, but I guess there's a difference between kill-or-be-killed and kill-or-walk-away.  If a 7-foot-tall bladed creature is swinging at me, I don't really care about the motive.


Offline anijen21

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Re: Jake/Elfangor comparison ***SPOILERS***
« Reply #3 on: November 29, 2010, 04:10:30 AM »
You draw an interesting parallel, but I don't think either act caused the other. Yeah, Elfangor refused Alloran's orders and that sure pissed him off, but the act itself did not cause Alloran's infestation. Nor did Jake's act cause Alloran's liberation--to me that always felt like more of a cheap addendum than a real link in the storyline. If they would have removed that whole scene, nothing in the series of events would have been changed besides Jake's year-long depression.

So yeah, the events are associated with each other but that doesn't mean they're causally linked at all.
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Offline abcxyz1020

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Re: Jake/Elfangor comparison ***SPOILERS***
« Reply #4 on: November 29, 2010, 04:47:39 AM »
True on your point about Jake.  But as far as Elfangor goes, wasn't it Alloran's insistence that the Yeerks be flushed, and Elfangor's continued defiance, that led to Elfangor knocking Alloran out, thereby allowing Esplin to transfer himself from Chapman to Alloran?
I feel like I'm grasping as straws now, trying to justify what originally jumped out at me as an intentional parallel, but in reality was probably just a last-minute detail thrown in for no real reason.

Offline KitsuneMarie

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Re: Jake/Elfangor comparison ***SPOILERS***
« Reply #5 on: November 29, 2010, 08:51:35 AM »
I think that Jake was rightly accused of committing war crimes, but humans have always had a knack for ostracizing and not giving full rights to the "other," so the fact that his actions ended the war and were against an entirely non-human aggressor is why I'm not surprised he wasn't charged.

You do bring up a really interesting comparison, abc. I had never thought about it before, and I don't think you're grasping at straws. It does have really interesting moral implications. Think about the atomic bombs the US dropped on Japan and the US's punishment (or lack thereof) for those actions. Something like this isn't unprecedented. It's just one more particularly dark shade of grey in our good-versus-evil palette.
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Offline TobiasMasonPark

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Re: Jake/Elfangor comparison ***SPOILERS***
« Reply #6 on: December 02, 2010, 08:29:21 PM »
     Doesn't Elfangor also order the ramming of a Blade Ship at some point during the Andalite Chronicles?

     Or am I misremembering?
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Offline Darth Zakryn

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Re: Jake/Elfangor comparison ***SPOILERS***
« Reply #7 on: December 03, 2010, 04:50:25 PM »

No you are not. He rams the Blade ship Visser Three is on and gives the Andalites time to escape.