Chad28: While they never say it outright, I think that the implication that he chose Cassie is so strong that we can safely say he did. I mean the book starts out with him kind of brushing her off when she needed to talk to someone, then next thing he knows he's in a AU!Future setting, in which he meets Cassie and finds that she has become this cold, hard, realistic, different version of herself, then he has to make the choice between her and the world, then next thing we know he's back home, thinking that he
now knows what was important to him (I don't remember what the exact phrasing of that was, but it was that essentially), and following this thought (and following his vision of a world in which Cassie is cold and hard and not the person he loved, all starting from that one night he didn't comfort her),
he calls Cassie.
Him choosing Cassie is just the only logical answer, given this sequence of events....I mean really, if he chose the world, why would the automatic response to him having realized what is most important to him be calling Cassie? Why would the unknown being who engineered the whole thing note, after he makes his choice, how
interesting it was, and that it would have to study these humans more? Surely someone choosing the world over one measly person is what you'd expect most people to do, not all that noteworthy....
Jake and Cassie kiss one, they say in the narration they 'like' each other, a couple books later Cassie doodles she loves Jake on a piece of paper and then at the end he's proposing to her. I get what he meant about having spent so much time with her that he felt he knew he'd always love her, but come on, we see almost nothing of their relationship, and what was present was bland. At most times it seemed more like a crush to me than love.
Again, we do see much more than that, even if you can't remember it--see my above post. I don't think that when someone chooses to save someone over the world it's a mere crush, either, but maybe that's just me.
In any case, all of you make me want to finish my project I began a few years ago of compiling every single Jake/Cassie interaction from every book! Since so many of you don't seem to remember everything....I've only gotten around to a few books so far, but for instance, this is what I have from "The Encounter":
• Everyone said good night. I saw Cassie and Jake touch their hands together in a way that could almost have been accidental.
• "That's it, Jake," Cassie urged. She held his hand tight between both of hers. "Come back to me, Jake. Come all the way back."
• "Ha ha! That was close!" Cassie exulted. She gave Jake a hug. Then I guess she felt self-conscious, because she ran over and hugged Rachel and Marco.
• "If you feel like you're suffocating, you have to back out of the morph," Jake told her. He took her hand. "Are you listening to me? You have to back out if it gets bad. You can't pass out halfway into a morph."
Cassie smiled. "I will. Don't worry about me."….
<Aaaah!> she cried.
"Cassie, pull out of it!" Jake cried in an urgent whisper.
Or here is from "The Predator":
• “Jake just shrugged. Cassie sidled up next to him and gave him a small little sideways hug. No one was supposed to notice. But right away Jake's harsh look mellowed a little.”
• “"Cassie?" Jake asked.
"I'm okay," Cassie said.
"Me, too, Jake, thanks for asking," Rachel said.”
• “I couldn't tell if Jake had told any of the others that I was quitting. Probably he had told Cassie.”
• “Cassie sidled up next to him and nuzzled him with her wolf's muzzle.
I guess it should have been funny. The wolf and the tiger, sharing a tender moment. But all it did was make me a little jealous. They had each other.”
Now many of these aren't major, just little moments, but they do exist, their relationship was a constant, even if it wasn't always exactly on the front burner of the plots.
Post Merged: March 20, 2010, 08:21:50 PM
i was not sad to see cassie and jake split. i don't think that either would have been happy in a relationship with one another. again, just speculation on my part, but i've heard this theory- that you're attracted to your opposite when you're younger, but attracted to someone similar to yourself when you're older (i.e., unless the both of you are very, very mature and can handle conflict well, being in a close relationship with your opposite means a fair amount of tension. different priorities, perspectives, goals...). in any case, JxC just falls into that hypothesis- if it has some grain of truth in it.
and i don't see why people don't understand why the "post-war" reason for the split is feasible. war, as an event that changes you dramatically and affects your daily life, is like.... summer camp on steroids. you make friends at summer camp because you're all there together, doing the same things, suffering under the same bad camp instructors, forced to eat the same nasty cafeteria food. once that's gone... the friends you make don't often keep in touch afterward. and why is that? why don't you keep in touch with 90% of your high school/college friends once you leave? (or, if you do, how long does the communication last? like, a year? or two, at most?)
i live five minutes from two roommates i had in college, but we never talk anymore. what was keeping us together is no longer there. we have little in common. none of the same professors, tuition costs, clubs, homework, exams... when suddenly everything that IS your life disappears, you fill it back up with new things... and seeing as the animorphs were all so very different (face it: they stuck together because they needed to save the world, not for much else), they just filled their lives up with very different things and therefore had no reason to hang together anymore.
the parallel for that probably isn't as accurate for a gf/bf relationship, but i'll be honest, i've never been in such a relationship, so it's hard for me to do more than hypothesize. ^^;
Are they really all THAT opposite though?
I mean, yes, they clashed sometimes over tactical decisions and such, and she has this heightened concern for the environment, but I certainly would not call her his "opposite"--they were both more quiet, reflective people, and they each enjoyed the other's company, were able to comfort each other, Jake could make Cassie feel better, Cassie made Jake feel better (though this changed towards the end when he became more and more damaged, and it was more just a one-way street comfort-wise). Seems to me like they were quite a suitable couple, and I don't get why after being so compatible and enjoying each other's company so much over the years (especially when they spent so much time together, so they had the chance to get sick of each other and didn't) they would not last after the war?
Honestly, Rachel and Tobias were much more "opposite" than Jake and Cassie were, IMO, so if you are going to use that as an argument about lasting....the reason why Jake couldn't be with Cassie at the end had nothing to do with her, it had only to do with him and his PTSD. He was too damaged to even sustain his friendship with Marco, his oldest and best friend, let alone a romantic one with Cassie!
Also I'm sorry, but war, especially a war as traumatic as this one, cannot be rightly called "summer camp on steroid"--unless in summer camp you regularly killed people!
People at summer camp don't have the deaths of 15,000 defenseless beings and 10 handicapped kids AND their own cousin weighing on their conscience....they don't have PTSD, which DOES change your life forever, for the bad.
