I was thinking that throughout the series, Erek seems to change his mind a lot on acceptable actions to take in the war and what level of violence is acceptable.
At the beginning of #10, Erek was not necessarily opposed to violence, and would have fought the Yeerks were it not for his programming. That was what I thought, anyway, based on his tone and how he talked about the Yeerks.
Well, obviously after the battle in #10 he decided that he didn't want to take part in any fighting anymore.
In #26 Erek was very eager to fight the Howlers, and even wondered if the Ellimist might remove the prohibition against violence for him when things were looking bad for the Animorphs.
But in #53, Erek was clearly opposed to what Jake was doing in order to win the final battle, and only went along by force. And he drained the Dracon beams feeling that it was the right thing to do, even though it ended up making the situation worse.
So why is it Erek had no problem with killing the Howlers, even after Jake found out they were really children and the killing was just a game to them, but he didn't want to help Jake defeat the Yeerks?
I think that he was much more involved in the actual fighting in the latter case, so that may be a factor.
Thoughts?
Also, this is just a random thing that I was wondering, but in #29, Cassie told Erek that if she didn't return from the Yeerk pool in time to operate on Ax, he would have to let Ax die. Why couldn't Erek have operated? Does that count as violence? I guess you are cutting someone's head open, so... xDDD