And it feels like coming home.
I think that it hit me when I read one particular passage, where Jake is wondering if his parents don’t want him to ever cut through the construction site because they’re afraid that he might run into an axe murderer. I read it and, in some way that I can’t describe, I remembered, vividly, reading that passage before, many times. I mean, I know when I’ve read something before, but it wasn’t just knowledge. It was feeling it, and remembering how I had felt when I had read it before, and, too, how I was now feeling about having read it.
It was something in the neighborhood of nostalgia. A cross between that and what you feel when you know, without anyone telling you, that what’s happening right now is a good thing and that you’re exactly where you belong.
It’s like coming to love someone again, without ever having stopped loving them before.
What struck me the hardest was just how depressing the series could be. I mean, it’s like Baby’s First Grimdark, and I don’t mean that in the pejorative sense. It really should be required entry-level reading for the stuff that makes you cry. Before your kid reads Lovecraft, give her Animorphs. And then, after she’s read Lovecraft, tell her to read Animorphs again.
I mean, in the first book Tobias gets turned into a hawk forever because he was in morph for more than two hours, and it’s implied then and throughout the series that he did that on purpose because his home life was so terrible that even life as a hawk was better. Not to mention Visser Three describing to Elfangor how the war was basically over now, just as soon as the Yeerks finished infesting Earth, and Visser Three was going to personally oversee the infestation of Elfangor’s family and looked forward to hearing their screams.
The Pretender only escalates it. Tobias has to resort to eating road kill because another hawk has moved in on his territory and he can’t kick it out. Just as it seems that Tobias has finally found a non-crappy family member who might actually care about him, it turns out that she’s Visser Three in disguise. And because he’s forced to interact with humans besides the other Animorphs a major theme of the book is how distanced he’s become from humanity. He can’t remember his birthday. He doesn't even remember to make facial expressions.
Oh. My. Heart.
What am I reading?
The rest of the series is no better. I remember when Elfangor had to leave his wife and unborn son forever to rejoin a war that he had spent years trying to forget about. I remember Alloran justifying war crimes- and I remember a war that just maybe was so terrible that he was right. I remember Dak Hamee’s guilt over making warriors out of a people so peaceful that they had never before conceived of purposely intending to kill someone.
I remember a story about six kids that were forced to fight a war on their own, and I remember the trauma that they incurred over three years and fifty-odd books of desperate guerrilla warfare against a foe that outnumbered them and could be anyone at all.
I remembered how depressing it was before I started to read the series again, but reading it again was like the difference between hearing about the Rocky Mountains and seeing them.
It’s no secret to anyone who’s read some of my stories that I like the really depressing stuff. Other stuff is good, but sometimes nothing will satisfy but something that cuts to the heart and bites down. Reading Animorphs again, I wonder how much it affected my future development; like that years-ago dance with that girl who was going to boot camp in a month. The first dance of my youth, and her last, and without even trying I can think of half a dozen qualities I find attractive in a woman that can be directly traced back to her. Same way, Animorphs is the yardstick by which I measure YA stories, both mine and others'.
I can’t wait to get my hands on the rest of the books.
No comments:
Post a Comment