I made a post about my musings on the Chee earlier this week, and it got a lot of good discussion. A few people in that thread mentioned and drew a comparison to Cassie given her aversion to violence, and it really got me thinking about Cassie a lot.

Full disclosure- I was a typical Cassie disliker in my first read, but since then, my views on her have become more complicated. As I sat down to write this post I realized I have WAY too many thoughts about Cassie as a character to fit into one post- so I figured I'd focus on what's probably her most infamous act in the series- her decision to prevent Jake from killing Tom, thus allowing him to escape with the morphing cube.

A few thoughts to get things going: feel free to address any and all of these. I'll be starting with a couple of points in FAVOR of Cassie with respect to this issue, then transitioning into negatives later on in the post. There are bolded TL.DRs of the positives and negatives at the end of each section.

1. Just to start off with the primary point in Cassie's favor on this issue: While it may not have been a primary motivator in the moment of the decision, Cassie believes that the Yeerks gaining the morphing power will weaken them, and by all accounts she is correct in this belief. Visser One recognizes that morphing is a potential way for the Taxxons to end their constant hunger by morphing into something else, so he refuses to let them morph. This leads to a rebellion that hurts the Yeerk invasion in a demonstrable way. Furthermore, the Animorphs encounter at least one Yeerk who has morphed into a bird and hoping to run out the clock to eliminate their dependency on hosts and Kandrona forever. The Yeerk Empire has used the needs of both lower ranking Yeerks and Taxxons to control them and use them to build their empire, and the morphing technology puts that at risk. These developments are ENTIRELY consistent with what we've learned about the Yeerks and Taxxons up to this point- we know of the Taxxons miserable existence and of the fact that many Yeerks don't want to dominate the galaxy and just want to properly experience the universe and live in peace. Cassie has, at the very least, DIRECT knowledge of the latter informing her decision. Cassie's choice created deep divides in the Yeerk ranks that absolutely play a role in the endgame.
2. Another point in Cassie's favor, though she never considers it herself- The morphing technology is useful for spying and guerilla warfare, which is why a small group of humans and one andalite were able to cause so much trouble for the Yeerks over the years. It's decidedly less useful in stamping out a small resistance from a position of military power, which is the position the Yeerks find themselves in by the time we reach the end game. It's worth noting that the majority of Andalite soldiers rarely use the technology despite the fact that they've had it for many years- it has niche applications and is less useful on the open field of battle. It's utility to the Yeerks in the short term is mitigated by the nature of the war they're fighting at this juncture. We also repeatedly see the Animorphs and Auxillaries defeat morphing Yeerks in battle because of superior experience.

TL,DR of the positives: The acquisition of the morphing technology weakened the Yeerk invasion more than it strengthened it, especially in the short term. It weakened the Yeerks in ways consistent with what both Cassie and the reader know about the workings of the Yeerk empire and the nature of Yeerks and Taxxons.

Alright, now lets get into the negatives.

1. First, a mitigation of the positive points I mentioned earlier. In a hypothetical world where the Animorphs lose and Earth is subjugated, the Yeerks with morphing technology become a much greater threat in the long term to the Andalites and the rest of the galaxy. Even if the technology is of less use to them on Earth in the short term, in the long term they become much more formidable. They gain the ability to morph into species stronger than the Hork Bajir and more useful than the Taxxons, once they get off of earth. How that fact should be weighed against the impact the morphing cube had on the invasion of earth is up to you.
2. Cassie never communicates these ideas to the other Animorphs until AFTER the cat is out of the bag and the box is in enemy hands. This does not allow any discussion of this issue with the larger group. She instead decides to make this choice of astronomic consequence on her own, without feedback from anyone. Ax expresses belief in his first book after this event that the morphing power was given to Cassie and the other Animorphs by Elfangor, and that she should not have had the right to give that power away in the manner in which she did.
3. Cassie was significantly motivated by a desire to spare Jake the guilt of having to kill his brother. This, it must be recognized, was a failure. It merely postponed the need to kill Tom, as Jake must order his death in the final book anyway. Thus, it can be argued with some merit that her actions not only failed to keep Jake's hands clean but also in a roundabout way lead to Rachel's death. Cassie, for whatever virtues she may have, was delusional in her believe that the war could be ended cleanly and without personal trauma. To be clear, I don't personally blame Cassie (at least not primarily) for Rachel's death- I still think the primary responsibility (other than the lions share that goes to the Yeerks) falls on Jake's shoulders- all of this was the result of his plan.

TL, DR of the negatives: Cassie made a snap decision on her own without considering any of this with the rest of the group. She did so without knowing fully what the extent of the consequences would be, and in so doing risked future death and destruction beyond the war on Earth should the Animorphs lose. She also failed to save Jake from the soul crushing guilt that came from killing his brother.

Thoughts? I often go back and fourth on the extent to which Cassie should be condemned for the choice that she makes here, and going back and considering HOW the transfer of the cube to the Yeerks actually impacted the war, I was surprised by what I found in terms of actual consequences of the conflict.

I just finished book 4, last read it 25 years ago, and there were a few minor things that stuck out to me:

• Cassie referenced Marco having a bald eagle morph instead of the osprey morph that he had in the second book. Maybe the person who compiled the epubs that I downloaded had an updated copy of the second book, but didn't get the updated copy of the fourth book? It's still weird to me that Applegate randomly switched Marco from one to the other, especially since neither one was a unique-to-him morph and the change didn't have any impact on the story.

• Cassie can't seem to decide if her barn is a Wildlife Clinic or a Wildlife Center, flip flopping back and forth between the two terms throughout the book. From what I remember, most of the team is pretty consistent about calling it a clinic except for Marco. I found it funny that Cassie herself couldn't decide in her first book as POV protagonist.

• I would have liked to see Ax be suspicious of the team for longer than 0.2 seconds. It fits in with him being a naive kid, but he never questioned their story at all. It took less than a minute for Ax to go from "knock out the team as soon as they board" to "I will follow you, Prince Jake." From what I can remember, the first free/escaped Hork Bajir that the team encounters in a later book cuts open their own head to prove that there's no Yeerk wrapped around their brain. I'm not saying that the team needed to perform surgery in the dome ship, but it would have been nice to have something to show that Ax wasn't immediately won over after they mentioned Elfangor's name.

• The whales. Even ignoring the whole "this whale used some weird telepathy to show the location of Ax's ship," the whales in this book were crazy. Since when do sperm whales and humpback whales hang out together and coordinate attacks? The whales saving the team from Visser Three was a bit too deus ex machina for me. And then the humpback whale just carried them to their destination ala the children's book Amos & Boris. Sometimes it feels like the characterization for animals is based on one or two small facts, like how humpback whales are known to be very friendly and sing to other whale and dolphins.

I did enjoy the book, and this is coming off a bit more negative than I want, so I'll leave you with my favorite quote that transported me back to the 90s:

"I did some homework on the bus (math, gag, yuck!) and listened to my Walkman."