Thank you, fiction, for the best and worst of humanity (part 2 (The Illuminae Series))
Welcome back to my series on the best and worst of humanity! You can find part 1 here.
My friend Liz got me onto this series, and ever since I finished it I've been smashing people's faces into the cover and demanding they read it. And so, dear friends, I introduce you to The Illuminae Files by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff. And, as always, spoilers ahead (and please read the books because I'd rather not have to smash your face into the book as well).
Today, let's look at the best of humanity. While there is not shortage of the human equivalent of the year 2016 present, there's also some pretty awesome people as well. I'm going to focus on the nice people in this post, not the waging-war-on-civilians-beheading-children-unleashing-doomsday-virus people. (And that's the nice stuff they did.)
No, let's talk about the heroes of this story. Kady, Ezra, Hanna, Nik, Asha, Rhys, and Ella (whom I feel is forgotten way too often). Of course that's a lot of names and I don't have time to write a 5,000 word essay on the themes of human goodness in Illuminae, but I can try.
Throughout the series, the characters sacrifice themselves for their friends/significant others (I'm going to refer to them all as friends for simplicity's sake). Kady boards a ship - by herself - filled with zombie people and a murderous AI while an enemy ship tries to blow said ship up. She knows she's probably not going to survive, but Ezra is on that ship and she refuses to leave without him. And when it turns out Ezra isn't on the ship after all? She stays aboard, knowing she could leave, in order to save the people on her original ship.
Hanna, while she's a bit of a brat to begin with, puts herself in harms way numerous times over in order to save her family and her ship from villainous space pirates. She could have hidden herself away and stayed safe, but she puts the people around her before her own life.
And finally, Asha knows she isn't a hero but she helps where she can, however she can. She can't hack supercomputers like Kady or ninja kick a pirate into the sun like Hanna, but she can carry secret messages, or protect a child in hiding. She stages her own small revolution against her planet's occupiers to enormous risk to her own life. Asha protects and serves in any small way she can.
I could go on. But at its core, The Illuminae series seems to argue that the best of humanity is found in the love of putting others before yourself, through sacrifice and love and courage. True love is recognising that love isn't always easy, it's hard and it sucks sometimes. But love brings out the best in people.
My friend Liz got me onto this series, and ever since I finished it I've been smashing people's faces into the cover and demanding they read it. And so, dear friends, I introduce you to The Illuminae Files by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff. And, as always, spoilers ahead (and please read the books because I'd rather not have to smash your face into the book as well).
Today, let's look at the best of humanity. While there is not shortage of the human equivalent of the year 2016 present, there's also some pretty awesome people as well. I'm going to focus on the nice people in this post, not the waging-war-on-civilians-beheading-children-unleashing-doomsday-virus people. (And that's the nice stuff they did.)
No, let's talk about the heroes of this story. Kady, Ezra, Hanna, Nik, Asha, Rhys, and Ella (whom I feel is forgotten way too often). Of course that's a lot of names and I don't have time to write a 5,000 word essay on the themes of human goodness in Illuminae, but I can try.
Throughout the series, the characters sacrifice themselves for their friends/significant others (I'm going to refer to them all as friends for simplicity's sake). Kady boards a ship - by herself - filled with zombie people and a murderous AI while an enemy ship tries to blow said ship up. She knows she's probably not going to survive, but Ezra is on that ship and she refuses to leave without him. And when it turns out Ezra isn't on the ship after all? She stays aboard, knowing she could leave, in order to save the people on her original ship.
Hanna, while she's a bit of a brat to begin with, puts herself in harms way numerous times over in order to save her family and her ship from villainous space pirates. She could have hidden herself away and stayed safe, but she puts the people around her before her own life.
And finally, Asha knows she isn't a hero but she helps where she can, however she can. She can't hack supercomputers like Kady or ninja kick a pirate into the sun like Hanna, but she can carry secret messages, or protect a child in hiding. She stages her own small revolution against her planet's occupiers to enormous risk to her own life. Asha protects and serves in any small way she can.
I could go on. But at its core, The Illuminae series seems to argue that the best of humanity is found in the love of putting others before yourself, through sacrifice and love and courage. True love is recognising that love isn't always easy, it's hard and it sucks sometimes. But love brings out the best in people.
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