Cassie (Animorphs) - Biography

Biography

Cassie is an African American teenager, and lives on her farm with her mother and father, who are both veterinarians. Before the Human-Yeerk war, Cassie also wished to become a veterinarian. Her father runs the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic, based in their barn; this barnhouse is the Animorphs' primary meeting place, due to its relative seclusion and the availability of various animals for possible morphs. Her mother is the head veterinarian at The Gardens, a big complex consisting of an amusement park and a zoo.

She is perceptive, clever, and often is aware of others' motives and feelings, sometimes even before they are. This develops into an ability to manipulate her enemies and allies as well as anticipate their actions, most notably with the Animorphs' traitor, David. Many of the other Animorphs also come to Cassie for comfort or advice, thanks to her empathetic nature. However, she often gives them her advice whether they ask for it or not. She is also the most knowledgeable of the group about animals, which supplies the Animorphs with important knowledge; she seems to have many qualities of an environmentalist and may be a vegetarian. She is best friends with Rachel, even though they are portrayed as being polar opposites, with Rachel being far more fashion and socially oriented than her, and lacking Cassie's sense of empathy and morality. Cassie maintains a casual romantic relationship with Jake throughout the series, but they end up parting ways.

Cassie is an estreen, a natural morpher, meaning that she is able to control the morphing process better than the other Animorphs, all of whom agree about her unique morphing talent. In The Andalite Chronicles, Elfangor mentions that on the Andalite homeworld there are professional estreens who make morphing into an art form.

In Back to Before, the Drode (representing Crayak) and the Ellimist make a deal which allows the Drode to change the past, so that the Animorphs had never met Elfangor. However, throughout the alternate timeline, Cassie senses something is wrong, and indeed soon the reality begins to fall apart. When the alternate timeline completely disintegrates, the Drode and Ellimist reveal that Cassie is a space-time "anomaly", and that as a result of this her very existence broke down the false timeline, as well as allowed her to see beyond it. It is revealed in this book that the Animorphs were unknowingly brought together by the Ellimist, as part of their intergalactic game. The Drode accuses the Ellimist of "stacking the deck", as the supposedly random group of humans contains "the freak of nature" (Cassie, the anomaly), Visser One's host's son (Marco), Elfangor's brother (Ax), and Elfangor's time-lost son (Tobias). From there the Ellimist added two other humans with strong traits of leadership, confidence, and fierce bravery to lead the pack; cousins Jake and Rachel. (Coincidentally, Jake becomes Crayak's most hated Animorph, and Rachel becomes the Drode's favorite.) After the alternate reality collapses, Cassie is the only one to remember the incident, albeit dimly.

Cassie is the moralist of the group and often worries, much more than some of the others, about the costs of the war. This leads her to many dangerous and sometimes hypocritical actions, such as when she convinces a Yeerk named Aftran to give up being the controller of Karen. This eventually leads to Aftran forming the Yeerk Peace Movement (composed of Yeerks who have a peaceful alliance with their human hosts). But this attitude also leads her to make what may be the most dangerous choice in the war: she lets Tom take the Escafil device in order to stop Jake from having to kill his own brother, even though it means their enemies would gain the ability to morph in the process. (However, this decision ends up being one of the main factors that ended the war with the Yeerks, although it is unfortunately an indirect cause of Rachel's eventual death, as well.) Cassie has twice morphed into an enemy: a Yeerk, and a Hork-Bajir. Cassie is largely a pacifist, and hates all the violence involved in the war; in Elfangor's Secret, the Drode accurately describes her as a "killer with a conscience." In The Departure, she finally gets fed up with all of the violence and quits the team after ripping the throat out of a Hork-Bajir Controller, but ultimately rejoins after the events of the book. Cassie is the only one who says yes to the Ellimist's idea of giving up and going to live on a new Earth with their families.

After the war, Cassie becomes something of an activist working for the free Hork-Bajir, along with her friend and love interest Ronnie Chambers; she is, at the age of nineteen, admitted to the president's sub-cabinet as advisor on the Hork-Bajir and resident aliens. She describes herself and Marco as the only two to really thrive after the war (and she is arguably even more successful than he, as his post-war life is portrayed as being rather shallow, and he admits to being bored out of his mind). She is the only Animorph who does not go to save Ax—but only on Jake's insistence that she does not do so, as he knew that she could do more good, and be happier, doing what she did best on Earth. At the end of the series, Cassie is the only Animorph remaining on Earth, and as the others' fate is not revealed, she may be the only Animorph to survive.