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“Great work, everyone!” Chidi looked with pride on his study participants. Sure, they still had a long road before becoming upstanding, moral people, but it finally felt like they were making progress. They deserved a little treat for all of their hard work. “I was thinking we could do something fun to finish off class for the week. Who’s ready for a field trip?” he asked.
“Me! Me!” Unsurprisingly, Jason was the first to make a suggestion. “Can we go to the zoo?”
“No, Jason.”
“Let’s go to Waltzing Matildaritas,” Eleanor said with a smile. “It’s almost happy hour!”
“No, Eleanor.”
“What about James Cameron’s secret deep-sea underwater lair?” Tahani offered. “I have an open invitation.”
“What? Tahani, no.” Chidi sighed. So much for his happy surprise. “How about I just go ahead and say it: we’re going to the library.”
“Oh, yipee, the library,” Eleanor said with fake enthusiasm. “The only other building on campus that has as many books about philosophy as the one we’re already in.”
Chidi made an annoyed grunt. “We are not going to the University library, we are going to the City library. And I’ll have you know, Eleanor, that the City Library barely has any philosophy books. There used to be a whole section, but supposedly the local homeless population likes to take them for barrel fires.”
Eleanor narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “So if we’re not getting more books about philosophy, then why are we going to a library?”
“Because instead of me assigning your standard weekend homework, each of you will get to choose your own reading!” He smiled widely, trying to ignore his students’ lack of enthusiasm. “Each of you will pick a favorite book from your childhood to re-read this weekend. When we come back together on Monday, we will identify the key moral themes as a group, and then tie those moral themes back to one of the philosophical theories we’ve been studying. Doesn’t that sound like fun? If we’re lucky, we may even be able to see how those books influenced the development of your own early ethical frameworks! I want you to think of a favorite book that you read over and over again as a child, and we’ll go find it at the library.”
“Ooh,” Tahani raised her hand in excitement. “Do you think they have the Holiday 1994 My Twin Doll Catalog?”
“Yeah right, fancy pants,” said Eleanor, rolling her eyes. “Those dolls were only for rich people. The rest of us were stuck reading the Holiday 1994 JC Penney Catalog.”
“What if it's a cereal box?” asked Jason. “I don’t know what year it was, or what cereal it was, but it had this super cool picture of these kids with skateboards.”
“No cereal boxes!” Chidi burst, “and no catalogs. It has to be a book. The kind of book you can find in a library. Let’s go!”
~~~
“I don’t like libraries,” Jason whined as they made their way through the stacks of the City Library towards the children’s section. “There’s always some mean old lady saying ‘be quiet’ or ‘you can’t have that in here’ or ‘how did that catch on fire?’."
“Now here’s one of my favorites from when I was a kid,” Chidi said appreciatively as he spotted a book on the front table display. “The Baby Blue Cat and the Whole Batch of Cookies. It is a wonderful book about self-control that we can extend into the philosophical teachings of…”
“ANIMORPHS!” Jason interrupted, practically jumping with excitement as he picked another book off the table and handed it to Chidi. “This book is so dope. I read it like a gazillion times after I found it in the dumpster behind a Food Lion.”
Chidi frowned. “I was thinking more like Dr. Suess, but if this is the one you want…” He opened the book to see the faded black-and-white print. “Oh wow, it’s an actual book. No pictures or anything.”
“Dude, it totally has pictures, look!” Jason grabbed the book, holding it with his left hand as he used his right to rapidly flash through the bottom-right corner of the pages. “See there? You can see him MORPH into a HAWK!”
“Did you say a hawk?” said Tahani. “You know, I met the cheekiest hawk one time on a hunting excursion to Balmoral Castle with my dear friend William and his younger brother Harry. The little fellow stole my best hat! The bird, of course, not Harry.”
“It’s about these evil aliens that take over your BRAIN,” Jason continued, not hearing a word Tahani said. “And these kids fight the aliens by turning into ANIMALS and it’s AWESOME!” He pointed at the cover, where a boy was cartoonishly turning into a large bird. “This is Tobias. His parents suck and so he turns into a bird and runs away forever. And he’s friends with this super hot chick named Rachel who turns into an elephant!”
Chidi’s enthusiasm fell. “Sounds…well, not exactly what I was thinking, but I’m sure there’s a lesson we can find in there somewhere.”
“Oh, there are SO many lessons. Like being a bird is AWESOME, because you don’t have to go to school and you get to ride on THERMALS.”
“Thermals?”
“Thermals.” Jason nodded smugly.
“Oh, you are definitely familiar,” Eleanor said while grabbing a different Animorphs book from the display. This one featured a boy turning into a tiger. “I remember now. I actually liked reading these books. What was this guy’s name again? He was the big, strong, cute one.”
“I think that’s Jake,” said Jason. “He’s the leader.”
“Well helloooo Jake,” Eleanor bit her lower lip, looking back down at the book.
Chidi stared at her. “I don’t even know where to begin with how wrong that is.”
“What?!” Eleanor said defensively. “I was twelve and into bowl cuts. At least my first boner wasn’t over a philosophy textbook.”
Chidi ignored the jibe, attempting to pry the book from her hands. “How about we find something else? There have to be other books that you remember: The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Where the Wild Things Are, Goodnight Moon…”
“Hey man, you said we could pick any book we read as a child that was in the library. Well this is the library, which means that me and Hottie McTiger here are going to have a little reunion, and it is going to count as my homework.”
Chidi sighed. “Well, Tahani, do you have a more traditional book that you would like to select?”
But Tahani had already picked up an Animorphs book of her own. “You know, I always harbored a secret fascination with the forbidden, low-brow mass-market paperback. Hardly acceptable literature, but still…” she sighed dramatically as she looked down at the book with longing. “Look, this one turns into a butterfly. Mother would never approve. How lovely.”
“Fine! You know what, fine.” Chidi yelled under the scornful gaze of a nearby librarian. “Everyone choose an Animorphs book to read over the weekend, and I’m sure on Monday we’ll have a deep, thought-provoking discussion about brain-stealing aliens and animal shape-shifting.”
“Woohoo!” Jason cheered. He leapt triumphantly towards the checkout desk, book in hand, as he thrust his fist in the air and shouted “THERMALS!”
“Here,” Eleanor handed Chidi a copy of Animorphs #1 - The Invasion. “Why don’t you read the first one. Never judge a book by its cover, right? Maybe you’ll like it more than you think.”
~~~
Monday morning they were all back in the lab, where Chidi greeted his study participants with enthusiasm.
“Alright! Who’s ready to talk Animorphs? Are you excited? I’m excited.”
“Dude, are you okay?” Eleanor looked concerned. “You look like my ex who used to stay up all night playing video games and then pound three cans of Red-Bull before starting his shift at K-Mart.”
“Yes, Eleanor, I have been more caffeinated than usual for the past few days, if that’s what you’re implying. But how can I sleep? There are too many Animorph books to read!”
“Exactly how many Animorph books did you read over the weekend?” Tahani asked.
“Oh, you know, just the 54 main series books, plus all 4 Megamorphs.”
“So…All of them?” Eleanor clarified.
“Don’t be silly, Eleanor, I haven’t even started on the Chronicles! I’ll get to them next.”
“But how did you read them all?”
“Someone posted the entire series online in PDF format. Naturally I would have preferred to read the books from a reputable source, but the library was closed, and the books are unfortunately out of print. Now of course this is no excuse to engage in online piracy, but several years ago there was an acknowledgement of the online copies by the authors themselves, who recognize the impossible dilemma of being unable to easily procure copies of the entire series through reputable means, therefore creating something of a gray area that’s more complicated than..."
"Yeah, yeah, we get it. You're not a book-thieving monster. I mean how did you read that many books?" Eleanor clarified. "Even without sleep, that's still sixty books in two days."
"Two-and-a-half days! Despite the mature philosophical content, these books are written at a children’s reading level, so they go fast. Plus you can skim over all the recaps. I mean, we all get it, Cassie’s parents are veterinarians! Am I right?” He stopped and stared at them with a manic grin.
“Let’s just back away slowly,” Eleanor said quietly to the others
“Come on, you were the ones to pick these books out! There’s so much for us to dive into here. Many of the books almost explicitly debate between deontology and consequentialism, and how they can be applied in a state of war.” He stared into the blank faces of his students. “Is extreme pacifism virtuous or dangerous? Is it justified to create greater suffering in order to avoid the moral evil of killing? Is a person evil based on his actions, or the desires that drive those actions? I’m sorry, am I the only one who actually read the books?!”
“I read mine!” Jason protested. “The whole thing. It was just like I remembered, hawks flying on thermals, hot elephant girl stomping cars, spaceship goes BOOM.”
Chidi stared at him in disbelief. “You read book number three, The Encounter. What about Tobias’s devastating internal struggle over sacrificing his system of ethics in order to live and survive in the harsh reality of a hawk? The struggle so intense that he tries to kill himself in order to escape the crushing torture of living in a state of constant moral compromise?”
“Whoah he tries to kill himself? I don’t remember that, dawg.”
“How can you not remember that?! He flies straight into a window.”
“Naw, man, you didn’t read the book,” Jason replied confidently. “He didn’t hit the window because Marco threw a baseball at it, duh. I remember that part because when I was a kid I threw a baseball at a window in the mall to see if I could break it. And I did! But then this rent-a-cop caught me. I bet you I wouldn’t have gotten caught if I could turn into a hawk and fly away. That’s a lesson.” Jason pointed for emphasis, as if he had just said something profound.
Chidi turned to Eleanor. “What about your book? Didn’t you get anything out of it?”
“Um…I learned that you should never trust creepy old men who ask you for favors, and that Jake is totally my type…” She noticed Chidi’s look of disappointment. “You know, or he would be my type, if I were a thirteen-year-old girl. Which I’m not. I’m a grown woman with absolutely no residual inappropriate thoughts about fictional teenagers.”
Chidi turned in desperation to his final student.
“Tahani, you picked one of the most morally complex books in the entire series. Please tell me you got something out of it that we can discuss!”
“Oh, an absolute treasure trove,” Tahani beamed. “The crowning metaphor of my book is the way that Cassie doesn’t turn into a butterfly until after she becomes a repulsive caterpillar, which of course represents the ability of all of us to arrive at a place of transcendent beauty, no matter how far we fall. It reminds me of the time I inspired my dear friend’s comeback hit Gimme More whilst on a shopping trip that we took together in Milan after she had a very public breakdown. Out of respect for her privacy, I won’t say who, but I will tell you that she…” Tahani dropped to a whisper, ”…shaved her head! She did look rather like a bug, but it all turned out in the end.”
“Anything else?” Chidi asked, feeling a familiar ache grow in his stomach.
“Oh yes,” Tahani continued. “I liked the way that the little rich girl got her daddy to give money to the poor girl and save her family’s farm. That was very nice of her.”
Chidi looked so heartbroken that Eleanor jumped in to cheer him up.
“Maybe we were just so caught up in all the cool animal stuff that we missed the deontogical ethics stuff. But I’m sure we can learn it if you explain it to us! I mean, I bet those crazy killing-machine aliens in my book break all sorts of rules about…you know…consequentialism.” She looked at him expectantly, handing him a piece of chalk. “What do you say, teach?”
Chidi smiled back. “Actually, Jake’s perspective change towards the Howlers is a great example of challenging consequentialist ethics. Can a creature be considered evil based on the consequences of its actions when it is merely adhering to a misguided set of learned virtues? Let’s see what Aristotle has to say on the matter…”
Several hours and multiple full chalkboards later, Chidi pulled Eleanor to the side as they broke for lunch.
“Thank you, Eleanor. I don’t always know the best way to make academic material exciting, but you give me hope that some of my lessons are getting through, after all.”
Eleanor felt a happy little glow inside as she smiled back at him. “Any time, nerd.”