When is Meyer going to learn? You can't make a character smugly anti-human, support that character in his/her views, and then expect the audience to like him/her. Your audience is human! Telling everybody that we're all horrible, nasty people who deserve to be enslaved is not going to endear yourself to anybody.
Why are we supposed to root for Wanderer? Why? She's a member of a race that makes it their duty to forcibly brainwash humans and take control of their minds, and she sees nothing wrong with it. She takes every opportunity to belittle humans for their depravity without bothering to think about the moral implications of controlling them against their will. That doesn't make her look enlightened; that makes her look like a monstrous hypocrite.
Yes, we humans have done terrible, horrible things. Nobody can deny that. But that doesn't justify the aliens' actions. Not all humans are horrible and the aliens shouldn't even have the right to brainwash those who are. Shaolina had a point when she earlier compared the alien-human relationship in this book to the colonizer-colonized relationship in real life. For example, take the British and the Indians. Did the Indians have some nasty things in their culture, like sati and the caste system? Yes, they did. But did that mean that the British had every right to stomp into India, take over their government and economy, proclaim them to be at the level of mentally incompetent children who they needed to "civilize" and dominate, strip them of their natural resources, exploit them in every way possible, and render them second-class citizens. No!
no subject
Why are we supposed to root for Wanderer? Why? She's a member of a race that makes it their duty to forcibly brainwash humans and take control of their minds, and she sees nothing wrong with it. She takes every opportunity to belittle humans for their depravity without bothering to think about the moral implications of controlling them against their will. That doesn't make her look enlightened; that makes her look like a monstrous hypocrite.
Yes, we humans have done terrible, horrible things. Nobody can deny that. But that doesn't justify the aliens' actions. Not all humans are horrible and the aliens shouldn't even have the right to brainwash those who are. Shaolina had a point when she earlier compared the alien-human relationship in this book to the colonizer-colonized relationship in real life. For example, take the British and the Indians. Did the Indians have some nasty things in their culture, like sati and the caste system? Yes, they did. But did that mean that the British had every right to stomp into India, take over their government and economy, proclaim them to be at the level of mentally incompetent children who they needed to "civilize" and dominate, strip them of their natural resources, exploit them in every way possible, and render them second-class citizens. No!
Stephenie Meyer just does not get it.