ATLA Book One: Water
Chapter Sixteen: The Deserter
In which Aang Squats
and breathes, Sokka goes fishing, and Zhao gets a little hot under the collar.
First and foremost, this episode is about Fire. It is a
story about the fire nation, about the face of their military and the people
who defected from that army. It is about fleshing out Fire Nation culture,
getting a sense of how a Fire Nation town will act out their culture. It is
about Aang’s desire to learn firebending, and the question over whether he is
ready. The themes of the episode are woven together to tell a story about the
uncontrollable, dangerous nature of fire, and how leaning too heavily into that
nature has corrupted a nation.
We start the episode by heading into a Town, an Earth
Kingdom colony, in a sequence that allows for more fleshing out of the fire
nation, building a sense of just how deep rooted its invasion is in some places:
this is a town filled with Fire Nation culture, celebrating one of its
festivals. We see more of their propaganda in the fire lord puppet show, and we
see some added foreshadowing when Aang worries about Katara getting burned in
the firebender’s performance, which highlights the perils of fire without
control, even if the performer’s loss of control is feigned.
This episode also increases the sense of a redeemable fire
nation with Jeong Jeong and his group of deserters, although unlike the
innocent townspeople of “Jet”, these people are on the fringes of society,
living as vagabonds in a way that Zhao considers “savagery”, something beneath
him.
The episode also provides us with more backstory for Zhao,
so this essay seems like a suitable time to do what I’ve been promising since
his introduction, and discuss his status as a problem character. The First, and
perhaps most obvious problem, is that he is the villain used most sparingly throughout
the course of this season, the one who (to paraphrase Bryan Konietzko) comes
along to show “Poop has gotten real”. But in his first appearance, he is
defeated by Zuko, who at that point is apparently still struggling to master
the basics of Firebending. While this is beneficial to Zuko’s arc, it does
nothing to help Zhao as a villain: he cannot be the villain used to show “Poop
has gotten real” (to paraphrase Bryan Konietzko) in anything more than a
superficial sense, as he doesn’t convince as a genuinely imposing threat. Heck,
here the episode makes a point of the fact that Aang beats him without having
to throw a single attack.
Furthermore, Zhao fails because Zuko takes the traits that
define his villainy, and makes them far more interesting. For example, when we
get the story of how Zuko came to be chasing Aang around the world in “The
Storm”, we are given the backstory of a multifaceted, complex character. When
we get backstory for Zhao here, we learn he is reckless and power hungry. It
works in the context of the episode’s themes, but generic doesn’t begin to
cover it. Aang’s taunt that he thought Zhao would be better than Zuko takes on
a particularly meta quality here: Zuko is the defining antagonist of Book One
in a way Zhao simply cannot be. Zhao does have his moments, such as in this
episode, where he feeds the theme around the uncontrollable nature of fire
pretty well. It’s just that these moments are few and far between, and the show
will ultimately come up with a much more threatening and compelling villain to
replace him, very shortly.
Fitting into the theme of the danger of fire is Aang’s
encounter with Jeong Jeong. This encounter start of Aang’s pattern of finding a
traditional “old male mentor figure” who seems to be set up to teach him their
separate element, only to instead learn from one of his peers, someone who is
marginalised or rejected by the wider world. Each old mentor figure is not able
to mentor Aang for subtly different reasons. In Jeong Jeong’s case, Aang doesn’t
learn from him because he isn’t ready to learn firebending: he can’t control
the danger of fire, and isn’t patient enough to deal with this danger, as he gets
too saucht up in in his natural aptitude for the element.
However, the problem doesn’t just lie with Aang: it also
lies with his prospective mentor: Jeong Jeong is ultimately too afraid of the
element himself, loathing the fact he is a Firebender. This self-loathing is
clearly an unhealthy approach the intrinsic part of the self bending has been
shown to be multiple times over the course of the show so far, with the line
“eventually it tears you apart” showing the internal chaos caused by Jeong
Jeong’s feelings about his own identity as a Firebender. If he is to learn
firebending, Aang’s mentor will have to be someone who understands, and can
move past, that fear of fire, and the sense of internal chaos and self-loathing
that fear causes.
As well as being the thing that means he cannot learn from
Jeong Jeong, the accidental burning of Katara is a significant obstacle in
Aang’s hero’s journey. The event is a sign of Aang’s impatience, as he once
again shows a natural aptitude for the element he is learning, but lacks the
discipline necessary to understand and respect the danger of fire. Hurting
someone he loves is a major cause of shame for Aang, and a major mental block that
lasts through most of the rest of the show.
However, being burnt allows Katara to learn about her
healing powers, thankfully meaning her pain is not just a cause for Aang’s male
angst, but a chance to move her own hero’s journey forwards, as she recognises
powers in herself that are only granted to a select few gifted waterbenders.
Jeong Jeong’s discussion of healing with Katara sets up a binary opposition
between the natures of water and fire, a dualism that will play heavily into
the Book one finale, and Katara’s part in the Book Three finale. It also
further expands on Jeong Jeong’s characterisation: the healing, soothing power
of water is something Jeong Jeong longs for desperately, but cannot have.
The resolution shows Aang better understanding the self
destructive nature of fire, but refusing to use the element as a result of this
understanding. It’s an incomplete resolution, one that speaks to the fact that
this problem will exist until the resolution of the series. At the moment, the
fire nation characters can only be redeemed if they reject the nature of their
nation, whereas the resolution of the series will hinge on redefining the
nature of their nation, and their understanding of the element of fire.
End of Part Fifteen.
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