ATLA Book Two: Earth
Chapter Eleven: The Desert
In Which Sokka drinks
some Cactus Juice, Toph makes a dirt angel, and Aang makes a friendly mushroom.
“The Desert” follows straight off from the ending of “The
Library”, dealing first and foremost with with the emotional and practical
consequences of Appa’s kidnap at the end of the previous episode.
It is a big Katara episode, with the most focus on her character
in book two so far. Book one was a narrative kick-started by her need to go to
the South Pole, so her hero’s journey was woven into the Book’s structure. As a
result, it was more prominent there than it has been so far this season,
although they have still given her plenty of focus, particularly through the
development of her new role as a mentor for Aang. However, this episode marks
the first time in the season she has served the structural role of protagonist,
taking the lead as the rest of the Gaang are incapacitated: Toph is less
capable in sand, Sokka is high on Cactus juice (one of the funniest jokes in
the series), and Aang is suffering from rage and grief after losing Appa.
Katara has to take charge, be the group leader, and hold everyone together, doing
the most in the episode to drive the plot forward and combat the obstacles our
heroes face.
Katara tries to be practical in her approach to getting everyone
out of the desert, finding simple tasks to keep everyone focussed and working
together. This approach is something she acts out in the most literal way when
she gets everyone to hold hands and keep walking: she literally holds everyone
together and gets them to keep moving towards the end of the desert. She seeks
a distraction from the Gaang’s emotional distress, particularly so in Aang’s
case. Like Iroh with Zuko, she seeks to placate and calm Aang’s rage, never
shouting back, an attitude that contrasts with her fight with Toph in “The
Chase”, suggesting she wants to avoid letting that happen in a desperate
situation again. A prime example of her approach to helping Aang comes in the
opening scene, where Aang blames Toph for Appa getting stolen, and Katara
diffuses the situation, not blaming Aang for his anger, but also pointing out
that Toph did everything she could, and that they wouldn’t be alive without her
holding up the library. Way back in “The Great Divide”, Aang defined conflict
resolution as a key part of the Avatar’s job, and it is a job Katara takes on
in this episode.
Indeed, there are only two, particularly notable, moments
where she truly loses her patience, and externally expresses her frustration.
The first comes when she snaps at Sokka for trying the honey right after he’d
(mostly) recovered from the cactus juice: she doesn’t want her job being made
harder just as she begins to get results by finding the sandsailer, and with
Sokka’s recovery. The other moment comes with her private response of “Trying to keep everyone together” when
Aang asks what she’s doing to help. She refuses to lash out at Aang, but allows
herself a moment to feel hurt by his unfair behaviour and accusations,
acknowledging the pressure she is under without letting it stop her completing
her task.
Katara’s practical response to the Gaang’s problems come in
the form of her looking for the things the Gaang can do, rather than despairing
at the things they don’t have. She focuses on conserving water, and fetching it
water from the cloud when she gets the opportunity as a way of making sure they
have the resources to survive. Similarly, reading the map of stars and using
the broken down sandsailer are her way making use of the things they do have,
or that become available, to get out of the desert. Furthermore, in the case of
the sandsailer and the cloud, she is getting Aang to help in whatever way he
can, making sure he stays connected to the group: her practical responses to
the Gaang’s needs are also an attempt to keep them together emotionally.
Once again, Zuko and Iroh’s B plot parallels the Gaang’s
plot, as they meet the white Lotus to find their way out of the Desert. Like
the Gaang, they are looking to escape the desert on route to Ba Sing Se. These
are parallels that allow for a further example of the season’s theme of interconnectedness,
as Zuko and Iroh are pursued by Yu and Xin Fu. By meeting her bounty hunters,
Zuko and Iroh’s story intersects with part Toph’s plot. Similarly they meet the
Rough Rhinos, who the Gaang fought in “Avatar Day”, and visit the Misty palms
Oasis. They are still not interacting with the Gaang, but continue flitting
around the edges of their plot, with the sense being that their storylines are
slowly coming closer together, though still without coming into contact. In
fact, this time, coming into contact with Toph’s pursuers impacts on their
plot, with the bounty hunters’ pursuit further necessitating their move to Ba
Sing Se. All the separate sets of main characters are slowly being taking
separate journeys, for differing reasons, to the same eventual location.
Zuko and Iroh’s plot also sees the introduction of the White
Lotus. In a season about breaking down boundaries and interconnectedness, we
are introduced to an organisation that is made to be removed from the divisions
between Nations, another way Zuko and Iroh’s plot supports the season’s central
theme. However, the White Lotus are more of a mystery at this point, with their
nature not being fully revealed: we only learn what Zuko learns about them.
However, this plot thread provides something of an explanation and payoff for
the emphasis on Iroh’s pai sho tile, and his quest to find it in “The
Waterbending Scroll”. It wasn’t flagged as anything huge at the time, and that
speaks to the nature of his characterisation. His actions in that episode were
consistent with the more comic character we knew him as then, a comic
distraction from Zuko’s quest to capture Aang. By contrast, his behaviour in
this episode is more consistent with the more rounded character we better
understand now. However, these different uses of the Pai Sho tile remain
consistent with one another, they just demonstrate the approach the show takes
in its characterisation of Iroh: as the audience’s understanding of Iroh
shifts, so do the apparent motivations of character.
While Katara is the figure driving the plot in this episode,
and Iroh and Zuko have another parallel plot that further explores the season’s
structure and adds some crucial worldbuilding, the emotional centre of “The
Desert” comes in the form of Aang’s grief. This grief first manifests itself in
the form of his anger at the rest of the Gaang. His grief makes him
unreasonable, cruel to those who love him. He blames Toph for losing Appa, and
asks Katara what she’s doing to help when she’s doing everything she can to
keep them together: in both cases, his grief leads to him unreasonably accusing
the people closest to him of not caring as much as he does, of not being as
angry as he is about losing Appa.
The darker portrayal of Aang escalates with his murder of
the wasp. It is a murder that comes about as a result of it trying to take
Momo, and he explicitly attacks it after saying he doesn’t want to lose anyone
else. However, he kills it after Momo has been successfully rescued, not in
order to save him, increasing the extent to which it is a murder that is
premeditated and in cold blood, as the Wasp is flying away. The premeditated
nature of the attack emphasizes what a dark moment this is for Aang’s
character: the wasp is only be an animal, so Aang’s claim in the finale that he
has “never killed anyone” can be taken as technically true. However, he is a
vegetarian because he feels it is important to respect all life: heck, he’s
grieving for an animal he considers one of his closest friends, and attacks the
wasp because it tries to take another animal in his care. As a result, killing
the wasp is a marked departure from his ideals as a monk, with his grief and
anger combining unhealthily to corrupt the person he has been raised to be, and
comprises the values he cares for greatly. The way Momo curls up in fear
emphasise just how scary Aang is in this scene.
His anger increases upon meeting the sandbenders. It is a
moment he has been preparing for all episode, and so he doesn’t give them the
chance to explain themselves, instantly breaking their sandsailers, once again
engaging in morally dubious behaviour. These actions are particularly
questionable in the light of the episode’s more balanced portrayal of the
sandbenders. They are not just villainous and faceless characters, but instead
are mostly a sympathetic group of people. The father, who is in charge, behaves
reasonably and helpfully, with the episode’s implication being that his son and
the bandits were acting behind his back, a rogue part of the sandbending society.
The son, meanwhile, is made deeply unsympathetic: “I didn’t know he belonged to the Avatar!” he says about selling
Appa, as if kidnapping a rare example of an almost extinct species, is only wrong
because said animal belongs to a world leader.
And the loathsome nature of the son is what leads to the
climax of Aang’s rage in this episode: learning the son put a muzzle on Appa
drives Aang into the Avatar State. His appearance in this sequence echoes his “uncontrollable
rage” Avatar State forms in “The Southern Air Temple” and “The Avatar State”.
As in “The Southern Air Temple”, Katara brings him out of the state, further
linking her to the Avatar State in a way that foreshadows “The Guru”, by
further building up the complex, interlinking relationship between his feelings
for Katara, his grief at losing his people, and his connection to the Avatar
State. The finale will clarify the nature and implications of this link, but
for now, it is worth just reflecting on the final scene. It reflects the extent
to which Katara and Aang’s relationship has developed since “The Southern Air
Temple”: this time she doesn’t need to speak to him, just takes his hand and
holds him tight, with both of them in tears. Katara cries because she is once
again seeing Aang go through the rage and pain she admitted to hating seeing
him in in “The Avatar State”. Aang, meanwhile, finally loses his anger, no
longer playing the part of vengeful demi-god, but instead being who he is at
his heart: a scared, grieving twelve year old boy who has been separated from
his oldest friend.
End of Part Twenty
Nine.
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