The 100: Chapter Five (Horror Carnival Ride)

So y'all should know I finished reading the book today. I was gonna do this thing where I didn't keep reading further until I recapped each chapter, but apparently my work email has a problem with curse words and haha anyway yeah, I can't write these at work anymore. Whoops.

I'll do my best to keep my comments confined to each chapter specifically but if you sense a lingering sense of "oh no" or "it only gets worse from here" or "U BETTER HOLD ONTO UR SEATS KIDS CUZ THIS HORROR CARNIVAL RIDE HAS ONLY JUST BEGUN" well, you know. That's why.

Anyway! Chapter five's a Clarke chapter. My general impression of it sits somewhere in-between "finally, some shit starts to happen that doesn't get interrupted by a cliffhanger" and "oh thank God we're done with that Glass/Luke shit." 

So we start off on the dropship, where everybody's just sort of hanging out being shocked at what just went down with Jaha and staring at Bellamy, probably because he's smoking hot. Or he just attempted murdered somebody, idk. Who knows.

The rogue guard had gotten what he wanted. He'd pushed the Chancellor's limp body forward just as the dropship door was closing, and then stumbled into a seat. But from the shocked expression on his pale face, Clarke gathered that gunfire had never been part of the plan.

That is quite the leap of logic there, Clarke, but can I just say I really appreciate how Morgan is unafraid to make Bellamy seem scared and unsure and weak? This is something the show does not do, because in TV-world, male characters you are supposed to like must always be brave and stoic and only show weakness or fear when pushed to the absolute edge, like say, when they're hallucinating in the forest and being beaten to the edge of death. Remember how on Stargate Atlantis we were all supposed to dislike Rodney for showing visible fear in the face of danger he was completely untrained and unequipped to deal with? And how all the other characters would get irritated with him for it? Because that's not how men act? Yeah, that's fucked up.

Ahem, anyway, yeah, so I like that about the book. Moving on.

Clarke notices for the first time that Wells is on the dropship, because everyone in this book never notices anything until the very, very last second, and thinks again about what a total dickwad he is, and how he deserves what he's getting because he totally got her parents killed. Then she notices Thalia, her old cell mate, and something COMPLETELY MIRACULOUS HAPPENS: TWO FEMALE CHARACTERS DISPLAY A FRIENDSHIP.

Her old cell mate twisted in her seat, the only person in the dropship not staring at the guard. Despite the grim circumstances, Clarke couldn't help smiling back. Thalia had that effect. In the days after Clarke's arrest and her parents' execution, when her grief felt so heavy it was difficult to breathe, Thalia had actually made Clarke laugh with her impression of the cocky guard whose shuffle turned into a strut whenever he thought the girls were looking at him. 

HALLELUJAH, PRAISE BE TO HEAVEN, A FRIENDSHIP BETWEEN TWO WOMEN. Oh my God it'd be so totally rad if this book actually passed the Bechdel Test that'd be super fucking cool I'm so excited about this -

"Is that him?" Thalia mouthed now, tilting her head toward Wells. 

That is literally the very next sentence. Lord give me strength. 

Okay, so...yeah. Okay. Clarke mentions that Thalia knows everything including Clarke's horrible terrible secret, and then they get distracted because the dropship engines turn on because apparently they'd just been, like, chilling in the holding area this whole time, who the fuck even knows. 

It had really happened. For the first time in centuries, humans had left the Colony. She glanced at the other passengers and saw that they had all gone quiet as well, a spontaneous moment of silence for the world they were leaving behind.

Very serious, momentous occasion, very important history changing stuff. Yes.

But the solemnity didn't last long. For the next twenty minutes, the dropship was filled with the nervous, overexcited chatter of a hundred people who, until a few hours ago, had never even thought about going to Earth. Thalia tried to shout something to Clarke, but her words were lost in the din.

But lolol always time for gossiping!! What the fuck, this is so weird??? Why twenty minutes exactly?? What is the ship doing? Just like, coasting down towards the atmosphere? Why is this necessary to include?????

Also, have I told you guys that the book doesn't call it the Ark? Yeah, that's a TV show thing. In the book it's just "the Colony," which sounds much much creepier.

So yeah, they (finally) hit the actual atmosphere and then shit starts to get real, with turbulence and shaking and "a strange hum" and vomiting and stuff and thEN HOLY SHIT THE CEILING STARTS TO MELT AND THEN RIPS COMPLETELY OFF HOW ARE THEY ALL NOT DEAD.

Well, some of them die, obviously. Only like three of them though, so it's not that big of a deal.

Anyway so the coolest passage in this chapter is Clarke's first impression of Earth, when Morgan gets her eloquence back on. Sort of. 

For a moment, she was aware of only colors, not shapes. Stripes of blue, green, and brown so vibrant her brain couldn't process them. A gust of wind passed over her, making her skin tingle and flooding her nose with scents Clarke couldn't begin to identify. At first, all she could see were the trees. There were hundreds of them, as if every tree on the planet had come to welcome them back to Earth. Their enormous branches were lifted in celebration toward the sky, which was a joyful blue. The ground stretched out in all directions--ten times farther than the longest deck on the ship. The amount of space was almost inconceivable, and Clarke suddenly felt light-headed, as if she were about to float away.

Okay, as the very first paragraph describing Earth ever, I'm gonna rate that a...solid C. Not great, but not bad. Don't get bummed, okay Kass Morgan, C's get degrees, dude.

Anyway so some people start wandering out of the ship to look around all impressed, but there's only like ten people important enough to get names so we don't know who they are. There's a cool line about one kid who has trouble walking at first because Earth's gravity is so different from the Ark, but I guess it must not be that bad because it never gets mentioned again. 

One of the nameless people points out that the air might be toxic, and that the wristbands are there to monitor them, and with my new found insight as an official Person Who Has Read This Entire Book, I can tell you that this is the only time that the hundred have any kind of realistic group conversation. For the rest of this novel, they all just sort of...blend into the background, like the projections in Inception on Arthur's level, you know, where they're all wearing business suits walking around purposefully without any noticeable faces?? Yeah. Like that. 

Then, with no transition or segue whatsoever, suddenly we're in a flashback!!! Haha, why not.

"We'll be back soon," her father said, as he slipped his long arms into a suit jacket Clarke had never seen before. He walked over to the couch where she was curled up with her tablet and ruffled her hair. "Don't stay out too late. They've been strict about curfew lately. Some trouble on Walden, I think." 

"I'm not going anywhere," Clarke said, gesturing toward her bare feet and the surgical pants she wore to sleep. For the most famous scientist in the Colony, her father's deductive reasoning left something to be desired. Although he spent so much time wrapped up in his research, it was unlikely he'd even know that scrubs weren't considered high fashion among sixteen-year-old girls.

Uh, well, Glass wears dresses made out of old tarp, so maybe your dad might have a point there, Clarke.

Anyway so yeah, Jake (who is not named Jake in the book, because Clarke's parents, despite being the source of her main motivation and conflict, are still not important enough to have names) is an absent-minded scientist, because why think outside the box when you can just use a trope, and warn Clarke like a bunch of times in a super suspicious manner that she totally shouldn't go into their private lab because, well, she just shouldn't, okay. So guess what she does.

what we've got here...is a failure to communicate.

There's interesting stuff in-between here, about a school paper Clarke is working on for a class called "Earth Literature," and that she calls it a "tutorial," implying that the Ark's schooling is like stuff you do on your own by yourself, and they write papers about the "changing view of nature in pre-Cataclysmic poetry" and "compare and contrast the vampire crazes of the nineteeth and twenty-first centuries," which sounds right up my alley tbh, but I can't even concentrate on that because holy fucking shit, Clarke's parents are mad scientists.

Clarke's eyes widened as they darted from one bed to another. Each contained a child. Most of the kids were lying there asleep, hooked up to various vital monitors and IV stands, though a few were propped up by pillows, fiddling with tablets in their laps. One little girl, hardly older than a toddler, sat on the floor next to her bed, playing with a ratty stuffed bear as clear liquid dripped from an IV bag into her arm.

I do not have a good feeling about where this is going.

Clarke's brain raced for an explanation. These had to be sick children who required round-the-clock care. Maybe they were suffering from some rare disease that only her mother knew how to cure, or perhaps her father was close to inventing a new treatment and needed twenty-four hour access. They must've known Clarke would be curious, but since the illness was probably contagious, they'd lied to Clarke to keep her safe.

Yeah, no. They're fucking mad scientists. 

Clarke suppressed a shudder. Diseases were rare on the ship; there hadn't been any epidemics since the last outbreak they'd quarantined on Walden. Clarke looked around the lab for something to indicate what her parents were treating, and her eyes settled on an enormous screen on the far wall. Data flashed across it, forming a large graph. Subject 32. Age 7. Day 189. 3.4 Gy. Red count. White count. Respiration. Subject 33. Age 11. Day 298. 6 Gy. Red count. White count. Respiration.

Yeah, because why not keep the damning evidence of your totally sick twisted human experiments on a big screen TV on the wall? Sure. By the way, I skipped over this part? But Clarke guessed the fucking password into this room on the third try. Yeah, this makes sense.

So yeah, Clarke's parents are studying radiation, all right. By torturing and poisoning a bunch of orphans to death. Yay, ethical science!!!!!

Clarke figures this out through a conversation with one of the sad, poisoned orphans named Lilly and then with another super transition, as in none at all, it's back to the present where Clarke runs around fixing people, specifically Octavia, who we know because Clarke mentions the red ribbon in her hair. The red ribbon is super important, okay. Spoiler alert.

Her ankle's been sprained in the crash, and Clarke does the best she can while thinking about how fucked they are without any medicine, which is...foreshadowing, I guess? Maybe? Who knows.

If the medicine chest wasn't in the clearing, that meant it was probably still in the dropship. She hurried back to the still-smoking wreck, walking around the perimeter as she searched for the safest way to get back inside. Clarke reached the back of the ship, which was just a few meters from the tree line. She shivered. The trees grew so closely together on this side of the clearing, their leaves blocked most of the light, casting intricate shadows on the ground that scattered when the wind blew.

Okay, I get it, enough about the trees. This book is all about the fucking trees.

Her eyes narrowed as they focused on something that didn't move. It wasn't a shadow.

A girl was lying on the ground, nestled against the roots of a tree. She must have been thrown out of the back of the dropship during the landing. Clarke lurched forward, and felt a sob form in her throat as she recognized the girl's short, curly hair and the smattering of freckles on the bridge of her nose. Thalia.

Of course!!! Give me a female friendship and then mutilate 50% of it six pages later, I love this. This is great.

So yeah, the chapter ends with Clarke rushing over to see Thalia's injury, which is a really bad really horrible but totally unspecified injury on her ribs, and instead of like, idk, doing something with the wound, as a doctor would, Clarke just holds her hands and talks to her friend's unconscious body because, lol, first aid? What?

"It's going to be okay," Clarke whispered, grabbing on to her friend's limp hand as the wind rustled above them. "I swear, Thalia, it's all going to be okay." It sounded more like a prayer than a reassurance, although she wasn't sure who she was praying to. Humans had abandoned Earth during its darkest hour. It wouldn't care how many died trying to return.

Well, that's a super creepy sentence about the unforgiving, endless struggle of Man against Nature that would be a great underlying theme of this book had Morgan carried it through whatsoever. 

Some things: 

• The passwords Clarke guesses to get into her parents' lab are: Pangea (the name of the original land mass on Earth before it split up into continents), then Elysium (described as "the name of the mythical underground city where, according to bedtime stories parents told their children, humans took refuge after the Cataclysm," also a super shitty Matt Damon movie, also the Greek concept of heaven), then Lucy is the correct one, also explained in the text as the "oldest hominid remains Earthborn archaeologists ever discovered." 
• That's it, that's the only extra thing. This chapter was sort of horrifying on many levels. Prayer circle for chapter six, people. I am only human.