Leviathan - The Kraken

The huge tentacle swept through the air, a sheet of seawater spilling like rain from its length. The Royal Navy kraken was another of Huxley's fabrications, Deryn had read, made from the life chains of the octopus and giant squid. Its arm uncoiled like a vast, slow whip in the spotlights.

Taking its time, the tentacle curled around the schooner, its suckers clamping tight against the hull. Then it was joined by another arm, and each took one end of the ship. The vessel snapped between them, the awful sound of tearing wood bouncing across the black water to Deryn's ears.

More tentacles uncoiled from the water, wrapping around the ship. Finally the kraken's head rose into view, one huge eye gazing up at the Leviathan for a moment before the beastie pulled the schooner beneath the waves.

Soon nothing but flotsam remained above the waves. The guns of the Gorgon roared in salute (Westerfield, 114).

Here, enemy ships threatening the Leviathan are being destroyed by another creature of fabrication, a kraken, made from the hybridization of the octopus and the giant squid. The Royal Navy saves the Leviathan using this creature to sink their enemy ships to the point that barely any remnants of their ships remained on the surface of the waters.

Being to make mythical sea creatures through hybridizations sounds both fascinating and scary at the same time. Making a kraken would be interesting for a tourist attraction, though setting it out in the ocean would just be devastating to the sea life. Using mythical creatures would be great for warfare though; for example, the kraken would just destroy navies like the situation described in this passage. Though… for the sake of humanity, it may be best not to dabble too much in the arts of combining animals if we get the technology to do so, lest we find ourselves with a planet destroyer...

The situation in the passage seems to show a much dangerous side to these Darwinist creations, or creatures made unnaturally. A single kraken was able to disable and dismantle a whole navy with its tentacles. Westerfield emphasizes this sense of danger primarily through the imagery that he conveys through the kraken’s actions. The way that he describes how the kraken used its arm to take hold of the ship’s sides and how the ship snapped into two suggests how these navy ships are children’s play for the kraken; the ships themselves are like ants against a greater force. The passage definitely brings the readers back from admiring the usage of these sort of creatures like in the last post and makes a point to them of the possible dangers and risks that come along with the power these creatures hold. It’s all fun and games… until a whole navy goes down to a mythical sea creature.

Based on this passage, the way the kraken effortlessly rips these enemy ships suggests that we as society nowadays are capable, or are on the road of being capable, of developing some dangerous things, whether they are creatures or devices. Even in the present day, some scientists have already developed a way to make the bird flu even deadlier by making it contagious through the air. As technology grows, so does our capacity to both provide assistance and inflict harm to our society.