Sat 11 Feb 2006
“I’ve watched through his eyes, I’ve listened through his ears, and I tell you he’s the one. “
So opens Ender’s Game, a novel that I strongly suspect everyone else in the Salon read long ago but that I only just got around to this snowy, housebound weekend. There’s no excuse for my neglect of it up to this point — plenty of readers whose tastes I respect have recommended it to me over the years — but I procrastinated all this time because I don’t normally care for Sci Fi. Now, dear salonnier(e)s, I need your help. Dust off your copy and refresh your memory, because I want to discuss this book with you! Here are a few thoughts to get started.
* The character of Ender felt very familiar to me — I think he would have been part of our crowd in high school, and certainly would have made a great addition to the Salon des Grands Geeks. Highly intelligent but small for his age and far from being in with the In Crowd, sometimes ruthlessly bullied by other kids, Ender struck me as being…well…a geek. Although Ender is undeniably not a “normal” kid by our standards, I thought Orson Scott Card did an excellent job of conveying the very normal geeky-kid emotions that Ender struggles with: Helplessness, rage, isolation, superiority, boredom, curiosity, etc. It occurred to me that for a geeky kid reading this book, Ender would be a tremendously sympathetic character. Who among us, when bored into numbness in class or bullied by jocks in the gym, didn’t secretly fantasize that we had been preselected heroes of some better world? Did you feel this way when reading this novel for the first time? What characteristics of Ender did you sympathize with the most?
* Ender’s life, like the lives of almost all the characters in the novel, is manipulated from the moment of his conception by forces beyond his control. Is it possible to truly be a hero inside this framework?
* Ender tells his sister Valentine: “And it came down to this: In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.” Later, we see this exchange between Graff and Ender:
“We used every means we could think of to communicate with them, but they don’t even have the machinery to know we’re signaling. And maybe they’ve been trying to think to us, and they can’t understand why we don’t respond.”
“So the whole war is because we can’t talk to each other.”
“If the other fellow can’t tell you his story, you can never be sure he isn’t trying to kill you.”
What do you think of this idea of violence as a failure of empathy?
* What else made this book compelling for you?
Thanks, all!
2 Responses to “Branching out”
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February 21st, 2006 at 12:22 pm
“Who among us, when bored into numbness in class or bullied by jocks in the gym, didn’t secretly fantasize that we had been preselected heroes of some better world? Did you feel this way when reading this novel for the first time? What characteristics of Ender did you sympathize with the most?”
I empathized with being treated as dangerous by my supposed peers. I was envious of Ender’s clarity…everyone told me I was intelligent, but that intelligence didn’t translate into a clear idea of what to do in any situation, much less into confidence.
I was more intrigued by the characters of Peter and Valentine. Unlike Ender, they acted to change the world WITHOUT the support of a huge military complex. Through words alone they swayed opinions and made an impact. As children, we all want to make an impact.
While Ender’s game was great fun for me when I first read it, the sequels were not (they moved away from the themes you describe, at least until “Ender’s Shadow” starts over with Bean), and rereading it now makes me feel…lessened. As if I’m now aware of the direct appeal to the emotions you describe, and I feel guilty for it.
The theme of “understanding brings love” is central to “Stranger in a Strange Land” by Heinlein. It even births a word that describes that level of understanding. I highly recommend it. As with all Heinlein stuff, there’s an element of “dirty old man” in it, but to a tolerable degree, and I really do consider it one of his two best works.
March 23rd, 2006 at 2:19 am
I loved Ender’s Game, and read all of the sequels (as noted by SwiftOne, they do diverge, but not necessarily in bad ways). I also have enjoyed the Ender’s Shadow spinoff/retellings. I thought about this for a while, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the reason Card’s characters are so winning is that they’re basically adults stuck in children’s bodies (consider how your interest in them wanes as they age to the point where their bodies catch up). They’re so precocious as to be unbelievable, but we believe them anyway because, yeah, who hasn’t wanted to be (or just know) someone that amazing? These advanced “children” see and know too much to be content with their child states, so there’s a lot of frustration along with the brilliance.
But the element of Ender’s Game that really got to me (and still lingers as one of my dominant impressions) was the deception involved in the “game” and the manipulation the actual adults engage in to get the ends they want. Yowza.