Topic 4: Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

Card, Orson Scott. 1985. Ender’s Game. Rev. ed. 1991. New York: Tor Book. ISBN: 0312932081.

ENDER’S GAME by Orson Scott Card

In Orson Scott Card’s novel ENDER’S GAME, all of Earth is in grave peril of an invasion by an alien force known as the Buggers. In a world where families are limited to two children apiece and these children are fitted with a monitor that allows unseen military personnel to watch, see, hear and feel what the children feel, Andrew “Ender” Wiggin is unusual. He is most unusual in that he is a third child, has had his monitor in place for far longer than his brother or his sister, and at six years old, he is a certified genius. Ender is recruited by the military to take part in Battle School, a military-type school where cadets are trained to fight the Buggers. The novel chronicles the journey that makes, breaks and molds Ender into an unwilling and unwitting weapon in the interstellar war.

ENDER’S GAME is a tale “smoothly written, but morally disquieting.” (Pringle, 107.) The last battle has a predictable outcome, but Card’s ending gentles the cynical edge by allowing Ender to reunite with his sister, though it is a strained relationship, and by allowing Ender to take the last larva of the Bugger race with him as he travels from planet to planet as “Speaker for the Dead.” Card poses questions in a subtle manner that allows the reader to come to their own conclusion about how they want the future to turn out. Ender becomes a weapon for the adults of the novel, an experiment that had to be because only a child would unknowingly affect the downfall of an entire race.

The paradoxes of the novel spin around Ender. Ender fights to win, not to kill, and yet he does just that. He fought to defend himself on earth and in space to the point that he not only broke bones of his attackers, but also killed two attackers. The military never tells Ender directly what happened to the boys, so the effect is that Ender is still naïve and yet cynical because in his heart he knows. Called “a perfect juvenile power-fantasy for the age of computer games” (Pringle, 289.) ENDER’S GAME is a novel that starts out slow and builds with an intensity that draws the reluctant science fiction reader, like me, in. As for the “cynical composition” of the story, Pringles says that “Card tried to make amends in the expanded version and its sequels, making the hero into a genetic experiment who suffers terrible guilt after his genocidal act.”(Pringle, 289.)

Reference List:

Pringle, David. 1990. The Ultimate Guide to Science Fiction. New York: Pharos Books. 107.
Pringle, David. 1996. The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Science Fiction: The Definitive Illustrated Guide. North Dighton, MA: JG Press. 289.