Ender’s Game question

I think you are reaching. There are similarities between most books if one wants to find them. In the end the very nature of the programmes in the two books are so different, that this kind of similarity seems superficial to me.
Correct me if I am wrong as it has been a while since I read Ender's Game:
In one book the children are used to control and divide the population, to display the absolute power of the government over the people. The "game" is broadcasted all over the nation and people entering it are fully aware of what is going to happen.
In the other book, gifted children are used to, without their knowledge, fight a war against an alien species, which adults have proven incapable of overcomming. Until the end, the children are not really aware that they are doing something other than a simulation. They do not know that their actions had consequences. It is one of the things that makes this concept so fascinating and ingenious: the military decides that to win, the decision makers must not know that they hold life and death in their hands.

In Hunger Games children's innocence has been brutaly yanked away, not through participation, but already through the threat of participation.
In Ender's Game the innocene is preserved as much as possible, as it is the nature of children that it is needed, even while it is stripped away.

Aside from the fact that they both volunteer to undergo their tribulations in order to save a beloved sister, I never thought much about the similarities.

Yes, those themes are seen but there is more on the surface likeness too. Petra? Not a common name. Wolves wearing the faces of children killed in battle (computer-made likeness in both stories?) Enders Game and Enders Shadow are classics, writers are bound to steal from the best, as long as we as readers duly note this may or may not be by chance stolen thoughts.

I never saw the Harry/Ender parallel until now. Harry is also similar to Grimm's fairy tales, King Arthur, Star Wars and Dianna Wynne Jones. There are only so many ideas out there.

Mark wrote: "I recently re-read Enders Game and it struck me how similar a lot of the general themes were to The Hunger Games... (respectfully snipped)
...Does anyone else think Ender’s Game had a hand in the concept of Suzanne Collins’ series?"

I'm listening to an audio version of Ender's Game right now. The video game Ender often plays includes menacing wolves sporting the faces of children he knew. I'd say Collins' wolf muttations in Hunger Games are right on the line between homage and blatant rip off.

BAttle Royal, HG, Ender's Game, Divergent...anyone care to add to the list of semingly similar? :D

Oddly, having read both Ender's Game and Harry Potter, I think that OSC was reaching if he ripped into JK Rowling. HP was hardly the first story with an abused orphan becoming the main hero. That trope probably predates written literature.

No, I didn't find it similar to the Hunger Games. Maybe because I also read the next story in the Ender universe, Speaker for the Dead.

I did like both Ender's Game and the Hunger Games Trilogy.

Mark wrote: "I recently re-read Enders Game and it struck me how similar a lot of the general themes were to The Hunger Games.

1) Children selected to compete against one another.
2) Child Innocence lost.
3)..."

I agree, there are similarities, however, as a long time (20years) fan of Enders Game, I have to say HG is like Ender's Game, not the other way round. Small point but Ender's Game feels like the original to me. HG is a great series, and in many ways unique, I just have an irrational attachment to EG.

BTW, in the vein of similarities, when I first read Ender's Game, there was no such thing as the net and the anonymous postings of intellectuals. I have often thought that OSC was prescient in his writings.

I have to agree with Stavros. Also, Collins' said she got the idea from the mythology of Crete, the labyrinth, and the Minotaur.

I would say the Hunger Games is much more similar to Battle Royale than to Ender's Game, although even Battle Royale has a different premise.

Ender's Game is all about the ethics of giving children power of life and death, and even the ethics of war itself. Hunger Games is about freedom and the fight against oppression, tyranny, and media-immersion.

I found more similarity to the hero arc of Harry Potter: a young boy with special abilities who goes off to a special school under the pressure of having to save the world. Along his journey, Ender is haunted by dreams and faces bullying from jealous schoolmates. He is also used (tricked?) by his mentor in the similar “the end justify the means” way that Dumbledore never quite told Harry the truth about his purpose in life.

No. it only has game in the title.
Hunger games is written for puberty flush teenage women. enders game is a novel

It crossed my mind but it didn't stay as i kept reading they only similarity really is the children and Stavros explained it pretty well.

In my opinion it anybody who can, is going to use the govt, we all have our suspicions/questions about that.

Children in "games" has been a genre forever, and there will always be more. Books like the Quillian Games and the movie Battle Royale (which I will admit, I haven't seen) both predate The Hunger Games, but have many of those themes as well. Children fighting each other by the comission of a big evil government should get it's own catchy sub-genre title with the amount of books written about it :D. So, yes Ender's Game and The Hunger Games have a lot of similar themes. But there are 20 other books that also do, so it's not quite fair to only compare these two.

When I began reading Ender's Game, I connected the two as well. How the children are used and pitted against one another, etc. But, the two are different otherwise and I like each for their own qualities.

I can see the similarities you point out, but I think that those tend to be the themes for these types of books. Specifically targeting children because that is the audience you're hoping to appeal to. There may have been some influence between Ender's Game and Hunger Games but not enough to make a fuss about. Nice catch though.

There was a definite similarity in Ender's Game, that the Battleroom was kept under such tight control by the teachers that eventually it ceased to be effective for what it was designed to do. The same is true of the Hunger Games. When the participants realized that no matter what they did they would lose, they threw the rules out the window and ended up winning that way: Dragon army passing through the enemy gate before the battle is finished, and Katniss threatening to eat the nightlock rather than kill Peeta.

It never occurred to me before but you're right about the similarities. They do tend to be fairly common tropes though. Almost all of Heinlein's "juveniles" written in the 50's had at least a couple of those attributes.

I like Orson Scott Card ripping into JK Rowling for having Harry Potter be so similar to Ender's Game.

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