Ender’s Game
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I don't buy Ender's horror at the end.
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Agreed - It's definitely overplayed at best.One possibility is that while he's comfortable with attacking/defending against bugger armies, he is not comfortable with killing their non-military population (which he would probably assume exists - the fact that they don't is irrelevant at that point). That line is often drawn in real life - it's deemed ok to kill thousands of soldiers in war, but any collateral damage is seen as a big deal. Collateral damage to the point of genocide would be an atrocity from that viewpoint.
But bear in mind the difference between being a conqueror and a destroyer. He was prepared to defeat the Formics and destroy their armies, but he considered destruction of the race as a whole to be the ultimate evidence of his unsuitability as a leader. He recognized that he was being used beyond all reasonable limits and was demonstrating his refusal to cooperate any further. Then he discovers that his childish rebellion destroyed a species. Ender IS a flawed character. He is willing to go to great lengths to protect himself but does NOT understand the ramifications. He probably knew that his actions had the potential for lethality, but believed that he had the control and precision to make them merely deterring rather than fatal. His naivete is what makes his ultimate, catastrophic act of rebellion such a tragedy.
Most soldiers must draw some uncrossable line for themselves. They will kill soldiers but not civilians, or adults but not children, or men but not women. The lines may seem superficial or trivial to noncombatants, but they are all that separates the individual's self-concept as soldier from a self-concept as monster. To cross that line, even if it is artificial, is devastating.
That is to say, while he was training, he was prepared to win. He was not prepared to win absolutely.
M.R. wrote: "But bear in mind the difference between being a conqueror and a destroyer. He was prepared to defeat the Formics and destroy their armies, but he considered destruction of the race as a whole to be..."I was going to reply to this thread, but M.R. so perfectly summed up everything I was going to say (and more), that I have no need.
Simply this: Amen, sister. Preach on.
He's also a child... you're asking for a lot of emotional complexity out of a child. Yes, he's a genius but that is an intellectual level not an emotional level. Emotionally he's still a child. Often children do things and regret them immediately after because they did not appreciate the emotional ramifications prior.
SPOILER: I think most of it stem from the fact that he thought what he did was only a simulated test. Once he realized that what had happened was real, that his cut-throat and vicious attack actually killed an entire species coupled with the realization that they were attempting to communicate through a virtual game he used for amusement it struck him hard.I wasn't terribly keen on the ending either. As a consequence, I'm not reading the rest of the series. No sympathy for the devil, if you asked me.
On a conscious level Ender has no grasp of the consequences of his actions as he's formulating them. In a way all his victories are pyrrhic ones.
Allan J. wrote: "SPOILER: I think most of it stem from the fact that he thought what he did was only a simulated test. Once he realized that what had happened was real, that his cut-throat and vicious attack actual..."Allan that decision would be a mistake. the rest of the Saga is the actual journey of Ender, from boy hero to a reticent Nomad. The rest of the saga deals with much larger questions of not only Humanity's disposition towards alien species but also explores the blurred lines between Ramen and Varelse. Read it i would say. who knows, u might like it :)
It all comes down to First Blood. Stilton and Bonzo drew first blood (when it came to Ender), Formics didnt. He was merely following order and deceptive orders on top of that. its natural he would feel such remorse. Also i suspect that by the time Ender launched his final attack on the Formics world he was already being mind-probed by the Queen resulting in an unintended emphathy for the buggers being present in his mind. All in all i agree with Sam, ur asking for too much emotional complexity from a child.
Alphus wrote: "It all comes down to First Blood. Stilton and Bonzo drew first blood (when it came to Ender), Formics didnt. He was merely following order and deceptive orders on top of that. its natural he would ..."I disagree on this point. Stilson didn't draw blood first, nor did the boys who ambushed ender in the battle room, nor did Bonzo. Ender was never the aggressor, all of those other boys pushed Ender into a fight, but that does not distinguish them from the Formics.
Stilson pushed Ender. Ender decked him and then beat him harshly while he was down. The boys tried to gang rush him, but Ender is the one who bloodied them. Bonzo tried to ambush Ender in the shower, but it was only wrestling until Ender killed him with his headbutt to the face.
In all those cases the enemy called for a battle, but Ender escalated it to the extreme violence out of strategy.
And we are told the Formics came to our solar system, we did not seek them out. They invaded.
So I think that it is entirely consistent with the manner Ender handled his previous fights to judge his extermination of the Formica as logical and in line with his previous actions.
The only difference, and perhaps this is where the shock comes from, is that the deaths if Stilson and Bonzo were hidden from him so he did not have to confront the lethality of his choices. There's really no way to pretend that a TPK (total planet kill) would be less than lethal, so there you go, he has to face it.
The alien communication through the game thing bothered me to no end. I just don't understand how they would accomplish that, how they would know to focus on Ender and seemingly no one else, and why they would be so cryptic and weird about it.Trying to think about it from the Formic's position just creates too many plot holes for me.
They don't have language and yet a computer game is ALL LANGUAGE! So how can they hack a game to a very sophisticated level?
Makes no sense to me. I know they are telepathic, but why would that manifest itraelf only in a computer game? Why not the entire human fleet getting waking visions and feeeeelings about the Formics instead?
Christopher wrote: "The alien communication through the game thing bothered me to no end. I just don't understand how they would accomplish that, how they would know to focus on Ender and seemingly no one else, and w..."In Children of the Mind while visiting the Hive Queen at her bugger city on Lusitania, Ender and his companions are stranded in the tunnels, no one else seems to know where to go, but Ender somehow knows. he says its a fractal type pattern that is the basis of the Hive Queens mind and its the same pattern she builds her hives in (think bees and their hexagonal patttern). This shows that patterns play an important role in the Hive Queen's perception of things and she says so explicitly that the Computer at Battle School was all so ordered and proper that she had no problem figuring it out.
How did they hack it? Well my take on this is that the bridge (Jane) the Hive Queen keeps talking about can be viewed as a hack. She infiltrated the Computer system and made Jane from the programs within the system itself and got Jane to do the work for her (i.e. spying on Ender) how she did this is the tricky bit. you see we are talking about beings who routinely call Aiuas from the Outside so its a given that their mental abilities are quite phenomenal. Ender on his end was obsesseed with the Formics (much more than anyone else) so it would be easy to follow the trail of thoughts of herself to the source i.e. Ender. the rest of them were focused on their own training without any strong references to the Formics.
They didn't hack the game at all, and the reason they focused on Ender instead of anyone else was explained in the sequels.Ender was reaching out to them mentally (by trying desperately to understand them and empathise with them), so they reached back in return since that was how they naturally communicated with each other. They weren't able to communicate with him, but were able to listen to his thoughts. They saw what happened between him and the mind game (though they didn't actually alter that in any way), and copied that to lure him to the place they hid the queen's egg.
The place where it gets a bit ropey is Jane: supposedly they had to create a "philotic bridge" to connect themselves to Ender's foreign mind, using the same instinctive technique that they use to bring consciousness to their own young. The way they did it was by focusing on the thing Ender focused on: the mind game. That's why Jane was linked strongly to the mind game to begin with.
I haven't read the book, just the novella from which it grew. In the version I read Ender is much more innocent. I think the added plot lines, I do not remember him having a brother in my version, make for a more callous character. Additionally, he is under a great deal of pressure which he does not appreciate for 'just a game', so the big reveal and shock makes more sense.
Well considering his state of mind, I thought it was believable, he thought he was cheating and would get out of the program by blowing up the planet, he was so stressed and tired he wanted to fail. He deliberately breaks the rules in the belief that he would get to rest and sleep.I didn't by his tactic though, and why they needed a leader like Ender, when they could suicide a fleet to blow up a planet pretty easy.
Sam wrote: "He's also a child... you're asking for a lot of emotional complexity out of a child. Yes, he's a genius but that is an intellectual level not an emotional level. Emotionally he's still a child. ..."Agreed, but I still felt it a bit over dramatic.
Great answers, all. Perhaps part of the reason I found Ender's reaction a little over the top is because I never felt any pity for the Formics. I certainly didn't find cause to "love" them as Ender supposedly does.
Perhaps they are fleshed out more in later books, but we have very little to admire about them in Ender's Game. First, they are designed after insects which are easily the least sympathetic higher life forms on Earth. So there is little empathy going into it from outside the book.
I'd say Heinlein's aliens are likewise easy to loathe.
Second, we are told that the Formics attacked us first. Twice. So we're already on board against them.
Third, we see very few reasons to empathize with them at all in the book. Really the only outside force who questions their annihilation is a comment to Ender about him being sure he doesn't want to do anything that would bring reprisals.
Fourth, I think the Formic are presented as pretty dense. They don't realize that Humans are sentient? PSH.
Fifth, the insect breeding / life strategy really does incentivize killing the queens. All the other Formics are basically just drones. So there are really no meaningful casualties until Ender kills the queens on the planet.
Maybe these things make me unable to appreciate Ender as written. That he really loves his enemy.
Allan J. wrote: "SPOILER: I think most of it stem from the fact that he thought what he did was only a simulated test. Once he realized that what had happened was real, that his cut-throat and vicious attack actual..."I wasn't too keen on the ending either (or the whole book for that matter), but I did read the rest of them and I have to say they get much better! At least in my opinion, the second and third books are awesome. I suggest you give that little devil a bit of sympathy...and see where he takes you. ;-)
Christopher wrote: "Great answers, all. Perhaps part of the reason I found Ender's reaction a little over the top is because I never felt any pity for the Formics. I certainly didn't find cause to "love" them as En..."
Yeah they are fleshed out a lot in later books, and they are admirable in their own way. I think the point in the first book is that he has committed genocide unknowingly - regardless of how you feel about his opponents, that's not something you'd want on your conscience.
I think the force that should make you want to question their annihilation is the fact that they are clearly sentient. No concerted attempt is made to contact them, the humans simply lash out in response.
The reason for the formics not recognising human sentience (supposedly) is that humans are so alien to them. In their experience, all sentient beings communicate mind to mind, so to them all evidence pointed towards humans being non-sentient. In real life almost all complex life has been proven to be sentient (but that's explicitly not the case in OSC's books), yet we don't exactly treat them well ourselves!
I remember at some point (can't remember which book) someone pointing out that in all the battles until Ender's "final exam", the humans had only killed one sentient being. However, in the last of the Ender series, there are hints that the drones do actually have free will naturally, and it's taken from them by the queens. Occasionally there are "rogues" that the queens cannot control, so the issue of slavery might arise in the planned sequels.
Christopher wrote: "This discussion assumes you've read through the entire book. Major spoiler.We know Ender is a genius. We know Ender is an eager tactician. We know that he has a thirst for real-world tactics kno..."
I disagree that Ender is an eager tactician and has a thirst for real-world tactics as you say. He is a child that, from his perspective, is only doing what is required to avoid being put back into a position he inevitable found himself where his brother was concerned.
Further, in both instances where he killed the other students, he did not set out to kill them. Just to put them down hard enough to convince them not to continue down the path they were on. Yes, he underestimated how his response would effect them, but in both instances when he realized he had killed them it tore him up. It was no surprise to me that, in the end when he found out the the "exercises" and the final "test" were in fact real and that he, Ender Wiggin had utterly destroyed another sentient species, literally committing genocide, he was filled with horror.
So say you had been playing "games" and you blue up a planet and killed billions of creatures and made them extinct how would u feel not to mention killing tons of your guys like totally sacrificing them...
Locke wrote: "So say you had been playing "games" and you blue up a planet and killed billions of creatures and made them extinct how would u feel not to mention killing tons of your guys like totally sacrificing them..."Like crap times a few billion...
He was horrified for the same reason they didn't tell him it was real. If he had known it was lives being lost he would have used different tactics to try to save people. Plus the fact that those people never needed to die in the first place. Only mankind's weakness killed billions
I think sometimes we forget how Ender was under already a lot of stress, sleep depravation, growth, being far from Valentine and his family. you should also remember that he says that once you understand you enemy, you also love him. You should also remember he was growing reluctant to playing the game and following the rules. I think he didn't even believe in the objective completely.
It was said in the novel (and in the movie also) that Ender had to understand his enemy completely and know how he thinks in order to defeat him. So, in my opinion, he had a very very good understanding of the aliens' thought processes, esp. as the alien queen reached out and sort of invaded his thoughts, and thus he could relate to them and know that they were not totally evil. And, now he has the added horror of being like his brother Peter.
James wrote: "Perhaps part of the reason I found Ender's reaction a little over the top is because I never felt any pity for the Formics. In a lot of the sci-fi of the Cold War, aliens are substitutes for the ..."
I would call it anti-propaganda, actually. After all, if any message can be taken from Ender's Game, it's that even if we can't communicate, the Other remains human.
The Formics are not implacably evil; that's IF propaganda. They arrived, found scurrying little animals that they weren't able to identify as intelligent, and killed a few. It wasn't until humans demonstrated their willingness to kill queens that the Formics started to realize that the creatures they were killing were individually self-aware, not just drones controlled by a central mind that lay safe elsewhere. Then they retreated in shame and remorse and never came back. If anyone was implacable, it was the humans who chased the Formics back home.
The point of Ender's Game was never "The Other is evil," which was the heart of truly anti-communist stories. Especially when viewed in its place in the Ender Quintet, it's actually strongly anti-xenophobic.
I honestly think it's very believable. He's a genius, and he is adept at the game. He is a great tactician, and he takes joy in outwitting others.But, while knowing full well he was being trained to fight buggers, the reality only hit him toward the end. He was training to kill millions of sentient beings. Beings that gave no sign of attacking the humans again. He developed lots of scruples about the war, and began losing himself; starting to see little difference between himself and Peter.
In the end fight, he didn't even care about the game anymore. He just wanted to spite the authorities. He gave up, he didn't want any of it anymore. And then he found that his cheap tactic to to spite the admirals was actually the destruction of an entire species. The adults had tricked him into killing billions.
I can absolutely believe his grief and mental scarring over that situation. Absolutely.
You could have given a spoiler alert warning first, Alphus... :(
James wrote: "M.R. wrote: "They arrived, found scurrying little animals that they weren't able to identify as intelligent, and killed a few. It wasn't until humans demonstrated their willingness to kill queens t..."I don't remember. I'd have sworn it was in Ender's Game, toward the end. Miiiiiight have been Speaker for the Dead, though.
Ash wrote: "I honestly think it's very believable. He's a genius, and he is adept at the game. He is a great tactician, and he takes joy in outwitting others.But, while knowing full well he was being trained..."
Indeed. He just wanted to finish the whole "exam" just like the last one he had in battle school without noticing that the whole process was the battle itself. Again, he was used.
[Oh the feels]
Being trained for war is not the same thing as going to war. The military has a lot of people being trained to defend their country. But in reality, going to actually fight and pull that trigger is a whole new beast.Ender, as a child, played games and trained with 'simulations'. When he found out that he had actually killed, not just a few, but a whole species...
Post Traumatic Stress at its fullest.
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We know Ender is a genius. We know Ender is an eager tactician. We know that he has a thirst for real-world tactics known to effectively kill the Formics.
So why is he so fragile and remorseful when he discovers, at the very end, that his many simulated battles were real. That when he sacrificed units in the "Game" they died in real life and that his ultimate tactic to end the war by destroying the Formic home world was somehow a step too far for him?
We see several times that Ender, despite not wanting to be a "killer" like what he thinks his older brother is, uses deadly force to protect himself. He kills two boys in self defense, even though the actuality of their death is hidden from him. He KNOWS that what he does has that possibility and we never see him, despite his providing much justification for that strategy, suggesting that he should behave differently in his own life in protection of himself.
And we know that while the games are "just games" that Ender is fully aware that the purpose of those games is to kill Formics and that any strategy he employs will cost human lives. He KNOWS this is a reality. This is not a double-blind situation even though he is kept partially in the dark.
I don't find it credible that Ender, in being a strategic genus, in over-and-over again being willing to sacrifice himself or his team to achieve the goals, in being perfectly willing to employ violence to protect himself with preventive defense and disproportionate response tactics, would allow himself to waste time and learn bad or ineffective behaviors in "practice" for the "real thing" which is what is is doing during all those exercises and games, that would be entirely ineffective in actual warfare because he'd suddenly behave differently if the enemy were real and the his forces had to pay with real lives for his strategy.
Really, any kid who can justify the attacks he makes on the bullies should have no issues with the revelation that what he's done at the end is actual war.
Frankly, it makes the otherwise unsympathetic characters who are manipulating Ender completely justified in their actions. If he is mentally unable to handle it, it's worth sacrificing his sanity to pay for the security of ending the Formics.