Book Review: Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
- Title: Ender’s Game
- Author: Orson Scott Card
- Published: New York: Tom Doherty Associates, LLC, 1994. Pages-349.
Preamble
This book was recommended to me several years ago and has been sitting on my shelf perhaps longer. I grew up reading lots of science-fiction and fantasy books. So, on a recent camping trip, I grabbed this copy and brought it along. I devoured it. It was like the old days. I am an early riser, usually five AM every day. So, there I was, reading in my camp chair, as the litany of birds serenaded me in the early morning hours, reading all about Ender. This book originally came out in 1985 while I was serving in the Navy. At the time, I was an avid Dungeon’s and Dragon’s player. In 1985 I was reading Dragonlance Chronicles and in the science-fiction genre, Armor by John Steakley.
After reading the book, I can understand the fascination accredited to it. As a side note, I have not watched the movie.
My Perspective
The story takes place in a futuristic earth setting in which mankind is threatened with a war against alien bugs. It is an us vs them mentality. Most of the book takes place in a military training school for gifted children. For some reason, it is the children who will be able to save the world. The three main characters are the children of one couple, the father a renounced Catholic and the mother a renounced Mormon. The oldest is Peter, a ruthless and manipulative boy who was passed over to be savior of the universe, Valentine, a middle child who attempts to bring compassion and hope into the story, and finally, Andrew, the main protagonist of the story. Andrew is called the Third child. In this future setting it is against the law to have more than two children. It is also looked at with disgrace to be a third child. The parents were given special dispensation to have Andrew. He goes by the nickname of Ender.
The story from here reminds me of listening to someone tell me the story of their character as they played in a role-playing game (RPG). Having been an avid gamer for decades and even ran my own game store for eleven years I am very familiar with this. This does not mean it is bad. No, that is just how it seems. Ender gains increased proficiency and acquires more skill and prestige as he overcomes obstacles to eventually save all of mankind. All while playing a game. He is only six years old when he starts Battleschool, and yet, he is very mature and intelligent. This is why I relate it to someone playing an RPG. The character, Ender, progresses through the story, but the player (the person playing the character in the RPG) is the same. I get this feeling with Ender. There is no Wilhelm Meister moment with a coming of age, no real growth, other than an increase in his ability to defeat the enemy.
Ender does experience some character growths. There is a friendship with Alai, which is deep bonding, but we don’t really experience it. I liken it to an Achilles and Patroclus bond, but I must admit that might be me reading more in to it than Card provides. But the story allows this. Perhaps that is why it will be read by different people and they will get something totally different out it. There are gaps that the reader can fill in with his own conception of what is going on.
The book is violent but not as violent as many others. I think what disturbs me is that this young boy, Ender, typically uses violence in such a hard, and final way to deal with bullying. True, it stops the bullying, but in a couple of those situations it is because he killed the bully. What message is this sending? It is a rough and very driven life that no one would want a child to go through. But we are led down the path that there is no other choice. This is the way it must be or all of humanity will be wiped out.
Meanwhile on Earth, the siblings, Peter and Valentine, start manipulating the political structure. In the guise of Locke and Demosthenes, with Peter the former and Valentine the latter, they impersonate adults on the world stage of political commentary. They purposely bring about a confrontation and rebellion so that Peter can take over the world. It is interesting the choice of names. That Peter would take the nom de plume of Locke is interesting. In the introduction, Card states, “Human beings may be miserable specimens, in the main, but we can learn, and, through learning, become decent people.”[1] This sounds like a Peter statement and something like Locke. Peter tells his sister Valentine that she will be Demosthenes. It is her job to create new philippics in order to fire up the people. She is very dismayed as her father takes a liking to the commentary that she wrote. In todays world, instead of when Card wrote this in 1985, it is even scarier to think of what Peter and Valentine did manipulating the world stage with social media and commentaries. Who are the forces behind the curtain today, what Wizard of Oz is pulling levers and manipulating smokes and mirrors to sway the beast called public opinion?
The computer game that Ender plays at Battleschool adds another dimension to the story. The idea of psychological manipulation using the game is one that should concern us all. We should be aware of it Ender was aware of it, and even though he was aware, it still influenced him. I think Card wrote this to show that even though we may be aware that we are being manipulated, it is difficult to resist.
“Ender didn’t go back to the fantasy game. But it lived in his dreams. He kept remembering how it felt to kill the snake, grinding it in, the way he tore the ear off that boy, the way he destroyed Stilson, the way he broke Bernard’s arm. And then to stand up, holding the corpse of his enemy, and find Peter’s face looking out at him from the mirror. This game knows too much about me. This game tells filthy lies. I am not Peter. I don’t have murder in my heart.
And then a worse fear, that he was a killer, only better at it than Peter ever was; that it was this very trait that pleased the teachers. It’s killers they need for the bugger wars. It’s people who can grind the enemy’s face into the dust and spatter their blood all over space.
Well, I’m your man. I’m the bloody bastard you wanted when you had me spawned. I’m your tool, and what difference does it make if I hate the part of me that you most need? What difference does it make that when the little serpents killed me in the game, I agreed with them, and was glad.”[2]
Graff is even straight-up honest with Ender in what he has in store for him.
“I thought you were my friend.” Despite himself, Ender’s voice trembled.
Graff looked puzzled. “Whatever gave you that idea, Ender?”
“Because you – ” Because you spoke nicely to me, and honestly. “You didn’t lie.”
“I won’t lie now, either,” said Graff. “My job isn’t to be friends. My job is to produce the best soldiers in the world. In the whole history of the world. We need a Napoleon. An Alexander. Except that Napoleon lost in the end, and Alexander flamed out and died young. We need a Julius Caesar, except that he made himself dictator, and died for it. My job is to produce such a creature, and all the men and women he’ll need to help him. Nowhere in that does it say I have to make friends with children.”[3]
The introduction by Card presented some very valuable insight into the book.
“Far more deeply rooted in my mind was my experience, five or six years earlier, of reading Bruce Catton’s three-volume Army of the Potomac. I remembered so well the stories of the commanders in that war – the struggle to find a Union general capable of using McClellan’s magnificent army to defeat Lee and Jackson and Stuart, and then, finally, Grant, who brought death to far too many of his soldiers, but also made their deaths mean something, by grinding away at Lee, keeping him from dancing and maneuvering out of reach.”[4]
This Civil War book had a definite influence in how Card looked at war and those that run it.
“I learned that history is shaped by the use of power, and that different people, leading the same army, with, therefore, approximately the same power, applied it so differently that the army seemed to change from a pack of noble fools at Fredericksburg to panicked cowards melting away at Chancellorsville, then to the grimly determined, stubborn soldiers who held the ridges at Gettysburg, and then, finally, to the disciplined, professional army that ground Lee to dust in Grant’s long campaign. It wasn’t the soldiers who changed. It was the leader. And even though I could not then have articulated what I understood of military leadership, I knew that I did understand it. I understood, at levels deeper than speech, how a great military leader imposes his will on his enemy, and makes his own army a willing extension of himself.”[5]
But is this really true? The soldiers do change, the leaders change, and what is most important, the relationship they have between them changes. A good leader has earned trust and respect from his soldiers. Depending on the situation, different measures may be used to gain those ends. The group experienced things together and grew together as an entity. The general is the head, but a head without a body can do nothing, and vice-versa. They do not truly follow the man, but a principle, some belief, even if they do not completely understand it, they know he does, and they are willing to exert their energy to accomplish this.
“I learned – from actors and from audiences – how to shape a scene, how to build tension, and – above all – the necessity of being harsh with your own material, excising or rewriting anything that doesn’t work. I learned to separate the story from the writing, probably the most important thing that any storyteller has to learn – that there are a thousand right ways to tell a story, and ten million wrong ones, and you’re a lot more likely to find one of the latter than the former your first time through the tale.”[6]
Card talks about the response to Ender’s Game:
“For one thing, the people that hated it really hated it. The attacks on the novel – and on me – were astonishing. Some of it I expected – I have a master’s degree in literature, and in writing Ender’s Game I deliberately avoided all the little literary games and gimmicks that make “fine” writing so impenetrable to the general audience. All the layers of meaning are there to be decoded, if you like to play the game of literary criticism – but if you don’t care to play that game, that fine with me. I designed Ender’s Game to be as clear and accessible as any story of mine could possibly be. My goal was that the reader wouldn’t have to be trained in literature or even in science fiction to receive the tale in its simplest, purest form. And, since a great many writers and critics have based their entire careers on the premise that anything that the general public can understand without mediation is worthless drivel, it is not surprising that they found my little novel to be despicable. If everybody came to agree that stories should be told this clearly, the professors of literature would be out of a job, and the writers of obscure, encoded fiction would be, not honored, but pitied for their impenetrability.”[7]
I dot agree with Card on these points. I would like to believe that he may have been exaggerating and perhaps naïve. But these are some harsh words and though one may ‘feel’ they are true at times, there is so many great authors out there that disprove this. The general public is not the only audience out there. We also have to have literature that stretches and flexes our vocabulary and our ideas. Now any author that writes just to be obtuse can be aggravating, however, I find that this is rarely the case.
“Why else do we read fiction, anyway? Not to be impressed by somebody’s dazzling language – or at least I hope that’s not our reason. I think that most of us, anyway, read these stories that we know are not “true” because we’re hungry for another kind of truth: The mythic truth about human nature in general, the particular truth about those life-communities that define our own identity, and the most specific truth of all: our own self-story. Fiction, because it is not about somebody who actually lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about ourself.”[8]
Card is discounting those that may read a book because of its language. Just because he does not, does not mean that nobody else does. He reaffirms here that he is purposely writing a book to be popular. That was his goal and he was successful. But those scholars seeking for truth know that the popularity contest is a fickle thing. Instead they look for the truth. Thoreau was very unpopular for his time as well as many other great writers. However, the message and the conversation and the search for truth is what drove them on.
“This is the essence of the transaction between storyteller and audience. The “true” story is not the one that exists in my mind; it is certainly not the written words on the bound paper that you hold in your hands. The story in my mind is nothing but a hope; the text of the story is the tool I created in order to try to make that hope a reality. The story itself, the true story, is the one that the audience members create in their minds, guided and shaped by my text, but the transformed, elucidated, expanded, edited, and clarified by their own experience, their own desires, their own hopes and fears.”[9]
A good storyteller, writer, poet, etc., is one who can take the ideas in their own head and articulate them in a medium (language) in such a way that the receiver of the information will be able to replicate it, as close as possible, to themselves. Thus, enabling a shared experience.
The book has many ethical dilemmas that will make the reader pause and think. This is a good thing. However, there is something that I can’t exactly put my finger on that disturbed me about the book. Is it a good book? That depends. It is exciting, well written, the narrative flows and the characters are believable, in the context of the world that Card presents. I enjoyed the book, it was very entertaining.
[1] Card, Orson Scott. Ender’s Game. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, LLC, 1994. Introduction xii.
[2] Ibid., 118-9.
[3] Ibid., 34.
[4] Ibid., xiii.
[5] Ibid., xiii-xiv.
[6] Ibid., xvi.
[7] Ibid., xviii-xix.
[8] Ibid., xxiv-xxv.
[9] Ibid., xxv.
