This book is set in the future and is about a six-year-old
genius named Ender Wiggin. Each chapter
is framed with a discussion between government officials who believe that Ender
might be the Earth’s only hope for the presumed second war with the buggers, an
alien species that invaded Earth years before the book begins. After some tests, Ender is invited to Battle
School, a specialized institution located in space designed to train commanders
for the military. Ender’s older,
power-hungry brother Peter is jealous, but Ender accepts, and leaves behind his
life and family on Earth. Mostly he
misses his sister Valentine.
At Battle School, Ender is bullied, but not for long. Quickly he distinguishes himself as a bold
decision maker (by the end, he kills two boys who threaten his life). Day after day, Ender and the rest of the boys
are put through battle simulations and skirmishes against each other. They fight in zero gravity zones with
non-lethal laser guns that freeze bodies with direct hits. All the while, government officials observe
the boys and make decisions about who deserves higher-level training. Ender’s novel insights and strategic
brilliance win him a spot in command school, where he is told that he will
become trained to one day lead an army against the buggers.
Spoiler alert: In command school, Ender is put through nearly
impossible and treacherous simulations where he is continuously pushed to his
limits. Despite that Ender has his
favorite and most competent friends operating under his command, they are all very
nearly defeated. Some want to quit. In the end, however, during the last and most
difficult challenge (Ender and his battalion are completely out-numbered and surrounded
by thousands of bugger ships), Ender decides to use a special weapon to blow up
the entire bugger planet. Just after he
wins the simulation, Ender discovers that it was no simulation at all; he was
actually waging the second on the buggers all along.
Another major component of the story is that Ender somehow comes into contact with the buggers telepathically and becomes aware that they were at war in part because they didn't understand each other and didn't realize that the other was in fact a conscious and intelligent form of life.
Ender's Game is the book I have absolutely enjoyed reading the most out of all the books (for book pages or assigned texts) I have read this semester. This doesn’t mean that it was necessarily the best book, or the most important book, or the book I think other people should read, though I do recommend it quite a bit. It’s simply one that I was enthralled with and couldn’t put down. It’s my kind of book.
My wife and I stayed in a tiny cabin for two nights over spring break somewhere in the mountains near Leadville. We had a lot of free time, and I decided to bring Ender’s Game. I’m glad I did, because now I associate that book with that experience, and that experience with that book. There’s nothing like finally being able to read without distractions. It’s like that Twilight Zone “Alone at Last,” where all the man wants to do is read his books when everyone in his life keeps him from doing so, and then he survives a nuclear holocaust because he was reading in the bank safe on his lunch break. The first thing he does is go to the library and stack up all the books he wants to read, and he does so (but then his glasses break and he can’t read – it’s the Twilight Zone after all).
I do actually think Ender’s Game is important for a few reasons. For one, the book is primarily about the manipulation of a child by adults in a position of authority. This raises not only important moral questions, but also practical questions about whether and where this happens in our society (it’s not so analogous to the book, but the first thing that comes to mind is Toddlers and Tiaras the TV show about mothers who dress up their toddlers for pageant shows). Perhaps this could make for an interesting class discussion on how students feel that adults in their life manipulate them.
Secondly, Ender’s Game is one of the first science fiction stories I’ve read that imagines alien life as distinctly non-humanoid. If you think about Star Trek, for example, all of the aliens are roughly humanlike – they are morphologically similar in that they are symmetrical, bipedal, have hands, eyes, noses, mouths, etc. And they all roughly communicate in the same way, with vocal cords (though there are a few telepathic exceptions). This is always what made Star Trek somewhat unbelievable, because the aliens are so patently drawn from human qualities (Vulcans are more logical humans, Klingons are more warlike humans, Ferengi are more greedy humans, etc.)
But in Ender’s Game, the buggers are so not like humans that both the humans and the buggers think that neither is even conscious or aware of the other. The buggers have a completely different type of communication; in reality, they have something more like one mind, which is composed of the hive. This is part of the point of the book, i.e. that we may not recognize intelligent life when we see it. But this also stretches the imagination, and makes you think about even other humans who are foreign and how they might see and live in the world differently than we do. So, Ender’s Game might make for an interesting way to talk about other cultures, misunderstandings, the impossibility of perfect translations, and xenophobia.
Despite that Ender’s Game has numerous virtues, and that I personally liked it a lot, I’m not positive it would make the best book for an entire class, in part because it’s mostly science fiction (which not everyone enjoys), and in part because there are so many other books that we can teach. But I will definitely keep a few copies in my room for students to check out.
Ender's Game is the book I have absolutely enjoyed reading the most out of all the books (for book pages or assigned texts) I have read this semester. This doesn’t mean that it was necessarily the best book, or the most important book, or the book I think other people should read, though I do recommend it quite a bit. It’s simply one that I was enthralled with and couldn’t put down. It’s my kind of book.
My wife and I stayed in a tiny cabin for two nights over spring break somewhere in the mountains near Leadville. We had a lot of free time, and I decided to bring Ender’s Game. I’m glad I did, because now I associate that book with that experience, and that experience with that book. There’s nothing like finally being able to read without distractions. It’s like that Twilight Zone “Alone at Last,” where all the man wants to do is read his books when everyone in his life keeps him from doing so, and then he survives a nuclear holocaust because he was reading in the bank safe on his lunch break. The first thing he does is go to the library and stack up all the books he wants to read, and he does so (but then his glasses break and he can’t read – it’s the Twilight Zone after all).
I do actually think Ender’s Game is important for a few reasons. For one, the book is primarily about the manipulation of a child by adults in a position of authority. This raises not only important moral questions, but also practical questions about whether and where this happens in our society (it’s not so analogous to the book, but the first thing that comes to mind is Toddlers and Tiaras the TV show about mothers who dress up their toddlers for pageant shows). Perhaps this could make for an interesting class discussion on how students feel that adults in their life manipulate them.
Secondly, Ender’s Game is one of the first science fiction stories I’ve read that imagines alien life as distinctly non-humanoid. If you think about Star Trek, for example, all of the aliens are roughly humanlike – they are morphologically similar in that they are symmetrical, bipedal, have hands, eyes, noses, mouths, etc. And they all roughly communicate in the same way, with vocal cords (though there are a few telepathic exceptions). This is always what made Star Trek somewhat unbelievable, because the aliens are so patently drawn from human qualities (Vulcans are more logical humans, Klingons are more warlike humans, Ferengi are more greedy humans, etc.)
But in Ender’s Game, the buggers are so not like humans that both the humans and the buggers think that neither is even conscious or aware of the other. The buggers have a completely different type of communication; in reality, they have something more like one mind, which is composed of the hive. This is part of the point of the book, i.e. that we may not recognize intelligent life when we see it. But this also stretches the imagination, and makes you think about even other humans who are foreign and how they might see and live in the world differently than we do. So, Ender’s Game might make for an interesting way to talk about other cultures, misunderstandings, the impossibility of perfect translations, and xenophobia.
Despite that Ender’s Game has numerous virtues, and that I personally liked it a lot, I’m not positive it would make the best book for an entire class, in part because it’s mostly science fiction (which not everyone enjoys), and in part because there are so many other books that we can teach. But I will definitely keep a few copies in my room for students to check out.
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