Orson Scott Card’s science fiction
novel, Ender’s Game, could just as easily been titled “The Chosen One.” Originally published in 1977, it tells the
story of a young boy who has been created and picked out by the government to
save the world from aliens known as “buggers.”
The
protagonist of the novel is Ender Wiggin.
He, along with his brother Peter and sister Valentine, have been
identified by the government as being extremely intelligent children with the
ability to save the world from the buggers.
However, both Peter and Valentine are deemed to have fatal flaws. Valentine was determined to be too “conciliatory”
and “empathetic,” while Peter has the soul of a jackal” (Card 228). Ender though was nearly perfect. Colonel Graff, who was supposed to locate and
train “the one” said this of Ender, “I’ve watched through his eyes. I’ve listened through his ears, and I tell
you he’s the one. Or at least as close
as we’re going to get” (1). Graff adds
though that Ender does have one flaw that they will have to solve. He is “too malleable. Too willing to submerge himself in someone’s
else’s will” (1). Graff says that the
solution to this problem is to completely isolate Ender and “to surround him with
enemies all the time so he will no longer rely on anyone other than himself" (1).
Ender is
six-years old when he is taken from earth and sent to train at the Battle
School on a space station. The purpose
of the Battle School is to train chosen children to become commanders in the
next war against the buggers. Ender is
isolated and made miserable at the Battle School His studies consist mostly of training in and
having battles in the battle room, which has no gravity. From the beginning, Ender proved his
leadership and strategic abilities. “I’m
very good at that,” he thought to himself.
Undertstanding how other people think” (238). By the end of his four years at the Battle
School, Ender proved to be the most outstanding student they’d ever had. In his time as a commander, he never lost a
battle.
At
ten-years old, Ender is sent to train at the Command School on planet
Eros. No one is supposed to go to the
Command School until they are sixteen-years old, but Ender is judged to be
ready. There, Ender is again isolated
and kept from others. At the Command
School, he trains on a video game known as the simulator. First, he starts by controlling one
ship. By the end of his training he is
commanding a fleet. A former commander and
war hero, Mazur Rackham, who defeated the buggers previously, is brought in to
train him.
Many things
have been happening back on earth while Ender is training in space. On earth, there are three large governments,
the Americans, the Hegemon, and the Warsaw Pact, that have joined together in
an international alliance ever since the first bugger war. However, this stability is breaking
down. Peter notices this. He tells his sister, “things are coming to a
head. I’ve been tracking troop movements
in Russia… they’re getting ready for war.
Land war” (125). He adds that the
Russians must know that “one way or another, the bugger war is about to be
over… They’re getting ready for the war after the war” (126). Peter believes that the coming period of instability
provides an opening for him. He would
like to rule the world and this is the perfect time to come to power. To do this, he needs not an army, but ideas
and words. He tells Valentine:
Everyone thinks that Hitler got to power because of his armies, because they were willing to kill, and that’s partly true, because in the real world power is always built on the threat of death and dishonor. But mostly he got to power on words, on the right words at the right time (131).
Back on
Eros, Ender is still training on the simulator.
At eleven years old, he is ready for his final examination. He takes the examination and completely
destroys all of the buggers, including the queens on the home planet. When it is over, he is told that:
Ender, for the past few months you have been the battle commander for our fleets. This was the Third Invasion. There were no games. The battles were real, and the only enemy you fought were the buggers (296)
Ender is very upset to find out what he has done, that he
has killed an entire civilization. He
yells at Mazer,
I didn’t want to kill them all. I didn’t want to kill anybody! I’m not a killer. You didn’t want me, you bastards, you wanted Peter, but you made me do it, you tricked me into it (297-298).
The book, which is a part of a
series, ends with Peter becoming the Hegemon on earth. Ender
cannot go back there because Peter would kill him. His sister Valentine has fled earth and come to
Eros. Together, they go off to start a
new colony on a new planet. On this plant Ender eventually goes off to explore new territory for another colony and while exploring he stumbles on a place that he has seen before. He finds the village made from the Giant's bones that he saw in the game and follows the path that he took in the game to the same castle that he went to before, then climbed the tower he climbed in the game and entered the same room that was from the simulation on the pad. Ender walks over to the mirror that he looked in at in the game, but instead of Peter's reflection he finds a bugger queen egg that tells him about the buggers' history and how they were not aware that the humans were intelligent and when they found out it was too late. The egg adds that the buggers forgive them for killing them and it tells him that if he is willing, Ender should take the egg to a place that meets its needs so that the species will not have to die out.
