Ender's Game and the Turmoil of Youth and War

Ender’s Game and the Turmoil of Youth and War

“In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.”
--Andrew “Ender” Wiggin

Description

Ender’s Game is a story by Orson Scott Card about Andrew “Ender” Wiggin who attends Battle School with the rest of Earth’s brightest children, where he is taught to fight the “buggers” and how to lead an army. The Battle School is designed to test the children’s ability to lead in order to defend Earth if the buggers attack again. Slowly but surely, Ender proves himself a competent leader, despite the obstacles stacked against him. He eventually gets control of his own army, Dragon Army, made up of other recruits. He leads Dragon on to become the top army at the Battle School. Soon after, he is taken to Eros to Command School, where he meets Mazer Rackham. Ender is chosen to lead a simulation mission against the buggers’ homeworld. During which, he sacrifices an entire ship full of people in order to complete the mission and destroy the planet of the buggers. After he wins, Ender learns that it was not a simulation, that those soldiers actually died, and the buggers were actually all killed. Ender is immediately filled with regret and runs away from the school. Beyond the school, he meets potentially the last bugger and learns that he can communicate with it. He makes it his mission to try to save whatever is left of the buggers.

Explanation

I chose this text for the same reason that many of my colleagues, it is a coming of age, of sorts, story. Beyond that, however, it is a story that deals with giant, looming, complicated, sometimes un-understandable ideas—especially for middle and high school students—in a way that is, at the very least, approachable, if not understandable. A student can pick up Ender’s Game, read through it, and have another facet to understand genocide or government corruption or questioning authority or revolution or any of the many other themes and concepts portrayed in this book. Despite Card’s best efforts, these ideas in Ender’s Game are not perfectly understandable, and no one would expect them to be; they are very difficult ideas to grapple with, but Orson Scott Card emulates them in an approachable way that, with the right resources, a student could begin to understand them.

Teaching Ideas

While I would love to teach Orson Scott Card and the Enderverse as a unit, and in retrospect, should have come up with some way to do so for my Lit Plan. It would be a fairly difficult series to teach as a unit. Now a more adept teacher—or myself, if given enough time—could come up with a brilliant way to integrate Ender’s Game into their curriculum, at the time of writing this I am not sure what that way would be. That being said, Ender’s Game or any of the several other books in the series would make an excellent book report for an individual or as a group project.

Challenge

One of the major challenges of Ender’s Game is simply the content. As mentioned previously, Ender’s Game deals with government corruption and deceit, with war and violence, and with the genocide of an entire sentient species. It is not especially graphic or violent inherently, but some parents or faculty may be apprehensive to the idea of teaching with the sensitive nature of the concept of genocide. Furthermore, the conclusion of the novel has Ender abandon his people, defying his government, and in essence, start a revolution of sorts. Defying the government and starting revolutions might be considered controversial to some parents.

Important Information for Students

In regards to the quote at the beginning, despite the numerous negative aspects of the story, Ender is focused on pacifism and compassion throughout the entirety of the novel. Despite being in a war school, he does not fight with the other students (save for one example) outside of the giant laser tag games that the school puts on. Ender is the shining

Other Tidbits

It is worth noting that Orson Scott Card is the only author to win both the Nebula Award and the Hugo Award for best novel two years in a row. Ender’s Game won the Hugo Award for best novel in 1985 and the Nebula Award for best novel in 1986, and Speaker for the Dead, the sequel, won the Hugo in 1987 and the Nebula in 1986. Ender’s Game also won Margaret Edwards award for its long-term effect on science fiction in 2008.
Also, check out this ultra-condensed summary by David J. Parker and Samuel Stoddard (which can be found at http://www.rinkworks.com/bookaminute/b/card.endersgame.shtml):
Ender
The government let my parents conceive me because they hope to mold me into the ultimate military commander.
Government
Ender, become the ultimate military commander and go defeat the buggers.
(He does.)
Ender
Horror. I'm only nine years old, and I have already eradicated an entire species. I thought it was a game, but it was for real. I will fret about this in the sequels.

THE END

And check out this image that explains the timeline of Ender’s Game, and its prequels and sequels (which can be found at https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ender%27s_Game_series#/media/File:Enderverse.png):



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