the kindness of a child

[And Their Refinement of the Decline Stars of the Lid]

Warning: review is riddled with spoilers.

Book: Ender's Game Orson Scott Card 10/10
Amazing. Definitely deserves a perfect rating because it's become one of my favorite books. There were about 150 pages there in the middle that I just couldn't stop reading. When Ender started to pwn other armies in Battle School, he became the biggest badass I've ever encountered. I bet he could beat Harry in a game of Quidditch. I'm as big a Gryffindor fan as they come, but there's no denying Ender's brilliance.

The book is fantastic for so many reasons. It starts out with an eight page introduction written by Card six years after Ender's Game was first published. In the first paragraph he explains that this version, the "Author's Definitive Edition", has some minor changes to correct errors he made in the first printing, but nothing major has changed. But since the publishing company decided to make a big deal out of it and started printing hardcover copies, he says "there ought to be something new in it..." so they made him write an introduction. He says that the novel really needs no introduction, and it stands well enough on its own; he basically recommends that we just skip the intro altogether. You don't need to tell me twice. Moving on...

One of the biggest pet-peeves I have with the writing of some literature and movies is when a character completely changes something about themselves, and there's no discernible progression that leads them to this change. For example, in The Godfather the movie, Michael Corleone is disregarding his family's lifestyle as barbaric and horrible in one scene, and in the next he's taken over his father's position as the head of the family. In the book, you see that he struggles with the role that he's forced into long before he embraces it. I didn't like the movie, if you couldn't tell.

In Ender's Game, Ender takes such a believable path towards his greatness. Sure he was hand selected in the beginning as having one of the most brilliant minds of any child, but it still took him a long time to figure it out for himself. All along you could see hints of what he was capable of, but not until he led his own army in Battle School did his full brilliance truly blossom. In the first two chapters alone, we were quickly exposed to just how precise and calculative his fighting skills can be when he beat (subsequently we learn that he actually killed) Stilson, and also how passive and thoughtful he can be when others, such as his brother Peter, are attacking him. He was always acutely aware of the situations he was in, and was always able to act in such a way that would benefit him the most. Even when Graff and all the other adults were manipulating and isolating him, he always knew that they were doing that. It was always a conscious decision to go along with it.

I'll become exactly the tool you want me to be, said Ender silently, but at least I won't be fooled into it. I'll do it because I choose to, not because you tricked me, you sly bastard. pg 252

This brings me to one of the biggest questions I had throughout the whole book: did they succeed in breaking him down into a killer, or did he retain his empathy?

The ending clearly showed us that he truly remained empathetic, but there were times throughout that I wasn't quite sure if that would be the case. He didn't mind breaking off his relationships with other soldiers and those under his command as long as it was for the good of his army. Nothing mattered to him in life other than winning the games, which were just mock wars, an analog of killing. This intense focus on winning was a byproduct of Graff's manipulation, and clearly it was working. That's why I thought that Ender might very well become the cold blooded killer they needed. But ultimately, they knew that his inherent kindness would have kept him from winning the bugger war. He remained naive of what the Command School games actually were, and this allowed him to throw caution to the wind and beat the enemy at all costs. If he had know that he was sending human soldiers to their deaths, and (I think more importantly) was killing buggers, he might not have fought the way he did (if at all) and risked losing the war.

I just flashed myself with my bike light and now I can barely see the computer screen. Just so you know.

But as I think back, all throughout the book, whenever he did something to harm someone else, he always felt bad about it. Even when he would think about arguing with Bonzo (his first army commander that was horrible to Ender and therefore undeserving of his benevolence) in front of other soldiers, he would stop himself because he knew that it would make Bonzo look bad. After he killed Bonzo, both he and Stilson were in Ender's nightmares for years to come. Ender never wanted to harm either of them, but they honestly brought it upon themselves. This shows that even though he did have a killer's instinct (that little piece of Peter was alive in his), he knew better than to use it when it was not absolutely necessary. Near the end, Alai surprises Ender and Ender grabbed him with the intent of killing him:

"...I thought you were about to kill me, and I decided to kill you first. I guess I'm just a killer to the core. But I'd rather be alive than dead."
The laughed and agreed with him. Then Ender began to cry... pg 303

There seemed to be an obvious note of sarcasm in his voice (not that I could hear it, but you know what I'm saying) that suggested that Ender understood at that moment that any killing he did was completely out of his control.

After learning all of this, it comes as little surprise that Ender became reclusive when he learned about having killed billions of buggers. When Valentine asked him to move to the buggers' home world to start new colonies, he only agreed to so that he could research the creatures he had wiped out. He came to realize that they were not the savage and dangerous beasts that humans had portrayed them as (out of ignorance, really. They had no reason to think otherwise.). He eventually became determined to help revive the bugger species, and dubbed himelf Speaker of the Dead. I suppose I'll leave any discussion of that for if (when) I read the second book in the Ender saga (Speaker of the Dead).

It's really hard to believe that any of this was accomplished by a pre-teen, but I think that Orson Scott Card's dedication really clarifies everything:

For Geoffrey,
who makes me remember
how young and how old
children can be