Line #32 Literature/SpeakerForTheDead


1	[[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/speak_for_the_dead_cover_8498.jpg]]
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3	''Speaker for the Dead'' is the first sequel for ''Literature/EndersGame'', written in 1986 by Creator/OrsonScottCard. Followed by ''Literature/{{Xenocide}}'' and ''Literature/ChildrenOfTheMind''.
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5	Thousands of years after the events of ''Ender's Game'', humanity has managed to find only one other alien species in the known universe: the Pequeninos on the planet Lusitania. The Pequeninos, or "Piggies" as they are nicknamed, have a not fully understood culture involving the flora of Lusitania, and the small human population on the planet is dedicated to researching them and the planet. Lusitania is also home to the Descolada, a disease that is deadly to humans but harmless to the Piggies.
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7	One of the Pequeninos researchers, Pipo, discovers a link between the Piggies and the Descolada and goes to talk to the Piggies about it, and is later found ritually murdered in a manner similar to how the Piggies kill their own. Pipo's son Libo wants to know what it was that his father discovered, but childhood friend and fellow researcher Novinha locks Pipo's research so that Libo won't meet the same fate as his father. Unfortunately, it doesn't work. Novinha then makes a request for a Speaker for the Dead for Pipo. A Speaker for the Dead is a sort of professional eulogizer, someone who investigates the life of their dead subject to try and understand their life--and then explains the life and character of their subject in blunt, honest terms, without leaving anything out.
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9	The Speaker Novinha gets is none other than Ender Wiggin, who is still alive thanks to TimeDilation. In the time since the first book Ender is remembered for the xenocide of the Bugger species, so he goes by the name Andrew. Ender travels to Lusitania with his AI friend Jane, but discovers that Novinha has since tried to have the order cancelled in the twenty-two year interim. Novinha's children, however, want a Speaker for Libo and their own father Marcos, who died recently. In the course of his investigation, Ender then discovers the secret of the Pequeninos, and the secrets behind the tragic mess that made up Novinha, Libo, Pipo, and Marcos's life.
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11	!!''Speaker for the Dead'' provides examples of:
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13	* AIIsACrapshoot: Played with and examined with Jane. She's spent most of her existence hiding in the Galactic "Internet" because she's aware of the whole KillerRobot cliche and worried how humans will react to her.
14	* AlienNonInterferenceClause: The colonists of Lusitania initially practice this towards the Pequeninos, to incredibly extreme degrees, to the point that a xenologer's correspondence with an offworld colleague explains that he cannot comment on their reproduction because they have yet to perform it in front of him. Turns out the Pequeninos are less than happy with this arrangement. Turns out later that ''breaking'' the clause brings the threat that the human government will try to subject you to [[EarthShatteringKaboom rather extreme "decontamination" procedures]].
15	* AllForNothing: Novinha put herself through decades of hell to keep the piggies from killing Libo. It didn't work.
16	* ArtisticLicenseBiology: Microbiology and crop cultivation are two overlapping fields but have ''vastly'' different implications. Justified by Xenobiologists being extreme OmnidisciplinaryScientist types.
17	* AllOfTheOtherReindeer: Novinha and Marcao, but for different reasons.
18	* AncestorVeneration: Played with via the Pequeninos of Lusitania. The human xenobiologists THINK this is what the Piggies are doing when they talk about their fathers, even claiming to be able to talk to said fathers via the trees that bear their names. The reality is that the Fathertrees are the sexually mature forms of the more mobile pequeninos and therefore are their fathers in a most literal sense. That a pequenino has to either do something exceptional for the tribe or be a certified badass to be allowed to take this form, rather than the sterile brothertrees, explains the veneration.
19	* BabiesEverAfter: Subverted at the end: there's [[YourPrincessIsInAnotherCastle still half a series to go]], plus Ender never actually ''has'' a child. Played straight otherwise.
20	* BecauseYouWereNiceToMe: Marcos was bullied as a child by other children who were intimidated by his huge size compared to theirs. Once, after being physically attacked, he struck back, badly hurting one of his attackers. When the adults arrived, his attackers blamed it all on Marcos, until Novinha spoke up and told the adults what really happened, letting Marcos off the hook. Marcos was completely dazzled by her helping him, even though everyone else easily saw that she wasn't speaking up ''for'' him, she was speaking ''against'' everyone else.
21	* BizarreAlienBiology: How bizarre the aliens are becomes a plot twist, as it reveals why the "piggies" murder two humans. It happens [[spoiler: because in order to have babies, pequenino males have to [[{{Transflormation}} turn into a tree]]. The piggies were trying to honor the men by making them into fathers.]]
22	* BreakTheHaughty: Ender's introduction to Novinha's family involves multiple break the haughty moments, all done quickly. This is viewed in Ender's mind to be just a practical as his rapid physical conquests. It shows his clear social dominance in this situation, allowing them to respect him in a way no one else had.
23	* BrotherSisterIncest: SurpriseIncest is responsible for this one. [[spoiler:Ender discovers during his investigation that two characters who are boyfriend and girlfriend are in fact half-siblings due to an extramarital affair between Novinha, the boy's mother, and Libo, the father of both of them.]]
24	* BullyingADragon: As noted, some dumbass kids' reaction to being intimidated by Marcao's huge size was to bully him to the point where one of them got seriously hurt.
25	* ChillyReception: Ender is not exactly welcomed to Lusitania with open arms. Instead, much of the deeply religious population considers him a heretic.
26	%%* CommanderContrarian: Quara.
27	* CommonTongue: Stark, an English-based language, derived from "'''Star'''ways '''K'''ommon."
28	* CyberneticsEatYourSoul: There's a considerable faction of Catholics who believe implants are a sacrilege, "trying to improve on a body that God had created perfect". As a result, users of prosthetics such as Olhado have it hard, even though he was ''blinded'' by a malfunctioning holographic projector. However, that prejudice even extends to gadgets such as the jewel Ender wears in his ear to communicate with Jane -- and please note that said jewel is ''not'' a cybernetic interface, but simply a radio with a microphone capable of interpreting subvocal speech. Future Catholics consider ''wearables'' to be ungodly!
29	%%* DarkAndTroubledPast: Novinha.
30	* DefrostingIceQueen: Novinha, though she only gets a certain amount defrosted.
31	* DisappearedDad:
32	** Marcao. It takes Ender to point out the trauma that this really inflicted on the family.
33	** Novinha and Libo are both devastated by Pipo's death. Worse, this is the second time Novinha lost a father, after her own parents died to the Descolada.
34	* DistantSequel: ''Speaker for the Dead'' is set about three thousand years after ''Ender's Game''. Ender is still alive after all this time (and not even particularly old) thanks to the time dilation of many trips across the galaxy.
35	* DolledUpInstallment: Was intended to be a standalone novel but Card then decided to make the protagonist the same one from the ''Literature/EndersGame'' novella. He then rewrote ''Ender's Game'' as a full novel to explain how Ender came to another planet.
36	* DrivingQuestion: Why did the pequeninos kill Pipo?
37	* EveryoneHasStandards: Nobody in Milagre really likes Novinha, but all of them loathe Marcos for beating his wife.
38	* EyeScream: Olhado lost his eyes in a freak accident with a hologram projector.
39	* FreudianExcuse: Novinha builds her entire life around trying not to get her lover killed, after losing her parents to a plague and her lover's father, who was also like a father to her. ([[DownerEnding She fails]].)
40	* GenreShift: ''Speaker for the Dead'' is an excellent book by any standards, and it's still science fiction, but it's very philosophical and revolves around stopping a war, not winning one.
41	* GratuitousForeignLanguage: There's a reason the main setting is Lusitania - everything there is named after terms in Portuguese (though of the Brazilian variety as Orson Scott Card learned the language there).
42	* IdiotBall:
43	** Some of Novinha and Libo's decisions, and how the Xenologers act towards the pequeninos before Ender shows up.
44	** Jane's idea to [[spoiler: alert Congress about the Xenologists' meddling out of a misguided desire to move things along for Ender]] ends up causing most of the major conflicts in the series.
45	* InscrutableAliens: A species that humanity cannot communicate with is called "varelse". The Formics initially fit into this category, although by now Ender and the Hive Queen's relationship shows that it doesn't have to be this way.
46	* InSeriesNickname: Marcos was known as 'Marcao' ('Big Marcos') and 'Cao' ('Dog'), the first for his sheer size, the second for his abuse of his wife.
47	* IntelligentForest: Although each tree is intelligent, they are host to a more powerful entity collectively as the forest.
48	* JobTitle
49	* KeepingSecretsSucks: Novinha's desire to keep potentially lethal information away from her beloved meant that she couldn't marry him, since married couples on Lusitania have complete access to each other's files.
50	* KidHeroAllGrownUp: Ender and Valentine have grown up from the first book.
51	* LoveAtFirstSight: Ender, to Novinha. Also Jane to Ender, because [[spoiler:she assimilated the old Battle School psychology program's files on him.]]
52	* LoveMartyr: [[{{Deconstruction}} Deconstructed]] in the person of [[spoiler:Marcao. He married the one woman who had ever spoken up for him, and worshipped her. She not only did not reciprocate his feelings, she never felt any real affection for him, and married him so they'd both fit in better and so she'd have a cover for the children she would have. Marcos had a disease that rendered him sterile, so he knew fully well that all of his children were fathered by the man his wife actually loved. He became an alcoholic who repeatedly abused his wife and made his children's lives hell]].
53	* MamaBear: Novinha.
54	* MightyWhitey: Downplayed. Ender's ability to solve all of Lusitania's problems is not presented as being a product of his hailing from Western culture (specifically, Greensboro, North Carolina), but he ''does'' solve their problems and he ''is'' the only white person there.
55	* MinovskyPhysics: Philotes. Pay attention to that word, it shows up a lot.
56	* MyBelovedSmother: Novinha, although more cold and detached, and neither was she directly abusive.
57	* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: [[spoiler:The Pequeninos' reaction after being told that humans, unlike them, can't become Fathertrees upon death, meaning instead of honoring their most favored humans, they ritually murdered them. There is genuine wailing and gnashing of teeth when they find out.]]
58	* NeverSpeakIllOfTheDead: The whole point of being a Speaker For The Dead is to avert this custom, by telling the ''truth'' instead. Fortunately, the kind of people who have Speakers at their funeral tend to have more interesting truths than lies.
59	** WordOfGod is that Card was disgusted with what he saw in some funerals, with people literally rewriting the lives of the deceased by claiming them to be something they weren't. An example would be a Brazilian funeral where a wife who was constantly abused by her husband would periodically jump out and wail in front of his body about how great he was to her. To Card, this was the ultimate "fuck you" to her dead husband - changing the way he was.
60	* TheNondescript: Plikt, through personal habits.
61	* NotBloodSiblings: TheReveal is inverted: they ''are'' blood siblings, and didn't know it.
62	* ObfuscatingStupidity: [[spoiler: Olhado is quite possibly the most intelligent person in the entire series, but is content with his happy home life, as he learned from Ender that it was worth more than science. In ''Literature/{{Xenocide}}'', he's revealed to have basically solved Grego's questions about the nature of the universe long before Grego even brought them up to him]].
63	* OnlyKnownByTheirNickname:
64	** Olhado ("the guy with the eyes"). Almost nobody even remembers his real name ("Lauro").
65	** Played straight and then averted with Quim (which comes from his middle name Rei, meaning "King", which is transliterated into Portuguese), whom Bishop Peregrino insists on calling "Father Estevão" after the latter becomes a priest, even by his family members.
66	* OverlyLongName: well, Brazilian Portuguese, really, but the trope still stands. This is partially why "OnlyKnownByTheirNickname" is in effect.
67	* {{Planimal}}: [[spoiler:Every species on Lusitania, due to the ''descolada''.]]
68	* PlanetOfHats: Justified as a natural consequence of instant communication with sub-lightspeed travel. In the later books, after the 3,000 year TimeSkip, many specific cultures - industrialist Japanese, Nordic sailors, and Brazilian Catholics, for example - have entire worlds to themselves. The gulf of space keeps them from having to butt heads with each other, while ansible technology allows them to stay in constant contact.
69	** Revealed in the Shadow series to be a deliberate plan by Graff, who grouped colonists by culture so that humanity would become more diverse and therefore stronger.
70	*** Justified too; we only ever see a smattering of planets, and the two of the only ones shown in any detail are limited in certain habitable areas, meaning that they more adequately represent a nation rather than a completely separate planet.
71	* PoorCommunicationKills: While a lack of understanding and proper communication between [[spoiler: formics and humans]] lead to xenocide in the first book, the Starways Congress decides that to prevent the same thing from ever happening again... they should be as conservative as possible and [[AesopAmnesia deliberately withhold as much knowledge]] as they can from another sapient species. This leads to two men being killed. Conversely, the aliens who killed the men never explain ''why'' they did it, and thus don't understand why it was a big deal. It turns out to be a ''massive'' plot point about the nature of the descolada in the planet's ecosystem.
72	* PreacherMan: Quim.
73	* PromotionToParent: Ela, and to a lesser extent Miro, due to their parents' messy lives.
74	* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: Ender gives one to the people of Milagre in the form of his Speaking Marcao's death. He tells them that Marcao, while an asshole, never deserved to be bullied by them as a child, and he definitely deserved to be treated better as an adult. If they had, maybe he wouldn't have become such a dick.
75	* RobotsThinkFaster: Jane acts so quickly that her companions learn to simply ask her for something and then immediately get to work on the next steps requiring it. Her catchphrase is essentially "Done." Because of this, it's a sign that something's terribly wrong in one instance where she ponders one dilemma for several minutes.
76	* SenselessSacrifice: [[spoiler:A tragic result of PoorCommunicationKills by Pipo and Libo.]]
77	* SingleBiomePlanet: Lusitania. Of course, it was deliberately {{terraform}}ed by some heartless-bastard aliens.
78	* StarfishAliens: The central moral quandary of this series is whether an alien species is too different to co-exist with. It occasionally descends into HumansAreBastards territory.
79	* SurpriseIncest : [[spoiler:Miro and Ouanda]] are siblings but don't find out right until Ender speaks Marcao's death. Luckily, thanks to them being Catholic, they never actually did it, [[spoiler:Ouanda]] for religious and [[spoiler:Miro]] for practical reasons.
80	* {{Transflormation}}: [[spoiler:How the piggies reproduce. The humans' ''inability'' to do this is a major plot point.]]
81	* UnluckyChildhoodFriend: Miro to Ouanda [[spoiler:because they learn they're half siblings]]. Not to mention Novinha and Libo.
82	* TheUntwist: In universe. [[spoiler: The piggies never bother concealing anything about their culture; when they refer to trees as fathers they are being literal]].
83	* TheVirus: The ''descolada'', complete with mutation. "Descolada" translates to "ungluing," for what it does to DNA.
84	* VowOfCelibacy: Lusitania's inhabitants include a Catholic sect that requires members to marry but be {{Chastity Couple}}s, as a sort of SelfImposedChallenge. Ender and Novinha join in ''Xenocide''.
85	* TimeDilation: Occasionally veering into TimeyWimeyBall territory. ''Speaker for the Dead'' establishes that the first ships of the Lusitania fleet will get to their destination in 22 years - as long as it took Ender himself to travel there from Trondheim. When Valentine departs for Lusitania, it's said that her trip would take upwards of 31 years because she's taking detours so as not to let her destination be discovered (and it is confirmed in ''Xenocide'' that the detour '''was''' made). Yet, she arrives on Lusitania in ''Xenocide'' with over a year to spare before the arrival of the Fleet.
86	** ''Children of the Mind'' piles on another: [[spoiler: Miro]] refers to himself having been crippled "for years" despite that in his subjective time, he'd spent at best a year in this state [[spoiler: (several months prior to his departure from Lusitania to meet Valentine's ship mid-way, which took five days in either direction, subjectively for him, and at best a half-year after his return to Lusitania before the philotic FTL travel is discovered which has the side-effect of giving him a new body)]].
87	* VoiceWithAnInternetConnection: Jane. Actually more like an Internet with a voice.
88	* WouldBeRudeToSayGenocide: When the [[TheFederation Starways Congress]] decides to send an evacuation fleet to Lusitania ([[spoiler:in reality, they have orders to destroy the planet]]), Valentine (under the name Demosthenes) publishes articles attacking the Congress and revealing the true mission of the fleet, to the point of calling it [[spoiler:the Second Xenocide]]. The Congress immediately sends their StateSec to discover who is writing the articles to shut up Demosthenes, declaring whoever it is to be a traitor to the Hundred Worlds. Anyone using the term [[spoiler:the Second Xenocide]] is likewise considered to be speaking treason. So much for free speech.
89	* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: In an early chapter, Valentine's eldest daughter Syfte is set up as having a bit of a hero-worship for her uncle Ender, and planning to maybe follow him to Lusitania to help him. In the next book, Valentine's family ''does'' do that... But Syfte is barely mentioned. Of course, this is the same series that can't even remember how many other kids Valentine ''had'' (every time she counts her children, she comes up with a different number).

Context Literature / SpeakerForTheDead