I would argue that part of the book's goal is to provoke conflicting thoughts about Ender's actions. Ender himself is certainly conflicted- he's so horrified by learning he wiped out the Buggers that he slips into a coma, and spends the rest of his life trying to help humanity see that there was another way. Both times he kills someone he's acting in self-defense against people who intend on killing him, and clearly isn't happy about having to do it. I don't see how any of the violence is really advocated by the book.
1. How is it that this book believes that the ends justify the means, if killing off an alien race to end a war is shown as completely horrible?
2. I don't see anything wrong with a book presenting an "innocent killer", as it allows us to see the effects of manipulation on a child.
3. I think the book makes it quite clear that the Formics struck first, but out of a huge misunderstanding and did not wish to kill off the human race.
"What's out there? What's waiting for me?"
I also believe that we are supposed to be conflicted, because Ender is what the ships he controls are: a puppet of a larger military leader. He blames himself, but at the same time I wondered how the people on his ships felt when the casualties rose. I haven't read the rest of the series, so I don't know if it's a coincidence.
illegitematus non carborundum est
\"In brief, a well-written scifi novel, but the thoughts provoked by it conflict with any reasonable persons morality\"
Not necessarily, no. Ender might not be the responsibility-free martyr the book makes him out to be, but that doesn\'t mean the violence he doles out is unjustified or something the reader needs to be encouraged to condemn him for. It\'s not automatically wrong for a work to advocate violence.
In a book where a kid commits Xenocide, the one thing that went against my suspension of disbelief was the sub-plot of his two pre-teen siblings moonlighting as bloggers who are taken seriously by the press and public.
If someone is unaware that their actions are causing harm, especially if it\'s under the pretense of a training simulation to prepare him, you cannot blame him for what he does. Had he known the battles were real, he clearly wouldn\'t\'ve been willing to command, placing all responsibility for his actions on the military leaders who manipulated him.
If you're going to put up a review of something, MAKE SURE IT HAS A PAGE FIRST!
You make some valid points, but you lose readers when your opinions are formatted into a giant block of text. You can certainly edit this into at least three paragraphs.
Leave a Comment:
Interesting premise, objectionable morality.***Spoilers***
Ender's Game is a fun, innovative scifi read—but tries and arguably fails to address serious issues of morality in a way that can feel grating at times. The book is gripping and you root for the protagonist Ender, although the book continually provides moral excuses for the brutal and often over-the-top violence Ender commits over the course of the book. The reader is told that he has no other choice, that it is for the greater good, and one wonders whether the author is genuinely endorsing the eventual acts that Ender commits. The author advocates for an overly simplistic view of ends triumph over means, placing characters in Ender's way that feel generic and one-sided, allowing us to feel assured in their demise. The book does have an interesting exploration of group and individual psychology, and the idea of "wargames," but the treatment of the morality of violence raised in the book leaves the reader nonplussed. The author's own real-life (religiously inspired?) homophobia adds an odd element to the book—the derogatory name for the main enemies of the book are "buggers", a slang term for gay men. However, the book (and Card's books in general) feature a pervasive erotic interest in nude male bodies. Bonzo, a young man seen as "tall and dark and slender, with beautiful black eyes and slender lips that hinted at refinement. I would follow such beauty, said something inside Ender" (71), is later brutally murdered by Ender naked in the showers, kicked hard and sure in the crotch. (closet case?) Authority figures are aware of this murder, and of others like it, but do not intervene, as we are told that Ender, in order to save the world from the Bugger menace, must be a cold-hearted killer. Clearly, the reader is supposed to submit to Card's morality that either Ender is justified in his repeated murder (he is relieved of guilt by ignorance of the effects of his violence, or in the seedy realm of 'self-defense'), or simply pity him at the way he is manipulated by the adults around him. In essence, Ender becomes the innocent killer. He even kills off a whole race of aliens, who for the reader it remains unclear as to whether they were belligerent in the first place. In brief, a well-written scifi novel, but the thoughts provoked by it conflict with any reasonable persons morality, making it uncomfortable to experience.