I promised myself that when we got to Ender's Game I would do my best to look at it objectively and (more importantly) be very, VERY careful not to talk about the rest of the series. That being said, this book shows a child in what is probably the most remarkable and disturbing bildungsroman ever. This group of children at the Battle School are essentially trained to forgo the positive parts of their humanity (kindness, caring for others, etc.) and to suppress these instincts in favor of something significantly more primal. I will not argue that this is uncommon--the nature of the individual is not particularly heralded in contemporary military organizations--but I think it touches on an interesting taboo. They are doing this to children. Literally alienating Ender--the word choice is purposeful--so that when the time comes he is capable of doing something that is almost inhuman in its proportions: committing xenocide. I have always, always looked at this book as showing, in many ways, how humanity can often be more alien than the aliens, for it is humanity who, fully knowing what they are doing, decides on the wholesale destruction of an entire race, and enlists a young boy to help them do it.
That being said, I think the parallels here between the world in which the Wiggin children live and the circumstances of the 1940s are too clear to ignore. It reminded me, in many ways, of a comment I heard during a class on the Vietnam War--that a lot of children grew up wanting to be Audie Murphy, firing at Nazis from the top of a burning tank. The Buggers seem to be roughly akin to the Japanese--the children play astronauts and buggers in the hallway, and there is this kind of unquestioning patriotism on the part of humanity in every word that Graff says. Ender is born because the government dictates it to be so, he goes to Battle School when they tell him to, and there, everyone believes that the terrible, crushing hardship they are suffering, subduing ego and kindness, is for the good of humanity, in the immediate peril of the Buggers' return. Until we discover that they are not returning, that in fact humanity is taking the war to them, and Ender commits the wholesale destruction of an alien race because he wants the game to end.
The last thing I wanted to mention, which is perhaps the most important, is how much Ender grew to love the enemy he was fighting. He studied them constantly, they got into his head (quite literally), and to a little boy to whom humanity had been nothing but cruel and alienating, this strange, unearthly presence must have been like a beacon in the darkness. And how different the Buggers' attitude towards humanity was than humanity's unequivocal attitude towards them! A hive mind considers its workers expendable; the hive queen did not realize that every single human life is individual, precious, unique, etc. The regret that the Buggers had, coupled with the near-extinction of their species, is so different from the victory in which humanity revels, except for one thing: Ender mourns. And then writes the Hive Queen and the Hegemon, in which the two enemies of his childhood--the Buggers and his brother--are explained, loved, and understood. How that impacts the rest of humanity, and the rest of Ender's life, is a topic we'll have to address when we read Speaker for the Dead.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I find Morgan’s discussion of Ender’s Game very thought provoking. She has a nuanced understanding of Ender and his training. Her comment on how he must be dehumanized, “alienated,” in order to preserve humanity brings out the irony of what the military was attempting in the novel. Ender was pushed to cruelty in order to preserve the better aspects of our society.
ReplyDeleteAnother observation: in our most violent moments it seems we somehow “cease” to be human and we lose our humanity in others’ eyes. Yet this propensity to commit violent acts is another aspect of what makes us human. Maybe someday we will overcome this inclination by a habit of peace over war, yet it is a part of us and we cannot claim to hold some moral high ground and reason away our negative actions as somehow being “less human.” The difference between the types of people we are lies in the choices we make.
Ender’s capacity to empathize and mourn is another wonderful aspect of the novel. He takes control of himself after the war is over and makes the conscious decision to reconcile with the buggers and make amends. Like Phil wrote, Ender is in some ways a “Jesus” figure – taking on the sins of humanity for its protection and then repenting for the rest of his life for our sins. He is even selfless in his name. Without getting into Speaker, the names he uses take on a life of their own and he is merely a projection for humanity of our “better” and “lesser” qualities. He is an embodiment of all we are capable of, but notice that Card associated his cruelty with lack of knowledge and awareness and manipulation, and his empathy with awareness, enlightenment and maturity. One grows out of cruelty and into empathy.
In response to Morgan’s question at the end of my blog I would have to say yes – Ender’s readers are sheep as well. I suppose I put a different value judgment on the sort of following that came of Peter and Valentine. In all fairness though, Ender, through communicating the buggers’ messages, conveyed truth through his perspective of guilt. I think the difference is that Ender’s books appealed to very different emotions than Peter and Valentine’s writings - much less potentially harmful ones.
-Michael Ginsberg