Substantive: Speaker for the Dead

Ah, Speaker for the Dead. Is it really a sequel for Ender's Game? The story behind the book seems to give the reader a little doubt as to whether Ender actually belongs on Lusitania in the first place. Maybe Card just couldn't manage to have the book stand on its own without the complex character of Ender? But then again, Andrew Wiggin from Speaker is hardly the Andrew Wiggin from Ender's Game. We need to tackle the complex issues brought into Speaker that are derived from Ender separately from new themes and statements made by the book sans Ender and his past. But, at the same time, Ender's presence informs and illuminates the issues brought forth in Speaker. To do a complete analysis of themes of alien and the other in Card's second Ender novel, these two aspects need to be individually considered, and then in some ways, combined.

At the heart of Speaker is the piggies. The second alien species that humanity encounters isn't quite like the threat of the Buggers - the main difference lying in the actual ability to communicate easily with humans. At the same time, this ability may be even MORE threatening to humans. Consider the case of the Buggers, where absolutely no communication was possible between the two species. One could easily assemble a logical argument for the Bugger's extermination - there was no clear way to determine the threat the Buggers actually posed. But now, for the piggies, the situation has been completely thrown upon its head. Humanity CAN communicate, and CAN share information; total destruction seems to have been taken out of the equation. But really has it? As soon as humanity discovers the piggies, a fence is built around the human settlement. Suddenly, only a few humans (the zenologers) are capable of speaking with the piggies, and at that, the zenologers can't even reveal any essential information to the piggies regarding human technology. Essentially, communication is cut off willingly by the humans, in the name of preservation of the piggu culture. This, of course, is humanities reasonably explanation for such a cut, but is it simply wishing the best for the piggies? Card seems to be hinting at something far more sinister at work within the human conception of the alien.

One of Card's goals in Speaker is to characterize the cultural isolation the piggies see at the hands of the humans. IN the novel, the piggies explain to the humans that every night they sneak into the village, looking at human inventions, and trying to work out how humans do things. This, of course, is set against the attempts of the humans to completely cut themselves off from the piggies, and their assumption that they had the power to do so. In essence, Card characterizes the Lusitanians as having the audacity to believe themselves completely separated from the world of the piggies. It takes Ender, however, to reveal to the humans just how wrong they are about the piggies. It isn't that the humans want to protect piggy culture culture, it's that the humans want to prevent the piggies from rising to a level where they can compete with the humans for domain over the universe - they are afraid of sharing their worlds with the piggies, of the piggies "getting there first". Therefore, the gate around the colony really isn't to protect the piggy culture, its to keep the piggies from ever going beyond their primitive roots.