Reflection: Speaker for the Dead

Ah, snowpocalypse, how you've upset the balance of the universe. Unfortunately, with the advent of the end of the world via snow, we weren't able to attend class this past Thursday for an in-depth discussion of Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead. But I can't let this stop me! So, onward and upward to analysis of Speaker.

One prime aspect of Speaker I wanted to comment on (in class next time, hopefully) is the nature of community that we see in Speaker. Card makes a note in his introduction that this isn't just the second Ender novel, it's much more than Ender's Game set out to be. We all know now the story of little Ender and his military battles, but Card took the aspect of community in his previous novel (Ender's "jeesh") and put it on steroids! Soft and cuddly "community" in an Ender novel? Yes! But maybe not so soft and cuddly, even in Speaker. Here we have the Novinha family, which is, to put it lightly, highly dysfunctional. Ender steps into a family where an abusive father's dead is being lamented, a brother and sister are within an inch of a love affair, and a other cast of other children including the religious fanatic, silent daughter, and the homicidal toddler. If you're reminded of historical fiction novels, or just regular vanilla fiction, I'm with you. This whole scenario sounds deeply similar to something that is NOT science fiction. Let's pull back a little further to the living situation of the town (colony really) of Lusitania. Surrounded by a gate, this small colony is self-sufficient in a world set against it (don't ask me what's on the cover, but it's definitely NOT Lusitania). No proper nutrients to be found, harsh natives, and few people make this essentially an alien old-west border town, run by Catholics.

So, yes, if we take away the relatively brief science fiction moments from the work, we can boil the story down to something very familiar. In fact, I can't help but jump off of Yaniv's post in comparison of this book to fellow "going native" plot lines. One of the foremost struggles the protagonist faces in these types of plots is his defection from his own community to another community entirely different from his home. This is where Speaker stands unique amongst these trite plots - it makes the native community weirder than we could ever imagine. If Card does one thing well with the piggies, it's the complete sense of unease associated with them, at least in the first half of the book. All we know is that if you do something unique with the piggies, they gut you completely. Death. Murder. No where in movies like Avatar do we actually have this deep sense of uncomfortableness with the natives. Card actualizes very well just HOW different an alien tribe can be from a human community. Yet there is no doubt that the piggies are a community all their own.

Does Ender, like other protagonists, join the piggie community and renounce his own? Hardly at all. In fact, Ender continually references how "humans have thrown me out". Clearly, he really isn't that much of a member of the Lusitania community, or even the human race for that matter. Which makes Ender the perfect candidate to resolve the differences between the piggies and the humans, without the ridiculous fanfare of Ender defecting to the piggies side. One of the most poignant scenes in the book is the making of the treaty under the Mother Tree. I can perfectly imagine Cameron's vision of the Mother Tree, seeing as though he included the concept right in Avatar. But Card writes an almost horrific Mother Tree, one filled with maggot-like piggies feeding off their mothers, emerging and draining the sap from this tree. It really isn't something that even Ender is comfortable with. And at that, the sterile females of the piggies (the "wives") are continually using cultural conventions (even insults!) that Ender cannot understand, and definitely does not facilitate. But this scene constructed by Card is poignant because it shows the capability of communication and reconciliation among communities that otherwise are completely alien. Ender doesn't need to defect to the piggies to show the worth of the piggies. In fact, Ender only shows strong human will and character completely disowned by movies like Avatar. And unlike Avatar, one community isn't obviously the better choice over the other. Card willingly shows the shades of grey between these two species, and does it without sacrificing originality.

Reflection: Speaker for the Dead

I know we didn't get a chance to discuss this book this week, and that makes writing an additional reflection on Speaker a little difficult. Also, having read the other two books (I don't rate anything after Children of the Mind as canon, and I barely count that) it's difficult for me to piece together what my ideas were about this book and what it was trying to say before I read the other ones. Still, I think the character that most distinctly fascinates me (as a feature of alien-human contact) is Jane.

We have a tendency to forget, reading this book (and Ender tends to forget as well) that Jane is not human. She looks human and acts human, within the context of her computer existence, as a means of facilitating communication with Ender. Her nature, and the way others treat her, reminds me greatly of what we were discussing while reading Concept of the Political--her power and abilities are so far above the realm of human experience, and so comprehensive, that there is no choice in the human-Jane relationship but to consider her a friend, because to consider her an enemy would be preposterous. She is the ansible, she dwells inside the philotic web, and as such everything that humankind is completely dependent on is dependent on her.

And yet when Ender switches off his comm, it hurts her. Deeply, on an emotional level. He does it as though chastening a naughty child, but as she has devoted so much of her attention and her understanding to Ender-as-father-figure, it's like losing contact with a parent. Losing part of herself. And though she recovers, eventually, time for her passes much differently than for humans, and by the time he switches it back on she has undergone the equivalent of a million years of suffering and recovery. Because Jane puts on this facade of humanity, Ender doesn't recognize, as he does with the Hive Queen, that she is alien or different, and that is a problem. If we perceive Jane as a person, and not merely as a computer program (and she is a person) then we must treat her as ramen or varelse because her thoughts and experiences are too different from ours to treat her as a framling.

Substantive: Speaker For the Dead

I believe The Speaker for the Dead, although greatly different from Ender’s Game, raises just as many questions about human nature and human-alien contact. One question the novel raises is whether or not humans would, or should, share technology with a less technologically developed species. Although we might not want competitors, aiding a species might lead to greater mutual cooperation and create a self sufficient ally. There are several problems with sharing techno logy though. For one, even normal technological development creates “moral lag.” Simply put, societies don’t develop norms about technology until decades after it has been invented. If we were to leap a species forward technologically by centuries it could be both devastating and dangerous. For example, if humans were gave piggies assault rifles after a few decades of technological aid, could they comprehend the implications of using such a weapon when they had trouble understanding that they had murdered the two xenologists. Besides this, I believe the some of the clergy’s view of the piggies as godless savages supports a statement that I made earlier that religious fanaticism would hinder inter-species communication. During a human-alien encounter, the more religious humans may view sentient aliens as soulless or simply animals, thereby making the aliens varelse and expendable. This is an underlying theme of the Halo series, where a theocratic alliance of aliens that views humans as demons and heretics. It is interesting in Speaker for the Dead that after the gate is opened that the clergy announce that there would be likely be attempts to convert the piggies. This attempt is very reminiscent to the treatment of the Native Americans. Interestingly enough Card wrote a novel about time travelers going back to 1492 in order to redeem Columbus by inoculating the native Americans against European diseases.
In some respects I believe that the piggies should have been quarantined. Unlike the war between the Buggers and the Humans, the piggies were a legitimate threat to all life in the universe, not simply to human territory. The Descolada the piggies carried would wipe out life on any planet it was released on. The piggies could actually utilize this as a form of unconventional warfare and any species, any army and any force would be woe to resist them. Although I am very supported for self-determination, this is a specific scenario where growth should be limited for the greater good, not just for one species but for all of those in the universe. To commit another xenocide, however, would be unnecessary if the piggies’ technological growth could be kept under control. Xenobiologists could also work on a cure to the Descolada in order to enable the piggies to expand and grow freely. Despite this, I believe it was naïve for Ender and the colonists to risk so much in order to modernize the piggies and I do not see how the information about the Descolada would ensure the safety of the colony. Rather, it would put it in greater peril.

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.

Substantive: Speaker for the Dead

I can't remember when I first read this book, but I remember liking it better than Ender's Game. I was, say, thirteen or so, eager to continue the series, and was, quite literally, blindsided by Speaker for the Dead, which is-and-is-not a sequel. It's a sequel in the sense that there's Ender, except thirty years older, and, yes, there's Valentine, kind of, and the Hive Queen. And yet, this Ender is so much more himself than the child who was manipulated into essentially being a weapon. This is a man who has been hardened by three thousand years of universal guilt.

I remember when we were talking in class about how, in War of the Worlds, Wells essentially takes the triumph and the victory away from mankind. I feel as if, in order to create a better world, Ender has deliberately sabotaged his own reputation. In writing The Hive Queen and the Hegemon he condemns his hero-self to millennia of ignominy because, if humanity were to consider itself triumphant, flush in the victory of having eradicated an alien species, the next would be disposed of in the same way, and for the same reasons. He also does so in the hopes that, when the Hive Queen is finally restored, she will be greeted by a universe explained into understanding by Ender's book.

This is a very different world in which to introduce a new alien species, and it shows. And yet, I'm not sure that humanity learned the right lessons from the Bugger Wars. Ender makes the point of explaining that the reason for this policy of non-interference is not, as might be imagined, a policy of tolerance engendered by his book, but a policy designed to prevent the exact kind of technological advancement that enabled the humans to defeat the buggers in the first place. It is the scientists who see these pequeninos as people who really treat them as ramen, in terms of Valentine's Icelandic-sounding hierarchy, and the government who treats them as children or varelse. It's almost as if the government is refusing to acknowledge them as equals, on an equal political plane, but treat them as some kind of endangered species. As an animal, as opposed to an alien. The result of this is, of course, that the pequeninos learn significantly more about humanity than they do about them.

There is a small hint of Ender's influence, though. When the xenologers are killed, there is no retribution from Starways Congress or the government. I could feel Ender's thoughts behind this in some way: What may be considered a travesty by us may be something completely different to them, in the same way that the buggers understanding of death and murder was entirely different from humanity's at the beginning of the Bugger Wars. The piggies a) believe that these people that they "kill" are anesthetized; b) do not realize that tears are a sign of human suffering; and c) reserve the ritual dismemberment for their most honored citizens. These are things that Ender notices almost immediately as meaning that their notions of death are different, but is this because he is inherently empathic or because he's seen it all before? What I thought immediately of was ethnocentrism. These xenologers were so absorbed in their own culture that even venturing into other ideas (like realizing that the trees were actually alive, and not totemic) was almost beyond their comprehension.