Ender's Game

“Ender leaned his head against the wall of the corridor and cried until the bus came. I am just like Peter. Take the monitor away, and I am just like Peter.”

Though Ender hates everything Peter represents, Ender starts recognizing similarities between him and his brother early in the story. The monitor is extremely invasive, but it offered him security against bullies, and without a supervisor’s protection Ender becomes a target. Ender finds that when bullies force him to fight, he responds just like Peter: mercilessly.

“Ender hadn’t cracked the teachers’ security system yet, so he couldn’t pretend to be a teacher. But he was able to set up a file for a nonexistent student, whom he whimsically named God.”

In a rare humorous moment, this passage ties Ender’s sense of humor to his intelligence. Card juxtaposes dry narrative humor and the word “whimsically” to create irony. Though it is meant to be humorous, Ender is manipulating someone’s future by adjusting everyone’s perspective, which reveals the intention to not be very whimsical underneath the playful surface.

“No wonder Bernard broke his arm in the shuttle, Ender thought. He tightens up when he’s flying. He panics. Ender stored the information away for future reference.”

Without making a direct allusion to Peter, these sentences depict Ender behaving much like his sibling. Ender evaluates Bernard’s weaknesses in an instant, already planning to use that weakness against him in any subsequent conflicts.

“He had lots of deaths, but that was OK, games were like that, you died a lot until you got the hang of it.”

Ender’s assumption becomes pertinent in the final battle, which he still believes is a game and therefore sacrifices ships without hesitation. This sentence foreshadows a major tactical decision Ender makes in the final bugger battle.

“‘You’re in a big boys’ army now. I’m putting you in Dink Meeker’s toon. From now on, as far as you’re concerned, Dink Meeker is God.’ ‘Then who are you?’ ‘The personnel officer who hired God.’”

In this banter between Rat Army’s commander (Rose) and Ender, Ender cheekily questions how the commander fits into the so-called divine hierarchy if Ender’s toon leader already tops the pyramid. Rose’s response is equally sarcastic, but he also implies every Battle School student is very intelligent—divine, like a god—but ultimately politics lace the games. They play in the battleroom and emerge champions or losers, but behind every intense battle is a series of political moves and watchful adults.

“He did not know whether Dink was his friend; he believed that Petra was, but nothing could be sure. They might be angry that he was doing only what commanders and toon leaders were supposed to do—drilling and training soldiers. They might be offended that a soldier would associate so closely with Launchies. It made him uneasy, to have older children watching.”

This quote demonstrates Ender’s paranoia, a side effect of his isolation. Ender can’t rely on anyone else to become the best, but in his caution, he doubts his own allies’ character, driving the wedge between him and others only further.

“Word got around. From now on no one could take five or ten or fifteen seconds in the corridor to size things up. The game had changed.”

Ender applies the philosophy of knowing one’s enemies to battles: He predicts how the opponent will act based on tradition, and his responding tactics uproot core assumptions other students have about the game itself. Ender’s unconventional strategies both change how armies play the game and contribute to his mythical status.

“[Valentine] couldn’t think of anything so terrible that she didn’t believe Peter might do it. She also knew, though, that Peter was not insane, not in the sense that he wasn’t in control of himself. She was in better control of himself than anyone she knew. Except perhaps herself. Peter could delay any desire as long as he needed to; he could conceal any emotion. And so Valentine knew that he would never hurt her in a fit of rage. He would only do it if the advantages outweighed the risks. And they did not. In a way, she actually preferred Peter to other people because of this. He always, always acted out of intelligent self-interest. And so, to keep herself safe, all she had to do was make sure it was more in Peter’s interest to keep her alive than to have her dead.”

Though Peter is a master manipulator, Valentine—using her Wiggin gift for understanding people—recognizes a predictability in Peter’s threats and uses that knowledge to ensure her safety. Surprisingly, she respects Peter’s consistency more than other people’s well-intentioned but emotionally-driven responses. This quote demonstrates a critical way in which Valentine grows less like herself and more like Peter as the story progresses.

 “[Valentine] found that while she rarely agreed with Peter about what the world ought to be, they rarely disagreed about what the world actually was.”

Valentine’s observation reflects the Wiggin siblings are similar in their intelligence and how they perceive the world. Their intentions and personalities dictate how they believe the world should handle situations, but they are intelligent enough to accurately understand things as they are.

“Peter even named it once, when he said that he could always see what other people hated most about themselves, and bully them, while Val could always see what other people liked best about themselves, and flatter them. It was a cynical way of putting it, but it was true. Valentine could persuade other people to her point of view—she could convince them that they wanted what she wanted them to want. Peter, on the other hand, could only make them fear what he wanted them to fear.”

Again, the Wiggins psychoanalyze people similarly. Valentine perceives a limitation in Peter’s manipulation methods. He gains power from using people’s fears, but Valentine’s flattery tactic elicits their willful cooperation. Valentine appeals to people’s agency while Peter uses fear like puppet strings.

“No matter what you do, it always helps Peter. Everything helps Peter, everything, you just can’t get away, no matter what.”

Peter has a knack for trapping people in a moral grey zone: Valentine intends to negate Peter’s hate with love, but her kindness only makes Peter’s prey (the forest squirrels) more vulnerable. Ironically, Valentine later presents Ender with a similar ultimatum: Ender doesn’t want to kill anyone, but regardless of whether he returns to Command School, he will be responsible for billions of deaths. Only he decides whether those deaths are human or bugger.

“And the snake in his hand thickened and bent into another shape. A human shape. It was Valentine, and she kissed him again. The snake could not be Valentine. He had killed it too often for it to be his sister. Peter had devoured it too often for Ender to bear that it might have been Valentine all along.”

In the fantasy game, Ender kills the snake—his enemy—repeatedly, and to his horror he discovers the enemy he destroyed was his beloved sister Valentine all along. This symbolism represents how once Ender understands who his enemy truly is, and he loves him.

“And Ender liked having the announcement of the extra fifteen minutes come from the toon leaders. Let the boys learn that leniency comes from their toon leaders, and harshness from their commander—it will bind them better in the small, tight knots of this fabric.”

Ender makes many decisions contrary to how other army commanders operate; raising toon leaders as loved and respected officers is one such maneuver. Ender believes in the comradery among soldiers, and because of the adults’ influence, he preserves the top command as a lonely—but more objective—position.

“Ender stepped under the water and rinsed himself, took the sweat of combat and let it run down the drain. All gone, except they recycled it and we’ll be drinking Bonzo’s bloodwater in the morning. All the life gone out of it, but his blood just the same.”

Nothing that happens in Battle School truly leaves. Even as students wash themselves, stepping out of the showers clean, they cannot walk away from their choices, which—as depicted through the water—cycles back around.

“‘I also remembered that you were beautiful.’ ‘Memory does play tricks on us.’ ‘No, your face is the same, but I don’t remember what beautiful means anymore.’”

Ender and Valentine love one another, but after four years without any communication, they are functionally strangers and don’t know how to read each other anymore. The interaction also emphasizes how Battle School and isolation have impacted his perception of the world and beauty over time.

“‘You must be good company for yourself.’ ‘Not me. My memories.’ ‘Maybe that’s who you are, what you remember.’”

Valentine suggests people are a compilation of their experiences. Even though Ender makes decisions in Battle School he doesn’t like or even regrets, Valentine’s comfort attempts to assure him who they were as children remains part of who he is.

“‘Two faces of the same coin. And I am the metal in between.’ Even as she said it, she wondered if it was true. She had shared so much with Peter these last few years that even when she thought she despised him, she understood him. While Ender had only been a memory until now. A small, fragile boy who needed her protection. Not this cold-eyed, dark-skinned manling who kills wasps with his fingers. Maybe he and Peter and I are all the same, and have been all along. Maybe we only thought we were different from each other out of jealousy.”

In the first chapters, Ender described Peter as having a face like Alexander the Great, whose face adorns Roman coins; as Peter has grown, he has also embodied Alexander’s domineering political nature as well. Valentine, while convincing Ender to return to Battle School, suggests Ender can be Alexander too (referring to his greatness and infamy), but she realizes Ender might already be more like the darker sides of Alexander than she wants to admit.

“I don’t want to beat Peter. […] I want him to love me.”

Just like Ender loves his enemies, Ender wants to receive love from his first enemy: Peter. If his enemies love him, then the conflict would resolve and Ender wouldn’t have to destroy them. Ender knows Peter has the capacity to truly understand him, and he wishes his brother would love him as he is.

“‘Why is it called Dr. Device?’ ‘When it was developed, it was called a Molecular Detachment Device. M.D. Device.’ Ender still didn’t understand. ‘M.D. The initials stand for Medical Doctor, too. It was a joke.’ Ender didn’t see what was funny about it.”

Ender’s natural sense of humor—or lack thereof—is illustrated here, and it becomes increasingly repressed as his isolation intensifies. Card intends for readers to understand the ironic humor in Graff’s history of “Dr. Device,” and Ender’s confusion both adds comedic awkwardness and maintains Ender’s stoic character.

“Sometimes one of them would be Valentine, and in [Ender’s] dream he also shoved her under the water for her to drown. She writhed in his hands, fought to come up, but at last was still. He dragged her out of the lake and onto the raft, where she lay with her face in the rictus of death. He screamed and wept over her, crying again and again that it was a game, a game, he was only playing!—”

As Ender fears in this nightmare, when he plays games other people tend to suffer. This perspective could also mirror Peter’s, who crosses boundaries with his antics, and then he depicts emotions that look like genuine remorse when he steps too far out of line. This would create another example in which Ender is afraid of growing more like Peter.

“Mazer, I don’t want to keep dreaming these things. I’m afraid to sleep. I keep thinking of things that I don’t want to remember. My whole life keeps playing out as if I were a recorder and someone else wanted to watch the most terrible parts of my life.”

Intensifying guilt is a side effect of Ender’s isolation. Loneliness gives him too much time and space to ponder what-ifs and second guess his greatest regrets. Unfortunately, Ender also requires sleep to perform well during battles, which only perpetuates the nightmares.

“It was plain to him now that they would not bring him back at all, that he was much more useful as a name and a story than as an inconvenient flesh-and-bone person.”

Ender never becomes a public personality, only a public figure. Humanity glorifies Ender’s victory, and Ender’s own humanity—imperfections, opinions, and all—would only disillusion and frustrate people. Ender saves humanity by working with complete independence, but if he returns to Earth, his choices will inevitably clash with others’ agendas.

“Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is choose to fill the roles given to you by good people, by people who love you.”

Graff coordinated Ender’s game with extreme detail, and Ender resolves to never let anyone control him again. The puppeteers prove untrustworthy from Ender’s perspective, and Graff has conditioned him to distrust everyone. However, Valentine offers a new perspective: Living a life totally devoid of others’ influences and choices is unrealistic, and sometimes the people in his life might hurt him, but he can control the quality of influences in his life.