Ender's Game: short story discussion notes

These are some notes in something resembling an order of our presentation on the short story version of Ender's Game.


"Remember, boy. From now on the enemy is more clever than you. From now on the enemy is stronger than you. From now on you are always about to lose."
One of the ways to read Ender is from the perspective of a smart kid, and all the heightened expectations that that implies. This here is probably the first time Ender is given an opponent who can challenge him without tricks and unfair odds. He laughs with glee at the prospect of defeating this enemy.


"What're legs for? Hmmm?"
Blank stare. Confusion. Stammer.
"Forget it. Guess I'll have to ask Bean here."
"Legs are for pushing off walls." Still bored.
"Thanks, Bean. Get that, everybody?" They all got it, and didn't like getting it from Bean.
Reading Ender's game from the perspective of a talented child. Orson Scott Card received a letter from some gifted children.
                All our lives we've unconsciously been living by the philosophy, "The only way to gain respect is doing so well you can't be ignored."
The story rang true to them because that's exactly how Ender (and Bean) eventually do gain respect, even though at first they're disliked.


Finally Bean thought of something else to say.
"What will we do now that the war's over?" he said.
Ender closed his eyes and said, "I need some sleep, Bean." 
What do you do with soldiers who are no longer needed? Especially in this case, where the children in question know literally nothing else. Another way to read Ender is from the perspective of soldiers. Card received another letter from a soldier in the army.
                     I've experienced the tiredness Ender felt, the kind that goes deep to your soul. It would be interesting to know what caused you to feel the same way. No one could describe it unless they experienced it, but I understand how personal that can be.
Likewise, he too made Ender's Game not just a story, but his story.

Card himself goes on to say
Why else do we read fiction, anyway? Not to be impressed by somebody's dazzling language - or at least I hope that's not our reason. I think that most of us, anyway, read these stories that we know are not "true" because we're hungry for another kind of truth
With Ender's Game, people read and find their own stories. People read and are spoken directly to by the author. That touches people in a way more powerful and visceral than any elaborate prose can.

Other reactions to Ender's Game are nice and varied. One thing ties them together: the reactions are very strong. Elaine Radford wrote an article in the late 1980s titled Ender and Hitler: Sympathy for the Superman. That people have such powerful reactions to the story, negative or positive, shows that there is something of substance involved.



The answer was quick. It was also surly, as if to say, Yeah, yeah, now get on with the important stuff.  
Perception in narration.


The system was breaking up. No doubt about it, Bean thought. Either somebody at the top was going crazy, or something was going wrong with the war -- the real war, the one they were training to fight in.
Perceptiveness of narrator



He woke up and fought another battle and won.
Then he went to bed.
He woke up and won again. 
Here the diction matches Ender's feelings, that the days are blurring together.


But while other commanders mastered the techniques that Ender had used to defeat them, Ender and Bean worked on solutions to problems that had never come up.  
Further cementing how far ahead they are

"If that's true, sir, then at least we all know that Ender is making it possible for the others of his age to be playing in the park."
"And Jesus died to save all men, of course." Graff sat up and looked at Anderson almost sadly. "But we're the ones," Graff said, "we're the ones who are driving in the nails." 
Probably the one allusion/metaphor Card uses. Also ties in to the major theme of the story.




His forehead was creased and furrowed. His breathing was quick and light. He was a soldier, and if anyone had asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he wouldn't have known what they meant. 
Theme: the child soldiers are not children.

Ender Wiggins was a stranger to the world he was being trained to save.
...

And before he could make any sense of the strange world he was seeing for the first time, they enclosed him again within the shell of the military, where nobody had to say There's a war on anymore because no one within the shell of the military forgot it for a single instant of a single day. 
Ender doesn't know anything other than training, battle, war.

Were they going to judge him today? Decide if he was good enough for something else? For another two years of grueling training, another two years of struggling to exceed his best? Ender was twelve. He felt very old.
Theme. 

He had long since learned that when something unusual was going on, he would often find out more information faster by waiting than by asking.
Tone. Narrator as highly observant boy prodigy.



Ender smiled, and realized that if he broke this rule they'd probably kick him out of school, and that way he'd win for sure. He would never have to play a game again.