<p>I didn’t read Ender’s response to bullying as any kind of lesson on how to handle bullies, nor would it bring Newtown to mind for me. As my kids would say, just because there is violence in a book, it doesn’t mean violence is being advocated. Ender felt threatened by those specific other kids; I’m pretty sure Adam Lanza was never bullied in any way by the students at Newtown. </p>
<p>Ender hated himself after every incident. And those situations were specifically set up by the adults–the harassment and the response–to see if Ender would respond violently enough to run the war for them (without telling him he was doing that, either). The implication was that most children would NOT respond the way Ender did. Ender’s response also showed that he was capable of understanding his enemies.</p>
<p>The other answer to bullying in the book comes from Valentine (i.e. love–and they end up together on “Eros”). On the lake she says to Ender:
</p>
<p>So she saves Ender, at risk to herself. She uses her intellect and writing to help Peter get the power she knows he needs, while also molding his actions so that he becomes a peacemaker and forestalls “a really vicious war that could have lasted for decades.” And then she helps bring the two brothers together.</p>
<p>So I see the lesson as one of love and understanding, not violence.</p>
<p>Valentine is the communicator of the family. On their way to Eros, Ender says to Graff:
Graff:
In the end Ender finds the hive-queen, has an imagined conversation with her, understands her story, and wants to live in peace.</p>
<p>^ Thank you for the thoughtful reflection, which helps me see Ender’s Game in a more positive light. As gouf78 wrote earlier, the many questions raised by the story, and the different interpretations, are what make it so good for discussion. </p>
<p>It’s hard for me to get beyond the violence in a book (and this applies to more books than just Ender’s Game), unless I feel that it is more than just gratuitous. I hope that the message of Card’s novel that you describe is the one that young readers pick up – but part of me still feels that it is masked by the appeal of the exciting kill-or-be-killed situations and the focus on the importance of ingenious battle strategy rather than peaceful negotiation to resolve conflict. But who am I kidding? There wouldn’t be an Ender’s Game—at least not a marketable version in our culture—if it revolved around peace negotiations. :)</p>
<p>I agree with everything buenavista posted - #121. </p>
<p>Also, in regards to an earlier post by buenavista:
</p>
<p>My son has the audio version of EG with a spiel by OSC discussing the upcoming movie. Card turned down movie offers over the years because filmmakers wanted to rewrite the character’s ages and have Petra become a love interest. He mentions that he intentionally chose character ages so that any romantic interest takes a backseat to other dynamics. He said that when you have characters in their mid-to-later teen years you can’t ignore the fact that interpersonal relationships take on a different tone. At the end of Ender’s Game didn’t Ender notice that Dink holds Petra’s hand when they visit him - an acknowledgement that the children are growing up?</p>
<p>And what the heck, a spoiler of sorts: Bean and Petra marry and have three children. I read brief synopses of the books in the Shadow series.</p>
<p>^ That’s not much of a spoiler really, in the grand scheme of the series. I googled Petra earlier when I was looking for a small detail about her, but instead got her entire life story. With the movie coming out, there are a lot of character bios floating around out there.</p>
<p>By the way, my son says that he read that word on the street is that Harrison Ford really phoned it in for his role as Graff. I wonder what the reviews of the movie will be like. What did you all think of the character of Graff? He is the primary parental figure in Ender’s life for more years than Ender’s actual parents. He is conflicted about the role he plays in Ender’s life, which makes him somewhat sympathetic. He says that he loves Ender, but is this possible? Can you really love someone whom you put through so much torture? Peter claims to love Ender, too, but I don’t know if he is capable of that depth of feeling.</p>
<p>Now I feel bad. I promise it wasn’t really a spoiler. I haven’t read the Shadow series but rather glanced at the back covers of the books. If you look at the books in the Shadow series at all, you learn who the story is about. It’s like saying that Ender gets sent to Battle School or that Bean is Ender’s shadow and Ender’s Shadow a parallel story to Ender’s Game. I guess those can be considered spoilers of sorts but really ones you already know from the book jacket.</p>
<p>What was the last movie Harrison Ford really acted in? I like him, but I honestly can’t think of anything since Air Force One (over 15 years ago).</p>
<p>Earlier this year, he was in *42<a href=“about%20Jackie%20Robinson”>/i</a>, where he did a lot of growling and cigar-chomping as Dodgers General Manager Branch Rickey.</p>
<p>The curate spouted a great deal of biblical language, but he was such an unpleasant person. It made me wonder if H.G. Wells had an axe to grind as regards religion. I thought maybe he was an atheist, but it appears he wasn’t much of anything:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Wells’ attitude toward God can only be described as “meh.”</p>
<ol>
<li>Meh
May 22, 2007 Urban Word of the Day
Indifference; to be used when one simply does not care.</li>
</ol>
<p>*A: What do you want for dinner?</p>
<p>B: Meh.*</p>
<p>To me, the final scene of the narrator “weeping and praising God upon the summit of Primrose Hill” did not reflect any genuine spirituality on his part. It’s as if he was just paying lip service to God – pretending a feeling that would be socially mandated under the circumstances. I think the narrator’s true feelings come out earlier, when he says to the curate, “Think of what earthquakes and floods, wars and volcanoes, have done before to men! Did you think God had exempted Weybridge? He is not an insurance agent” (p. 65).</p>
<p>It’s not that the narrator doesn’t believe in God – more that he believes God has better things to do than occupy his time by seeking out particular geographic locales for either punishment or reprieve.</p>
<p>I thought that Wells believed in some sort of theoretical God, but he definitely didn’t believe in religion. Card is pretty careful in his sci fi not to be too Mormon - but he’s pretty invested in Christianity - even if he doesn’t preach turning the other cheek. It’s even more obvious in Ender’s Shadow where Bean is rescued by a nun who spends a fair amount of time soul searching about her activities.</p>
<p>We’ve covered most of the discussion questions in one way or another, but one aspect that’s worth touching upon is the writing style of our two selections. The War of the Worlds and Ender’s Game couldn’t be more different in that regard.</p>
<p>Orson Scott Card writes in his introduction that he deliberately made his writing very simple, so that the book would be easy for anyone to read: “I designed Ender’s Game to be as clear and accessible as any story of mine could possibly be. My goal was that the reader wouldn’t have to be trained in literature or even in science fiction to receive the tale in its purest form.” Ender’s Game opens with dialogue that immerses the reader immediately into the story.</p>
<p>In contrast, the opening of The War of the Worlds is as follows: “No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.”</p>
<p>Today, many people find H.G. Wells to be a slow and rather difficult read, but he was immensely popular in his day. Do you think the way Wells wrote reflected the vernacular in 1898? Or were readers in those days more simply more comfortable with 72 word sentences and expansive vocabularies? A book written in the style of H.G. Wells probably wouldn’t be a bestseller today. I don’t know if that’s due to the natural evolution of language, a less rigorous educational system, or a combination of both.</p>
<p>It’s funny HG Wells came off as pretty plain spoken to me, compared to say Henry James! I think a much smaller portion of the population was even literate then. Books were wordier then - no TV, no movies or even radio. When my kids were whizzing through kid’s books way too fast (this was before Harry Potter allowed longer books for kids) I used to give them Victorian novels (E. Nesbit, Lewis Carrol, Burnett, Alcott etc.) for G-rated material.</p>
<p>I found The War of the Worlds an easier read than expected.</p>
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</p>
<p>I think yes. I discussed this once with my mother - born 1912 and an avid reader, as was her mother and grandmother. My mother grew up in a small town in the days before TV. Children played outside and read books. However, books were limited and readers quickly learned to read well above their age. Picture books were nonexistent to rare in most of the homes - maybe a Peter Rabbit could be found. Homes had the Bible and classics that had accumulated slowly over years. Classics for children - she owned The Secret Garden - and classics such as Little Women, Sherlock Holmes and various Dickens could be found at her house or nearby. She read those books over-and-over by the age of 12. Fewer people may have been literate but those who were tended to read books that would be considered “wordy” now.</p>
<p>I had early readers and sometimes had to look long and hard to find G-rated books that appealed. I remember The Boxcar Children being a big hit for my K-1 daughter - a series originally published 1924.</p>
<p>Late to the discussion here, but I immediately thought of “Podkayne of Mars”, also a Heinlein youth lit book. One of the children is killed – they are definitely imperiled!</p>
<p>Ender’s Game has been read and re-read by all members of our household many times. My kids say they are Peter and Val (and they agree on which is which!), and that I should have had a third “Ender” that would surely have been an amazing child. And I admit we also all hope some nicer Dragon Army t-shirts will be available on the web with the movie coming out soon.</p>
<p>If you go on to read Speaker of the Dead, I thought it was very different in tenor and tone than Ender’s Game, but I also found it very compelling.</p>
Heinlein wrote a lot of youth sci-fi, most featuring young men in their teens. Podkayne of Mars is (I think) the only one where he made the protagonist female, however. Tunnel in the Sky might make for an interesting comparison, although the characters there are largely in their late teens, about to graduate from high school.</p>
And I admit we also all hope some nicer Dragon Army t-shirts will be available on the web with the movie coming out soon.</p>