Ender’s World

My daughter and I have much in common. We both would rather lose a pint of blood than an argument. We both were raised by book-loving parents (heh, heh). And we both seem to have a knack for finding creative solutions to problems—especially those problems that would go away if left alone.

When I was asked to write an essay about Ender’s Game, it dawned on me that, despite our commonalities and our 50 percent identical DNA, my daughter and I approach the book from a variety of opposed perspectives. As a writer whose books are often assigned to students for required reading, I’m on the supply side of publishing and education. As a teacher who has taught science fiction and AP English, my daughter is on the demand side. I’m male, she’s female. I’m her parent, she’s my (grown) child. I grew up in a world without the internet; she can text with her eyes closed. My speculative preference as a young adult was for science fiction, hers was for fantasy. Even where there are commonalities, we diverge. Though we both studied philosophy, having fallen in love with it at the first sip, my focus was logic and computability, hers was ethics, identity, and responsibility.

I can think of no approach to this essay that is more exciting, and potentially more revealing, than to hold a discussion with her about our perceptions of and reactions to Ender’s Game. Our conversation will definitely be a discussion, not an argument. At the moment, I don’t have any pints of blood to spare. And I hate to lose.

In the interest of starting off in a balanced fashion, I’ll now pass the pen over to her for the second introduction.

I grew up trying to foster everything that was the opposite of my parents: if they suggested a book, I refused to read it. If something was forbidden, it became all the more tempting. This benefited both of us: when I was told to go to bed, I thought that staying up to read under my covers with a flashlight was a great and noble act of rebellion (and it probably was part of my parents’ plan the whole time).

I don’t remember my dad suggesting I read Ender’s Game when I was younger for this very reason: he’d never suggest such a sacred text to someone who’d reject it only because it was recommended by a parent. And although I discovered its brilliance only later, as an adult, it was as an adult who would be telling kids to read the book after being given Ender’s Game as one novel in the curriculum for a science fiction course I was teaching.

My dad and I are coming from similar and dissimilar places, and a dialogue seems a natural way to approach these opposing viewpoints: much like Graff and Anderson’s discussions at the beginning of each chapter, a philosophical dialogue is a candid look at all of these viewpoints. Both of us are stubborn enough to refuse to be the interlocutor, so I’ll default to the older and wiser of the two of us to begin.

D: I’m not sure when I read Ender’s Game for the first time. I re-read it in 1998 at the suggestion of my editor at Starscape (a Tor imprint that had just released a new edition of the book for younger readers). He felt the Graff sections would give me some ideas about how to reveal more of the world in the novel I was working on because my novel was written from the first-person viewpoint of a single character. I was definitely inspired by this technique.

A: And I read it for the first time as a teacher. To teach about a six-year-old’s coming of age to a class of seniors in the spring is like handing them the best skydiving manual an hour before they’re going to be pushed out of the plane.

These kids are about to experience the ultimate monitor-removal: leaving school. And just as Ender worries about becoming like Peter now that his monitor is gone, students graduating from high school are faced with radical freedom as well as with what could be debilitating responsibility to fulfill the expectations that have been set for them, and their new ontological status as “graduates.” The depth and extremity of Ender’s isolation from everything safe—his parents, his sister, his home, and even his planet—parallels the approaching graduation. Ender still has the choice of whether to go to Battle School. My students have a choice in their future, but it’s likewise unknown and scary. Students are also leaving what’s comfortable and familiar. By leaving home, they’re approaching complete responsibility for all of the decisions they’ll make in their lives.

D: Though they may be leaving one home, part of growing up is finding your own home (even if you have to take a slight detour and save humanity from extermination before you get a chance to start apartment hunting). But to the parent, the child who moves out will always have two homes (unless the homes are separated by interplanetary distances).

A: And this is part of the “master of two worlds” that my students become once they graduate: when they leave for college, they have a college “home” and a hometown “home”—it’s reconciling the two, much like reconciling being a soldier and a friend (like Ender), that’s difficult. Ender has to find a way to fulfill the expectations set for him by his soldiers as well as his teachers. He has an ultimate mission—saving humanity—and several local missions—peer acceptance, platoon success, and self-preservation—at the same time.

What one could read as Ender’s goal, to be unforgettable, is cemented early in the novel. “They won’t forget me,” he says, after he beats the older boys at the holographic game. This is something that seniors can all relate to: part of embarking on adulthood is thinking about what you’re leaving at your high school. Students want to leave a mark on their school—whether they want to write the best paper you’ll ever read or be the worst-behaved kid you’ve ever seen.

D: Those goals don’t end with graduation. Some writers write to be immortal, or at least, like your students, to make a mark. That creates a “be careful what you wish for” scenario. Most successful writers see a dynamic change in the way they are treated by their peers after they break in. (Writers are just as cliquish as students. We’ve merely swapped the cafeteria for conventions, pubs, listservs, and other gathering spots.) It’s okay to be successful but not too successful. I think the scene in chapter eleven where the commanders react to Ender’s success is a perfect metaphor for the way I suspect some writers responded to Scott after the rise of Ender’s Game. Revealing more of my dark side than is wise, I’ll admit it is easier for me to like and applaud books that broke out before I broke in.

A: I often hear kids telling each other to be mindful of the pitfalls of success, especially envy—particularly when it comes to bullying. Unless they know they won’t be ridiculed for outstanding success, they want to stay safely in the middle, for fear of those who pick out and try to destroy the eccentric or the talented outliers.

D: Ironically, it’s often the outlier who becomes the writer—assuming he survives the bullying.

A: But it’s part of the “human condition” that I talk about so much in my classes, and the fear of the unknown, of not knowing “the plan.” In Ender’s case, and unbeknownst to him, the plan actually exists.

Graff says, “He can never come to believe that anybody will ever help him out, ever. If he once thinks there’s an easy way out, he’s wrecked.” Throughout the years that I’ve been teaching, I’ve always had at the foundation of my pedagogy the idea that teaching is the gradual transfer of responsibility from myself to my students. Ideally, they all leave me completely comfortable in their autonomy, and ready to enter the “real world”—which is a phrase with intriguing implications in Ender’s Game. There’s an interesting relationship between practice and reality, where when you’re in “practice,” there’s still a degree of reality to it, but in reality—haha—all practice is reality. When we think we’re preparing for the next stage, we’re still in a reality.

D: And in reality, we all strive to know the plan—which brings us to one of the many masterful elements of this book. Ender is facing the unknown. But we aren’t. One reason the book absorbs the reader is that we know the plan. Graff says what he is going to do to Ender. We’re now being prodded by a two-pronged suspense fork. We not only wonder what exactly will happen—how Graff will carry out that plan—we also wonder how much Ender will figure out. For Ender, the story is a mystery. For the reader, it is a suspense novel. Though we are both led blindfolded to the final twist. (The reader has a much easier journey than Ender.)

The chapter openings are a brilliant way to show things that Ender doesn’t know because most of the book is written from Ender’s third-person limited viewpoint. I suspect that writers are much more aware of viewpoint shifts than most readers. For those who want to study such things, take note of the places where we see a scene from Valentine’s or Bean’s viewpoint, and take special note of the way Ender’s first-person thoughts are presented without the traditional use of italics.

D: The very first use of first person for Ender’s thoughts takes place in Ender’s opening scene, and is introduced not with “he thought” or with italics but by smoothly transitioning from an action (“tried to imagine”) to the thought that arose from the action: “Ender tried to imagine the little device missing from the back of his neck. I’ll roll over on my back and it won’t be pressing there.”

A: This sets the tone for the reader for the rest of the novel; it leads the reader to understand that she will be privy to Ender’s thoughts. Ender and the reader are intimate from the beginning—she can trust Ender to tell her the truth and the way that things really are.

D: Speaking of trust and intimacy, I find it fascinating that we get the shift to first person for Ender, Valentine, and even Bean, but not for Peter. Peter, alone, remains shadowy, never fully revealed by the tools of viewpoint. The problem is, writers can do all these brilliant things, and then they wait for someone to notice them. Writing is one of the most difficult art forms for those who crave a response. (I plead guilty to this weakness. Validation is my drug of choice.) If I paint or draw, I can get immediate feedback or at least validation in the form of a gasp of delight when I unveil the canvas. If I compose, you merely have to sit back and listen while my music plays. No real effort is required. But if I want you to respond to a novel, I need patience on my part and effort on yours.

A: And this is exactly what teaching is like—the time and patience that go into guiding a student to becoming whoever she will be doesn’t have immediate rewards (aside from the occasional parent-mandated thank-you note at the end of the year).

D: Happily, most of your work stays in print for many decades. And if you teach for long enough, you’ll even get to work on sequels.

A: And I frequently teach different editions. Sometimes I’ve taught several kids from the same family.

D: Of course, like most analogies, this one offers interesting contrasts. A book reaches many people for a brief period (though the memory can last a lifetime). A teacher reaches fewer people but for a prolonged interaction.

A: As a teacher, you may change a student’s life (for better or worse!), but part of the job is being okay with the idea that you might never know the impact you have. I can see how writers and teachers are both creators, but with a teacher, so much depends on the student. Two autonomous agents are working toward (again, hopefully) the same goal—learning, growth, and development. Creating a future.

D: And just as teachers sometimes receive amazing letters from former students, either at graduation time or many years later, most writers can tell wonderful stories of getting “you changed my life” letters, like the one Scott shared in the introduction to the definitive edition of Ender’s Game.

On the other hand, writing a popular book means you are forced to become, to some degree, a public person. The bigger the book, the more the world sees you as their own. Given that most writers tend to be introverts, this can be a painful transition. In many cases, the successful writer is asked to become a teacher. As in all things, some of us are better at it, and more comfortable with it, than others.

Even if they never enter a classroom, writers are indirect teachers, both through the texts they create and the actions of their characters. For any writer who pays attention to what he reads, Ender’s Game is a classroom on viewpoint, plotting, pacing, and character development.

A: Ender himself is a better teacher than I could ever hope to be, both to his Battle School troops and to my students—the lessons that he learns are everything that I hope my students take away from high school. I’m lucky to be able to lead my students to Ender, for them to gain these lessons through his experiences.

Second, only fictional characters can achieve such a high success rate with their plans. Writers have the pleasure of creating super-human humans. We also have the luxury of second chances. Our characters can succeed, even where we have failed. (I’m not saying Scott flunked out of Battle School or had his monitor yanked after only one week. I’m speaking of writers and life in general.)

Third, the fact that you tied graduation to monitor removal shows you have the kind of creative mind we desperately need in our classrooms. (When I think about graduation and science fiction, the line that comes to mind is, “Danger, Mrs. Robinson!” This helps explain why I don’t belong in the classroom.) I can’t speak for Scott, but I love it when readers find depth and meaning of this sort in my work, whether or not I put it there, and I suspect most writers feel this way. I try to weave connections into my work at all levels, but readers constantly ask, “Was this intentional?” about things I never intended or even noticed. Making observations and connections, as you did when you linked monitor removal to graduation, is a wonderful activity that enhances the pleasure of reading. I trust you shared some of these observations with your students, and they shared their own observations with you.

A: Definitely. My students have a field day with the names that Scott used—Ender (the one to end the war) is a gateway to a discussion like this, but they make the connection that Valentine is the one who loves her brother the most. Peter is the oldest, and many of my students have made a connection to St. Peter (as the foundation and rock of a faith).

Especially on a second pass. Ender’s Game has so many levels of complexity that, upon a second (or third or twentieth) pass, it gains meaning. On every return to the novel, you bring added experience from your life. This is one of the best parts of revisiting a novel, especially when a marked change has taken place (childhood to adulthood, for example) in the interim, and particularly of revisiting a novel like Ender’s Game, which has a versatility of compassion for its characters: as an adult and educator, I can feel for both Ender and Graff as teachers in their own respect, but I know that if I read this as a kid, I’d immediately connect to Valentine struggling with the relationship she has with her parents and her brothers.

D: Reading this as a parent, I connected from the other direction. When Valentine realizes her father admires Demosthenes, I felt the power of the scene from the father’s perspective, not Valentine’s. He appeared to be unaware of major aspects of her life. Though it also reminded me of all the things I hid from my parents.

D: And not that I’ve ever secretly known some of those things you’ve never done. But we’ll talk about that later, in private.

A: The concept of parents as autonomous agents reminds me of the realization that my parents are individuals themselves, and don’t just exist as extensions of my own life and experiences. Parenthood is an aspect of their lives, not the entirety of it.

D: I’m pleased to have been granted an independent existence by she who I helped bring into existence. This makes me feel like a Borges character or part of an Escher engraving—but in a good way. Getting back to the idea of reader identification (and comfortably away from further discussion of our youthful misadventures)—readers may identify with different secondary characters at different ages, but readers also generally begin a book with a biased view of the main character. Readers assume characters share everything with them, and then are slowly disabused of the connections as they encounter conflicting evidence. Every time I pick up a book, the main character is an adult male of my size, weight, and beliefs. As I read, the attributes I imposed are sliced off like the limbs of the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. In Ender’s Game, as in most well-crafted novels, the reader learns the key differences within the first few pages. It would be jarring, and perhaps even disastrous, to get to page fifty before learning Ender’s age.

A: Aside from the age of the reader, one of the most marked differences between readerships is gender. It’s common to see my female students read a novel written from a male perspective, but it’s less common to see a male student reading a novel that’s written from a female perspective.

Ender is of course male, giving male students something in common with him. But Scott also has two incredibly well-crafted and dynamic female characters—Petra and Val. Their strength is important because they don’t merely serve supporting roles. They are guides for Ender. Valentine is Ender’s Beatrice: Ender’s taken this impossible quest with Valentine in mind, unable to envision a world where she’s torn apart by formics. And Petra is Ender’s Virgil: her guidance, support, and camaraderie give him the confidence to become the leader he needs to be.

D: Writers deal with a certain body of conventional wisdom, including the idea that a girl will read a boy book but a boy won’t read a girl book, and that young readers prefer to read about someone two or three years older. Whenever I hear the latter belief mentioned, I point to Ender as a counter example. I suspect, if Valentine got her own novel, she’d be a good counter example for the former belief. I’m glad your students, both male and female, were able to identify with Ender in various and meaningful ways. And I’m pleased you’re teaching a novel that taught me so much. However, I can’t help wondering about one potential issue for anyone who teaches the book. In the introduction to the definitive edition, Scott mentions that he deliberately avoided “all the little literary games and gimmicks that make ‘fine’ writing so impenetrable to the general audience.” As someone teaching literature not to a general audience but to high school students at the highest levels, does the clarity of the text create any problems in the classroom?

A: I don’t think it does—it just opens up an opportunity for students to see the text through different lenses. A text whose literal meaning is clear is more effective on a figurative level. I always teach science fiction with the idea that the genre has allegory at its core. The science aspect of science fiction, as well as the fantasy aspect, allows the enjoyer (I always tell my students to avoid writing about “the reader” when they should focus solely on the literature) to understand philosophical and, particularly, ethical issues. A discussion about true happiness is easier to understand if man can widely and readily attain complete physical complacency without repercussions (like the use of soma in Brave New World); a dialogue about racism can be easier to explore if you’re talking about aliens versus humans.

Many of the ethical dilemmas brought up in science fiction are timeless, but science fiction’s frequent use of emergent technology allows these timeless issues to be tethered to both the science and technology present in the news and the science and technology present in science fiction: video games and the internet have changed the way that we can express and understand the human condition.

D: As someone who was around when the internet was evolving, I can appreciate the ways in which the book came close. The idea of gaining a following is right on target, as is the idea of concealed identities. As for the bloggers influencing or shaping public opinion, that is dead on.

A: The anonymity of the internet became a source of power for Peter and Valentine. Online, the enemy doesn’t know if you’re a teenage mean girl or a middle-aged socialist. The power that comes with concealing one’s identity can allow one to be not just effective, as Peter and Valentine are, but cruel in a way that’s safe for the bully.

A: Ender wants to use this kind of anonymity for good, rather than ill, when he identifies himself as “God.” We can still, however, see a dichotomy of good and evil in the range of all of the characters’ ethical options, and Ender’s place in the middle. This power through anonymity is the beginning of Ender’s extreme burden of responsibility and his eventual despair: he’s constrained by his morals, yet his mind enables him to comprehend and rationalize man’s capacity for both good and evil when given any amount of power.

D: Even in the fantasy game, where no real blood is shed, Ender struggles with the morality of his decisions. Though what really caught my interest, as a writer, is that the fantasy game is a volitional dream. The player/dreamer can take conscious actions and has free will, but the results of his actions and the experiences he encounters fall into the realm of fantasy. Every writer writes dream sequences, and most of us would be better off if we then deleted them. (I know from my own failures that it is very easy to let this sort of scene get out of control or become as self-indulgent as bad poetry or unschooled abstract art.) Although Ender does have some brief traditional dreams and nightmares, especially toward the end of the novel, the game allows him to spend an extended time in a world that reflects his deepest thoughts—without it feeling contrived or arbitrary.

A: And in games, you can always get “multiple lives.” Second chances exist in video games. It’s safe to fail, and it encourages learning. We connect to games, and even project ourselves (in true Avatar fashion) onto the pixels that we control. If Link failed to save Zelda, I failed to save Zelda. If Link died, I died. But we were both reborn. Scott writes the following about Ender’s first experiences playing the game: “He had lots of deaths, but that was OK, games were like that, you died a lot until you got the hang of it.” Dying is a necessary part of the game and of the learning experience, but this (putting aside all arguments for reincarnation) is impossible for us—to have the opportunity of trial and absolute error, resulting in death, without harming one’s self, instead of one’s avatar, makes learning available where it otherwise might be impossible.

D: Games allow us to practice making decisions and solving problems without penalty, just as fiction allows us to learn to cope with and process a variety of emotions and situations in a safe environment. I’m not preparing to fight formics, but I have on occasion found myself in micro-versions of some of Ender’s dilemmas where I had to rely on my mind to find a way to defeat a physically superior force or avoid an unpleasant task.

A: Video games are more than choose-your-own adventure books; they take away the need for imagination but replace it with a greater (though still finite) amount of free will. A lot of games provide the player with morally ambiguous situations—the heroic Link in Legend of Zelda can also throw and slash at chickens in the town, and the protagonist in Infamous can choose a good or evil path. The player can choose to be the hero or the villain, making it possible to save humanity or safely play the bad guy.

D: Ender, through the qualities endowed in him by his creator, is more than a hero. Though portrayed as human, he is almost a super-hero. He cannot lose any game or battle. His powers of reasoning allow him to be one step ahead, not just in formal games, but in the larger game of life. This is one of the reasons he is so appealing to the reader. When we read Stephen Gould’s Jumper, we imagine ourselves with the power of teleportation. When we watch Spider-Man, we picture our own silky smooth flight among the skyscrapers. And when we spend time with Ender, we see ourselves triumphing against all challenges.

A: Many of us have experienced the luck of winning when we didn’t think we could, but Ender never loses; he always wins. And this could partly be explained by Ender’s expectations about his own reactions and the control he exhibits over his emotions. Even when mad, Ender is a “cool” mad, not a “hot” mad, which is ultimately destructive. Using even the most destructive emotion, anger, to propel him forward prioritizes rationality and deliberation in his thought and actions. We all want to know we’ll win all of the time, but we don’t. Rooting for Ender, and feeling him win and succeed, even when he loses a lot in his sacrifice for it, provides the catharsis that solidifies Ender’s place in the pantheon of literary heroes.

D: Perfection is also a powerful dramatic hook. The fact that Ender has never failed yet doesn’t guarantee that he will win his final battle. No promise is made to the reader. The fact that we learn of his final victory at the same time that he does bonds us more closely to him by way of both celebration and relief. The wire-walker has reached the platform. Somehow, Ender has survived everything Graff and Mazer have thrown at him. Not only has he survived—he’s triumphed, vindicating Graff’s cold-blooded methods. As a parent, when I think of Graff’s approach I am reminded of my constant battle to allow my child total freedom vs. my instinct to do everything for her and to protect her from all possible harm.

A: And as a child (who has experience as a teacher but not as a parent), I always took comfort in the safety net, even when I was running from it. But Ender is different—for Ender to become the person that the world needs him to be, he has to cultivate complete self-reliance. This also brings up the idea of the “easy way out”—sometimes there is none. Sometimes we need to claw through the Giant’s eye to survive.

D: This holds true for both characters and their creators. The writers who take the easy way out are not the ones who get published. Or, at least, are not the ones who publish books that endure. If the path is one every reader can immediately see, why bother taking the trip? I suspect it wasn’t easy for Scott to kill off characters, even if Ender’s victims were unlikeable bullies, or kill off an entire species.

D: I can think of no greater proof of good parenting on my part than the fact I taught you that phrase of Faulkner’s, and no greater proof of good daughtering (to coin a phrase) than that you remembered it, and knew not only when to pull it from the quiver but how to sharpen the tip with multiple meanings.

D: Beyond those slain characters, there are many other ways in which Scott doesn’t take the easiest way out. The largest of all is in his choice of hero. This is another reason the book is a classic. The easy way to generate empathy is to create a character cut of the same cloth as the reader. It’s difficult to get a reader to empathize with a character who is totally unlike the reader in most ways. Nobody who reads Ender’s Game is six years old, an unwanted third child, and a staggering genius. But we all feel his pain.

A: I think it’s Ender’s isolation that we can all feel. Many of us are told that we are unique and special and wonderful, but with that comes the isolating aspect of being so unique and special and wonderful. In a way, it’s the commonality in our individuality that makes the connection to Ender so instantaneous.

D: Speaking of unique and special and wonderful, daughter dearest, given that you gave me the first word, I’ll give you the last.

David Lubar has written thirty books for young readers, including Beware the Ninja Weenies and Other Warped and Creepy Tales (the seventh book in a series of story collections that have sold more than two million copies), and Hidden Talents. His novels are on reading lists across the country, saving countless students from a close encounter with Madame Bovary. He has also designed and programmed many video games, but he’d much rather spend his time writing books and trying to gain influence on the internet. In his spare time, he takes naps on the couch. He lives in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, with his wife and various felines. His daughter speaks for herself.

Alison S. Myers née Lubar teaches high school English and has also saved countless students from a close encounter with Madame Bovary. She lives with her husband, Mark, and her crazy little shiba, Kira. She recently developed a Philosophy and Literature class, and is hoping to avoid all offerings of hemlock. Alison also has less to say about herself than her father.

Q. How long was the Battle School open before Ender started? And was it always for children that young?

Did the military always recruit children into Battle School, or did they recruit any genius?

A. Battle School was conceived of as a school for children, precisely because they were young enough to be trained out of the gravity-centered mindset of the Earth-born. The school would shape their lives toward war in space from earliest childhood in order to maximize their readiness as adults. But it was not the plan to use them, as children, in combat leadership roles. It was only the calendar that eventually forced that, since by the time the fleets arrived at the formic worlds there was no time for the children who were most skilled to grow up!

Even the first class of Battle School students believed that they might grow up to be the overall commander in the final battles, though of course they had no idea that the battle would not be fought in their solar system. But they expected to take such a position as adults, perhaps after years of experience in fleet maneuvers in real ships.

As the inevitable and unpostponable final battles approached—as the human war fleets prepared to reach their destinations within days of each other—the time for training kept compressing. Since they had not yet found that betterthan-Mazer commander when the fleet was ten years out, they knew that the commander, if they found him, would be ridiculously young, and Mazer prepared for command.

Then they found Ender and, a little later, Bean. They knew when Ender came to Battle School that he would have to be made ready by the age of twelve. Thus when they watched him through his monitor, they knew that they only had seven years left. That’s why they accelerated his training so radically. Having bean as possible backup gave them a bit more security, but their ultimate backup was always Mazer Rackham himself.

However, the Battle School experience had gone on long enough for the teachers to see that having children in command would not necessarily be a bad thing, as long as they could be shielded from the knowledge of what they were doing. That is because they had long since learned that, like mathematicians, soldiers slow down as they age. Nobody would follow a twelve-year-old into battle under ordinary circumstances, yet the twelve-year-old is far quicker of reflex and thought than the same person would be at thirty-two.

Rackham himself could see how much sharper these kids were than he was. It’s the experience adults have when children start beating them at videogames. There is a greater depth of knowledge and experience in adults, however, and that’s what the teachers in Battle School were trying to duplicate in Ender’s training. They had to put him in situations that no child would normally be placed in during Battle School, in order to give him a fund of experience that would rival Mazer’s own, and make him ready to take command when he was barely twelve years old, for, ready or not, that was when the battle fleets would reach their targets.

So, with the use of children forced upon them, they made a virtue of necessity and then set about framing the situation so that adults would follow children into battle and the children could command without knowing they were doing so. But by no means was this the original plan when Battle School was founded.

—OSC