Ender's Game (1985) - Orson Scott Card

Orson Scott Card’s Hugo and Nebula-winning, 1985 science fiction classic is a thrilling relic from Cold War America. For a society reared on the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction, and one clamoring for “Miracles on Ice” and Stallone movie sequels, Card’s novel fits perfectly. Today, Ender’s Game is still an exciting and suspenseful narrative, full of geeky sci-fi fun, but its cavalier attitude toward war and its justifications for violence are more frightening than they are reassuring, especially in the context of current US foreign policy.

Ender’s Game is the story of Ender Wiggin, a six-year old child prodigy whose parents turn him over to the International Fleet (IF), future-Earth’s unifying military body. After monitoring the Wiggins’ first two children and seeing much promise, the IF asked them to have a third child, an uncommon practice on the planet, in a last ditch effort to save the world from insect-like aliens (We’ll get to that, I promise). Ender is taken from his home, contact with his family indefinitely suspended, and sent to Battle School, a prep academy for future spaceship captains. Floating in Earth’s orbit, this station was specifically developed for children to be trained to command and kill in the Battle Room, Card’s most inventive contribution to the genre and the device that propels the majority of the book. In the Battle Room commanders lead their armies, each a specially assigned division of students, in mock skirmishes. Equipped with unique battle suits that freeze when fired upon, these war games are nothing more than a complex round of paintball or laser tag, but nonetheless Card makes them entertaining and the most worthwhile reason to read the novel.

After a remarkably short initiation period, Ender is quickly promoted to Salamander Army, where Bonzo, his arrogant commander, sidelines him in the Battle Room because of his young age and inexperience. Yet, after much individual training with his friends from the initiation class, Ender pulls a clever tactical maneuver during a war game that helps Salamander Army to win, all despite his near inactive role on the sideline. Because of his quick and ingenious thinking Ender is quickly promoted once again and given command of his own unit. On one level, Ender’s Game is a typical bildungsroman; Ender is picked on by a series of antagonists, his older brother Peter, a school bully, his commander Bonzo, etc., and Ender’s humiliation and isolation spur emotional and mental growth. With each hardship, the boy’s mentors promote him for handling adversity so well. By the time he is ten years old, Ender is already the most accomplished commander in Battle School’s history, with an undefeated record in the Battle Room, and a loyal and accomplished army of misfit students. Ender’s Game is a feel good story for the most part, except for the violent circumstances that often lead Ender to his success.

Kicking the shit out of people is Card’s method for allowing the young prodigy to mature. In a later passage of the book, after he has successfully graduated and advanced to Command School, Ender sums up the underlying tone of the novel:

“Peter might be scum, but Peter had been right, always right; the power to cause pain is the only power that matters, the power to kill and destroy, because if you can’t kill then you are always subject to those who can, and nothing and no one will ever save you.”

I don’t want to disagree with this sentiment, it is perfectly acceptable logic, but it does frighten me. Six-year-olds beating other six-year-olds to death doesn’t make for the most inspiring coming of age tale. It’s not the war games that are despicable, I can accept the military academy as an institution, but Card’s theme of preemptive violence seems gratuitous; kill ‘em first, let God sort ‘em out. The theme is paralleled throughout the book, starting first with the school bully that picks on Ender. Threatened and surrounded, the six-year-old Ender knocks the boy out, and then with a swift kick to the face, kills him. This scenario happens again at the Battle School, but the ultimate parallel is found in the novel’s climax. All of Ender’s training has led to this event, leading the IF in battle against the “buggers,” an insect-like race with the ability to communicate telepathically, on their home planet. Previously the buggers had waged war against Earth twice, and were only narrowly defeated. This time the IF has decided to strike first and traveled the 80 year distance through space to destroy the buggers’ home planet once and for all.

Yet all of these wars, from the very beginning, were the result of just a misunderstanding; first on the part of the buggers, and later on the humans. An inability to communicate, to understand each other’s cultural differences caused the destruction of an entire race; where have we seen this before, I wonder? I can’t decide if Card’s revelation in the final chapter is meant to justify the preceding 300 pages of turmoil and vengeful righteousness. If he’s arguing for diplomacy, it seems too little too late.

Twenty years removed from the writing of this novel, though, and I can start to understand its perspective. Threatened by the superpower that was the USSR, and the need to be physically prepared to destroy an entire civilization in order to save your own seems justifiable. That’s why the U.S. elected tough-guy Ronnie Ray-gun. I can’t argue that it was the wrong thing to do either, just as I can’t argue that it was wrong for Ender to do what he did to survive.

But I want to.

What is it that keeps us from understanding each other? Why is the need to exert one’s power over another so prevalent in all the world’s foreign policy throughout history? The same military philosophy of the 1980’s has clearly not worked today; selected air-strikes, and no-troop battles didn’t work in Iraq the second time around. I can only hope we’ve come to realize that diplomacy is the key to solving our problems, but what’s keeping us all from reaching that peace, on both sides of the divide? The inability to communicate, to understand our cultural differences? I think so. But, how can we resolve this disjunction? In an effort to clean his conscience after the Bugger War, Ender writes a book about the bugger’s civilization called Speaker for the Dead, and many on Earth eventually come to understand the miscommunication between the two races. I hope that our current differences, in this world, can be resolved before someone has to speak for any more of our dead.