tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post10698799478274515..comments2023-11-05T04:09:53.857-05:00Comments on Something Short and Snappy: Ender's Game, chapter nine, part two, in which alternative interpretations aboundErika The Over Queenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03649072707709302370noreply@blogger.comBlogger32125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-33131096966922323642013-09-03T16:24:51.039-04:002013-09-03T16:24:51.039-04:00There is, regretfully, a lot of textual support fo...There is, regretfully, a lot of textual support for Valentine as nothing but a deified concept inside Ender's head in the sequels.LunarGnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-3740095465040868592013-08-30T20:20:18.666-04:002013-08-30T20:20:18.666-04:00I have no idea, which is why my first guess is tha...I have no idea, which is why my first guess is that he did in fact use the "eat, drink, or taste" command, and the game chose to show him kissing the snake because it was really tired of seeing him come back to the same tower room for a year and wanted to do something else. (Or it wanted him to have a breakthrough and realize how to solve all his problems.)cheyinkanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-33575895000904568742013-08-29T10:51:09.178-04:002013-08-29T10:51:09.178-04:00"Card believes that the essential core of thi..."Card believes that the essential core of this story that makes it <br />resonate with so many people is exactly this: the lonely child--a figure<br /> that anyone empathetic both identifies with and wants to help."<br /><br /><br />The lonely child bit would be a lot more effective if he didn't always get the last laugh and we weren't constantly bombarded with assertions that he's the bestest best of all time, 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000, the genius who's head, shoulders and torso above all the other geniuses at battle school, and the military commander so brilliant he innovates the game every damn day.GeniusLemurnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-84003778024482042482013-08-28T22:36:27.170-04:002013-08-28T22:36:27.170-04:00But why would this game for these kids have a &quo...But why would this game for these kids have a "be affectionate" command?JenLnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-738481038130895292013-08-28T15:46:52.238-04:002013-08-28T15:46:52.238-04:00Considering all that happened with the philotic ph...Considering all that happened with the philotic phenomena in Xenocide, I'm very very glad I didn't read Children of the Mind. Ender doesn't have issues; he has volumes assembled on shelves, organized by the Dewey Decimal System.VMinknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-77749621151753074962013-08-28T10:46:29.475-04:002013-08-28T10:46:29.475-04:00That's a good point, which I hadn't consid...That's a good point, which I hadn't considered--whether she meant to or not, Valentine indoctrinated Ender with the 'Peter Is Satan' idea for years. If only that were considered in the story, it would become so much more interesting.<br /><br /><br />As regards the symbolism of the game, my brain isn't sure it wants to know what it's meant to mean, but regardless you put forward an interesting take. (I'm pretty sure the goal of the intelligence behind the game is not to indicate that the snake can't be trusted, but that it <i>looks</i> like it can't be trusted even though it really can. But that's based on bits I know about the later books and might be incomplete.) Alternative interpretations abound!Will Wildmanhttp://somethingshortandsnappy.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-12357475463096135382013-08-27T21:46:43.706-04:002013-08-27T21:46:43.706-04:00On the plus side, I think this section finally sho...On the plus side, I think this section finally shows *why* Ender considers Peter to be the embodiment of all evil, though likely not the way Card intended. Valentine--the one person Ender ever seems to have considered a trusted, nurturing figure--outright states that she spent Ender's whole childhood explicitly linking the concepts of "being good" and "not being Peter" repeatedly when talking to him. Ender wouldn't be the first smart kid to swallow something a trusted figure told him whole, and never apply critical thought to it; so really it makes sense that Ender appears to have mentally marked all "bad" concepts as "things that are like Peter" (and marked any "bad" impulses of his own as "I am being tempted to become like Peter") without considering whether he has ever seen any actual evidence of Peter doing these things. Interestingly, this probably would've made Ender *more* vulnerable to Peter, just because it's hard to fight back against someone you've essentially built into Satan in your own head. Also, I have to wonder what things were like between Peter and Valentine *before* Ender's birth, given that this is what she went with.<br /><br />I'm also wondering if the key to the symbolism with the snake-Valentine involves the Christian iconography of snakes as manipulative, corrupted beings: Ender accepts that Valentine has been corrupted by the Battle School heirarchy, goes into the game and kisses and embraces a snake who *is* Valentine, and his embracing the corruption (of Battle School, which he cannot escape despite how much he hates it) lets him step into a new world--one which is populated by the evil and impure. Which is all even *more* narcissistic self-pity, but that really seems to be Card's *thing* here.lexicologynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-11027538453165102612013-08-26T22:25:47.433-04:002013-08-26T22:25:47.433-04:00I liked Speaker much more than Ender's Game, m...I liked <i>Speaker</i> much more than Ender's Game, mostly because it was 'anthropology in space' and I thought it did a decent job examining how a Prime Directive rule would really work. And as you said, very alien aliens, which is always a nice change. It's been a long time since I read it, though, so I too wonder how much I was reading into it that wasn't there.Lady Viridisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-76593023876859095362013-08-26T19:51:47.099-04:002013-08-26T19:51:47.099-04:00Graff sees Valentine to get her to write Ender a l...Graff sees Valentine to get her to write Ender a letter. And doesn't think that she's important past that. Because someone depressed might cherish a visit from family to help with that. But no, no outside contact, because we need an isolated commander to commit xenocide, and one of sufficient opinion of himself at nine(?) that he thinks it's because he's so good.Silver Adeptnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-89842519780207385772013-08-26T19:37:47.796-04:002013-08-26T19:37:47.796-04:00Read Speaker for the Dead. I think its better than...Read Speaker for the Dead. I think its better than Ender's game (it actually supports the assertion that he is empathetic. Almost too much, like he magically understands everything about everyone on contact.) You should deconstruct that next, it'd be interesting to see what you think about how it addresses religion and women and so on.Erikanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-89808382806899799832013-08-26T19:32:23.013-04:002013-08-26T19:32:23.013-04:00I would assume that it means legendary within the ...I would assume that it means legendary within the context of battle school. Like legendary among the other students.Erikanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-10929586263086536092013-08-26T17:01:22.389-04:002013-08-26T17:01:22.389-04:00Children of the Mind is terrible. It is so terribl...Children of the Mind is terrible. It is so terrible that I forgot I'd read it (and I am pretty good at remembering what I've read) and started re-reading it before realising mid-way through chapter two that I had encountered this awfulness before. (I found "Speaker for the Dead" and "Xenocide" both not bad at all, just on readability terms: they had plot, tension, and one could remember who was who and what they were doing.) <br /><br /><br />I thought "Ender's Shadow" was a good paraquel to "Ender's Game": I thought, also, that Orson Scott Card writing the events of EG from the pov of a child who *really had* suffered through horrendous times before coming to "Battle School" did kind of put all of the "no one ever suffered as terribly as Ender" in perspective, which may not have been Card's intention. I thought "Shadow of the Hegemon" was bad, if not quite as bad as "Children of the Mind", and I tried to read "Shadow Puppets" and gave up. I have never read any of the other EG books.EdinburghEyenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-53341772041100278812013-08-26T16:47:54.865-04:002013-08-26T16:47:54.865-04:00The 'zer-g tag' idea makes sense, especial...The 'zer-g tag' idea makes sense, especially since one of the big things in most military training is teaching recruits to trust the people beside them. Card's school seems to teach to opposite to all of the students, not just Ender the most specialest snowflake.Kaynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-64412531765143047942013-08-26T15:30:39.174-04:002013-08-26T15:30:39.174-04:00The one with the descendants from the Shadow books...The one with the descendants from the Shadow books is baaaaaaaaaad. I mean, I liked Ender's Shadow (though its plot conceit isn't remotely plausible within the universe Ender's Game set up), and then I thought that Shadow of the Hegemon was okay, Shadow Puppets was not worth buying, and Shadow of the Giant was not worth reading, but I couldn't even get a page through Shadows in Flight. I kept skipping chunks in hopes that the next page I tried would be better.<br /><br />The Speaker books also went downhill for me; Speaker for the Dead was pretty good, Xenocide was okay, but if I'd read Children of the Mind before buying it I wouldn't have bought it.<br /><br />(I did like Ender in Exile, though; it gutted the end of Ender's Game, but since the end was really just a sequel hook that 11-year-old me didn't realize was a sequel hook, that's okay. I thought it was as good as Ender's Shadow.)cheyinkanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-28684193528270658772013-08-26T13:01:53.627-04:002013-08-26T13:01:53.627-04:00Huh. Speaker was my favorite of Card's novels,...Huh. <i>Speaker</i> was my favorite of Card's novels, although looking back, I think I got a radically different message out than he put in. I liked it for the convincingly <i>alien</i> aliens, which had much less humanity around the edges than most other writers. Possibly because Card has enough trouble writing believable humans? And the moral I read into it was something along the lines of, "Purity Culture fucks everyone over and women twice," which, y'know, in retrospect I can't imagine Card intentionally writing.<br /><br /><br />The sequels afterwords were dreadful, in terms of plot, imaginary technology, and ethics. Messy, not coherent, and simply didn't make any sense. <br /><br /><br />Anyways, if you read <i>Speaker</i> I'd follow those deconstructions, just to see how far off my reading managed to be.SharraRustnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-50119222278942336332013-08-26T12:23:59.319-04:002013-08-26T12:23:59.319-04:00The thing about Dink would make more sense as a de...The thing about Dink would make more sense as a defeat except that it comes in among all these other things that we're meant to take as evidence that Life Is Good, with Ender being a leader under Petra's command and his friendships with Alai and Shen strong as ever and his special practice sessions considered an elite group for soldiers nominated by their commanders while still taking any launchy who wants to join. In that great cavalcade of 'these are the golden days of Battle School', it would seem weird for Dink's promotion to be intended as a defeat, to me.<br /><br /><br />I guess it's ambiguous whether Valentine wrote the actual letter. She certainly wrote something, based on her 'I sold my brother out' lament, but it won't be touched on again, so no confirmation either way. If she didn't write it, I think that only serves to make Valentine even less relevant and even more the Morality Object--she isn't important as a person who acts, only as a deified concept inside Ender's head. If she did, then she might be morally compromised but at least her actual character matters. Personally, I prefer the latter reading, because otherwise the scenes spent on the real Valentine seem even more pointless.Will Wildmanhttp://somethingshortandsnappy.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-8017052391356899032013-08-26T12:03:35.318-04:002013-08-26T12:03:35.318-04:00I think because what Orson Scott Card *really* wan...I think because what Orson Scott Card *really* wanted to write about was kids playing zero-g tag. And video games. When you think about it, the idea behind Battle School is like a keyboard warrior/gamer's fantasy: never mind your CLASSES, you can have a fantastic career ahead of you if you just learn to play GAMES.EdinburghEyenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-65131142331521968832013-08-26T11:59:11.523-04:002013-08-26T11:59:11.523-04:00I'd always assumed that when Dink was in comma...I'd always assumed that when Dink was in command of an army, it was because he lost. (I was completely used to the idea that no matter how strongly children state their feelings/their principles, if this comes up against what the school/the teachers are telling you you have GOT to do, you will in the end lose. That the only way for a child at school to keep their principles intact is to ensure that they never come into direct collision with a teacher - and the only way for a child at school to be able to believe their feelings matter is never to share them with a teacher.) So what I took from this "and time passed" was "Dink was defeated". <br /><br />Since I suspect that (lefty, female child though I was) I fell into the target demographic Card was trying to reach (if we assume that's solitary, introverted, thinks-well-of-their-own-smarts) it's possible that "Dink was defeated" is something like what Card meant us to get. But I may be giving him too much credit.<br /><br /><i>Ender gets a letter, and it takes him a moment to realise it's from Valentine. It's a short thing, only eleven sentences and weirdly badly punctuated considering that Val is such a genius writer--I suppose she's trying to play down her intelligence still, except that Graff already told her he knows she's smarter than most university professors now (because that is clearly a standardised unit). It is the platonic ideal of awkward, basically leaping segue-free into 'so I bet some people think you're a cruel person now but I know you aren't'. She of course takes some time to insult Peter before the end, because after being separated from her beloved baby brother for three years, that is her priority.</i><br /><br /><br /><br />And also FWIW: I'm fairly sure Valentine never wrote that letter. She may have written Ender <i>a</i> letter, but I am about as certain as I can be that the letter Ender received was written by Battle School as a digest of Valentine's previous letters, and the only reason Valentine was interviewed was so that Graff could get a better idea of what Ender wanted to read in a letter from Val.EdinburghEyenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-48056125735490859142013-08-26T11:50:42.863-04:002013-08-26T11:50:42.863-04:00Xenocide does have a final sequel, Children of the...Xenocide does have a final sequel, Children of the Mind, which I know nothing about except that it's the chronological final Enderverse book. Shadow of the Hegemon has two sequels, Shadow Puppets and Shadow of the Giant, which get progressively worse, and then there are the more recent interquels like Ender In Exile (which I have read; it is bad) and something with the descendants from the Shadow books, which again I have not read but it sounds terrible.<br /><br /><br />Despite all of the horrors of Ender's Game, I retain hope that I will still genuinely enjoy Ender's Shadow and Shadow of the Hegemon when I get to them. They have fail, no question, but Card had to find a way to write a hero who canonically couldn't be the Universally Beloved Perfect Soldier, and I think the result turned out much better. (He also retcons Peter and the Wiggin parents drastically, and greatly expands Petra's role. All of these are good things.)Will Wildmanhttp://somethingshortandsnappy.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-65057584331878358272013-08-26T11:50:39.506-04:002013-08-26T11:50:39.506-04:00What in...? *looks* I don't even. I'd pu...What in...? *looks* I don't even. I'd put it down to childish exaggeration, but I'm really not getting the impression that we're supposed to. Everything in this book is just WTF.depizannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-69778137510317841422013-08-26T11:30:59.430-04:002013-08-26T11:30:59.430-04:00Ender's Game, Xenocide, and Speaker for the De...Ender's Game, Xenocide, and Speaker for the Dead make sense only if you consider Ender Wiggin to have been monumentally messed up in the head, probably by Graff and Battle School.<br /><br /><br />There are some interesting observations about the Mind Game, and IIRC it actually <i>does</i> make some sense in the next book and it... sort of returns. Sortakinda.<br /><br /><br />I never read any of the other books -- I think there's just Ender's Shadow and Shadow of the Hegemon? -- but if there was a sequel to Xenocide.... yeeesh, all I can say is 'awkwaaaard.'VMinknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-16708336464595259512013-08-26T11:18:30.473-04:002013-08-26T11:18:30.473-04:00I agree, this book made much more sense when I rea...I agree, this book made much more sense when I read it as a kid (11 or 12). Now I read it and the contradictions between stated purpose and actual behavior make no sense at all. <br />I keep thinking that even though I am neither a trained educator nor a military-type person, I could design a better battle school than this. Step 1: base the curriculum and games on the works of recognized military greats like Sun Tzu, Von Clausewitz, Julius Caesar, etc. Seriously, I know some really creative people and analyzing what they just did and why it worked/didn't work is a big part of helping them come up with new and wacky ideas. I don't see any evidence that this school is teaching these kids the basics of critical thinking. <br />Also, why aren't they covering things like logistics? Thanks to a grandfather who retired as a colonel in the army, I know more than I want to about why it is a good idea to ensure that your troops have the appropriate supplies where they need then, when they need them. Among other fun tales, apparently someone sent winter gloves instead of extra canteens for a desert exercise.Kaynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-45273913682939679232013-08-26T11:00:04.729-04:002013-08-26T11:00:04.729-04:00"Ender never did anything to be ashamed of&qu..."Ender never did anything to be ashamed of"<br />Of course not, he didn't have time to! For the 1002nd time, he was <i>six years old</i>. While he was writing this, Card should have tattooed "Age Six" on his eyeballs so he wouldn't keep forgetting it.GeniusLemurnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-92058457413150203362013-08-26T10:55:06.588-04:002013-08-26T10:55:06.588-04:00Legendary Soldier? Legendary Soldier? He's bee...Legendary Soldier? <i>Legendary Soldier?</i> He's been in school for a couple years! Legendary soldiers win wars, not laser tag! Could this be another subtle hint about how AMAZINGLY GREAT Ender is?GeniusLemurnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-2545589359722010492013-08-26T02:16:46.231-04:002013-08-26T02:16:46.231-04:00It's one thing for children to mock the kid wh...<i>It's one thing for children to mock the kid who is in any way different <br />and another for society at large to be all "Ugh, I hate those really <br />competent people".</i><br /><br />I don't know if this is evidence against the suggestion that there are dozens of Enders with different Jerk Mentors, or evidence that they all turn out a lot like him.<br /><br /><i>because apparently the controls in this game are as graceful as a 6-year-old N64 C-stick</i><br /><br />I really think most of this makes sense if we assume the Mind Game is ridiculously intelligent and has almost turned Graff et al into its robot slaves. (It even reprogrammed Dink!) The Game knows enough to analyze Ender and alter his psyche with a few well-chosen images in order to achieve the specified goals. No word on whether or not it drugged his food, or whether the military would know if it did.<br /><br />Not all of it works on a Watsonian level. Alai in particular still forces us to ask how humanity won the war. But Doylistically, this way of reading the book may explain Card's motivation. We can imagine the program told Graff (in some other context, if Card intended it to make sense) that the subject "can never come to believe that anybody will ever help him out, <i>ever</i>." Graff wants to follow this rule robotically. Someone else uses human judgment and countermands him, for once, by allowing Ender to stay in his launch group and make a friend. You could say that at this point in the author's career, Card still opposes rule by robots (don't know if he changes this view before writing a certain other series.)<br /><br /><i>I begin to suspect that I will have to read Speaker eventually, just to see if that book has the payoff that this one throws away.</i><br /><br /><br />Well...I think it supports the above reading.hfnoreply@blogger.com