Module 5: Ender's Game

Summary:

This book follows Ender Wiggins.  Ender is a third child, which is a bad thing in his society.  He beats up bully and the military decides that Ender is perfect for training.  He is sent to battle school in space.  Ender struggles socially at times, but probably because he excels in battle school.  It seems that just as Ender gets comfortable and makes friends, he gets transferred to another unit.  The friends that Ender makes help him to overcome the challenges of the games or remind him that life is life and to not take it so seriously.  Back on Earth, Ender’s brother and sister rise to extreme political power and are seen as political philosophers.  Ender continues to succeed and rise to his own power at battle school.  When he defeats an old foe, Bonzo, his life is at risk.  Bonzo attempts to kill him, but Ender beats him up and feels terrible about it.  Ender is whisked away to Commander School.  He is given a computer simulation to play and finds that his friends from his journey are under his command.  They play the game and eventually win.  Only then do they find out the game wasn’t a game but was the actual battle.  Ender realizes the adults used him to destroy an entire species.  He also finds out he killed the bully he attacked at the books opening as well as Bonzo.  In the end, Ender’s sister convinces him to join her in starting a new colony.  There he discovers the aliens left an egg (more or less) for him to restart their species with.  He also begins to speak for the aliens. 

APA Reference:

Card, O. (1991). Ender's game (Rev. ed.). New York: Tor.

Impression:

I liked Ender’s Game.  I enjoyed the dynamics of the three siblings and their rise to philosophers.  I thought the characters were beautifully crafted and fully developed.  Ender was likeable and easy to root for. Ender’s friends were also fully rounded.  I found it interesting how the usual stereotypes were present in the children and I think students would appreciate that as well.  There is someone in the story you can relate to.  I also did not expect the “game” to be the reality.  But, I felt like the book fell apart once Ender began to speak with the aliens.  It seemed to be a choppy transition and it just felt odd. 

Library Use:

This book would be great to look at character development.  Students could work in group to find symbols for each character using images from magazines or from image searches using creative commons or flickr, and then present those to the class and the class would need to figure out who the symbol represented and why.