Ender’s Game~ Orson Scott Card
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card is one of my favourite books. I have read it enough times that my paperback does not have any of the stiffness that a 300-page paperback usually has. Ender’s Game spent the entirety of my final year of school in my bag, constantly being flicked through and randomly read. I love it so much that I chose to take it apart and analyse it for my A-Level English Lit coursework and I still really enjoy it. I added it to my list this year because I relish in the opportunity to have an excuse to read it once again.
Ender’s Game tells the story of Andrew (Ender) Wiggin. The novel is set in the future when the human race is at war with an alien race known as the buggers. The wars are fought in space by the International Fleet (IF) who take children from the homes and train them to be the next generation of starship pilots and commanders. Ender is taken from his family, aged six, to Battle School, where he begins his training. The book follows Ender’s journey for the next five years.
Ender’s Game is a strange book to really categorise. It is, primarily, a sci-fi book, but it deals, very heavily, in ethics and personal moral dilemmas. This is most obviously shown in Ender’s fear of becoming like his elder brother, Peter, who Ender genuinely thinks could kill him. This is touched on multiple times by Card and becomes a much bigger part of the ethical issues raised. It’s a fact of life that children are compared and compare themselves to their siblings and Ender is no different, despite being a genius child. I think this was an ingenious way to create a connection between Ender, a non-relatable protagonist, and the readers.
Something I very much liked, was that the beginning of each chapter had about a page of dialogue that was in a different font and was the thoughts of the adults that were leading Ender’s training. You want to hate the adults for what they are putting Ender through and for knowingly being cruel and mistreating him, but at the same time, there is a small part of you that understands why they are doing it. And, at that moment, you hate yourself just as much as the adults in the book. Orson Scott Card really highlights the worst parts of humanity as our will to do whatever it takes to survive.
it is a different experience reading Ender’s Game for the first time than it is reading it for the however-many-times I have read it. Knowing what is going to happen and what the twists are, makes you read the book differently. Things that don’t seem like a big deal to begin with now have significance. It’s one of my favourite things about Ender’s Game is that each time you read it, there is something new that you missed before.
Ender’s Game is one of my favourite novels of all time. I know there are some issues like the lack of female characters and the super lengthy chapters, but the story so wonderfully deals with the complexities of warfare and the ethics of raising child soldiers. It makes you a little proud and disgusted to be apart of the human race. For me, Ender’s Game deserves more than five stars, but as I can’t give more than that, it is safely a five-star novel.
C🌙
