Unlike many of the people in our class, this was my first time reading Ender's Game. Based on the fact that much of the class said that they had read the book multiple times, I had high expectations for the novel; I was not disappointed. I got very much wrapped up in the story and couldn't help but finish it in two days. While I found the book to be really interesting and engaging, I also noticed quite a few important pieces of commentary on the human condition and our society.
In the previous post by mginsberg, he points out that the humans see the situation with the buggers as "them or us" and therefore act preemptively. This ends up being unnecessary and needlessly destroys the entire bugger race. This whole nasty affair is a result of a complete lack of communication. Ender sums it up quite nicely on page 253 when he says, "'So the whole war is because we can't talk to each other.'" One can see how miscommunication frequently causes conflict in reality as well. It makes me wonder how many battles have been fought because the two sides could not understand each other.
Another theme of Ender's Game that interested me was Orson Scott Card's examination of what is considered murder and what isn't. Toward the end of the novel when Colonel Graff is put on trial, Ender is accused of murder for the deaths of Stilson and Bonzo. However, Ender notes, feeling somewhat amused, that people condemn him for the deaths of two humans and yet they celebrate his murder of ten billion buggers (p309). The killing of the bugger race was essentially genocide and called to mind the many times the "civilized races" killed native races in order to expand. I'm sure if one colonist killed another, they would be prosecuted, but the killing of huge numbers of indigenous peoples either took decades to be acknowledged as a crime, or it continues to be ignored. Obviously, this is slightly different than in the novel because the buggers did attack the humans first and they felt threatened, but the way humans view their deaths is the same. And while we understand Ender's empathy towards the buggers and understand his guilt about their extinction, it is only when we realize that there was never any need to attack them that the true tragedy of the story reveals itself.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Yes. From the books we've read so far, and certain ones that are coming up, it seems that we're making an intended parallel to imperial or colonial cultural attitudes. As mginsberg pointed out, Ender's Game is the human response to a violent first contact with aliens, and may be taken as a natural progression of the events in War of the Worlds. After an initial misunderstanding with this alien culture, the humans resolve to wipe it out, then colonize its lands. The text is reminiscent of the North American genocide. The Earth governments serve as a hyperbolized, futuristic Spanish or British Empire, colonizing any land that appears profitable after conveniently wiping out the inhabitants.
ReplyDelete