The Dissection of Ender’s Game

1. The Dissection of Ender’s Game By: Fayth Kakos

2. S Ender thought space was beautiful! The setting of Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, takes place first at a doctors office where Ender gets the monitor, which allows scientists to become part of his perspective and view things as he does, removed. Gradually, he makes it to school, where he gets picked on by bullies for being a third child in a society where you are only supposed to have two kids. Then, he reaches home, where he see’s Peter, his jealous brother, and Valentine, the sister he loves. After being picked to go to Battle School to learn to fight buggers (Aliens) his setting shifts to a battle ship where he is predicted to spend the next ten years at, until he is 16, with only one visit when he is 12. He is only 6 now. The battle ship is much like Earth and is tilted on an axis. Ender has his own bed and is situated as if it is boarding school, with each student having there own bunk. The setting takes place in the future where there have been more than one bugger invasion. As the story progresses from battle school you find Ender at a sort of paradise in which he is content. It is many years later before he makes it to this place, but it is after he is sufficiently broken and they needed a place to put him before he continued. After that little faze you find him at Command School, here he takes real action in fighting off buggers even though he doesn’t know he’s doing it until after it happens. And the last place you find Ender Wiggin is on a bugger planet where he is helping to build a new society and stretch the limitations of human life. etting!

3. Ender Wiggin Ender Wiggin is the main or major character in the book. Figuring out his character is kind of tough because at first you think that he is a nice boy. Then, he beats up another student and you start to doubt what you know. Then you start to get on a level where you understand him and his intentions. As the book progresses you see that he is nothing but a troubled kid. He is of pure heart, but he seems to have problems with the other students at Battle School and his confrontations are very thorough. Yet, he is a remorseful child. His physical appearance consists of dark hair and eyes as well as a thin gangly physic. As he grows older and years pass in the book he starts to become very muscular and lithe. He is a very dynamic character, he seems to change a lot throughout the story as he starts to get a better grasp or understanding of who he really is. His knowledge grows rapidly and he starts to use his mind even more creatively then he did before. I find him to be the protagonist in his story because he is always the character who is fighting through troubles and not causing them. He does not want to cause trouble with the older kids, but they are jealous of his ability and are always seeking opportunities to strike him down. Ender is a very easy person to relate with because you can really understand what he is going through. Ender was serious, but sensitive. Character!

4. Valentine Wiggin Valentine Wiggin spent most of her life defending Ender and for that you picture her as a likeable character. Though it may be controversial I think that she is a major character because of the role she plays in the story and the affect she has on the main character. She is the only person Ender loves and that gives her a certain influence on him that the I.F. crave. They want to make sure he has the strength to do what he needs to do, but it seems that Valentine is the only one that can do it. She is the character that convinces him to do stuff Colonel Graff wants him to do. She alters certain decisions he makes to ensure he stays on the path that the military wants him to. Her morals seem to be in the right place, but when she bonds with Peter, the brother she considers evil, her perspective starts to change. I wouldn’t exactly say her personality changes, I just think that she is changed. I think that is what makes her a dynamic character in this book. She changes a lot and that has a big affect on her and Ender’s relationship. At the start of the story they seem to have a close bond, but when they meet again at Ender’s paradise island she has to acknowledge the fact that by working with Peter her life has changed a bit. Valentine is definitely the protagonist in the story because she is one of the important leading characters. She is not one of the more evil characters that provoke situations or the wrongdoer. She has important affects on the plot of the story but there aren’t any evil intentions behind that. I think she is a character that you can really like in the story. She mothered Ender and was always looking out for him and she seemed to mellow some of Peter’s evil ways. I found her as an overall good character. She, like Ender and Peter, has dark hair and eyes. Character! Valentine was called beautiful on more than one occasion.

5. Peter Wiggin Peter is a difficult person to sum up. He is always rude to Ender and as the reader from Ender’s perspective you want to hate him at the beginning. He always seems to be trying to discourage Ender, but then he turns around and says that he loves Ender when he thinks no one can hear him. That’s when you start to get interested in Peter and you wonder what he really feels and thinks. You see a completely different side of him when you get into Valentine’s perspective for a little bit. He feels remorseful for all of the evil acts he’s done, or so he says. Valentine doesn’t believe him or trust him. For me he always seemed like a hard kind of person to figure out. But at the end of the story I don’t necessarily think he is evil, more power hungry then anything, but I don’t think he is good either. He is a major character in the story. It seems that he left plenty of mental scarring upon Ender and Ender does not seem to be able to get rid of him, even when he was in Battle School. This harsh affect makes Peter ever present in the story. He is a hurtle that Ender is fighting to get past. For those reasons and more I think that Peter is an antagonist in this story. I think that Peter is a static character, because even though you think he has changed I don’t really think he has. For me he is a character that has stayed the same throughout the whole story. Some may think he is a changing character, but I think that he doesn’t change you just get to know him better. Peter shares Ender and Valentine's features. He ha dark thick hair and dark eyes. He is often compared to Alexander the Great in looks. Peter had beautiful features, that were cocky and sure. Character!

6. Bonzo Madrid You get introduced to Bonzo at the beginning of Ender’s Battle School years. Bonzo is a jerk. He uses terrible methods of strict tyranny to keep his army in check. He is upset that he gets Ender, a launchie. This disrupts the organization of his army. Ender starts off just obeying orders, but then he threatens Bonzo’s authority to tell him how to spend his free time. That is just the start of Bonzo’s hatred towards him. Ender is instructed by Bonzo not to participate in the games and to just stay there, but when he defies orders and shoots his gun turning a loss into a tie Bonzo is furious. He does not want Ender to be the reason for his success and by helping him Bonzo feels even worse because he knows Ender is the better person. As commander of the army he takes his anger out on Ender and hits him in front of the whole army for defying orders. He loses the respect of his army because they know that Ender is the reason they didn’t get a loss. Ender gets traded to a different army and you think your done with Bonzo, but a couple of years later Ender is the strongest and most skilled person in the games. He never loses and lots of leaders including Bonzo resent him for it. They plot to kill him and six of them confront him when he’s in the bathroom. Bonzo still has his old grudge against Ender and fights him, but Ender beats him. Trying to ensure Bonzo wont bother him again Ender goes a bit to far and kills Bonzo. Ender does not know he has done it though he thinks Bonzo is just unconscious. I found Bonzo to be a minor character because his affects on what happens are not exactly superior. He is just one of Ender’s obstacles. Bonzo is a pretty static character because he doesn’t really change throughout his part in the story. He stays as the same vengeful and hateful person as he was in the beginning. He was an antagonist because of the abuse he evoked upon Ender and his overall attitude in the story. Bonzo is a beautiful Mexican boy. He has dark black hair and black eyes. His skin is of a dark complexion. I thought Bonzo was an evil character that got what was coming to him. Despite this picture, you never really see the nice side of Bonzo. Character!

7. Colonel Hyrum Graff Colonel Graff is a pretty straight forward guy who is easy to read. He is the leader at Battle School and the head of the organization that is trying to ready Ender to Command the bugger army. He likes Ender, but he still pushes him really hard. He isn’t lenient and makes sure that Ender always relies on himself only. He does not allow him to get to comfortable with his situations and is always changing them games. He drives Ender over the edge at one point. Colonel Graff deals with a lot of stress in his life and he gains a bunch of weight. Though the book does not give precise information as to how he looks, but I imagine him as a tall man with sandy blonde hair speckled with grey, a thick beard and mustache, and dark brown eyes. I think that he is the protagonist in the story because he is not evil and though his intentions are sometimes questionable, you can agree that in the end they are the right thing to do to succeed. Colonel Graff is a major character in the story. He is ever present in Ender’s life. He is the person that brought Ender to Battle School, the one to take him out and give him a break, and the one who supervised him when he went to battle school. I think that all of that shows that he had a major impact on how the story ends. He is also a very static character due to the fact that he does not change throughout the story. His attitude remains the same and though he goes through physical changes, he does not change mentally. I found that I disliked his character because he was so harsh on Ender and relentlessly pushed him when he needed a break. His methods were crude, but affective. Character! Graff treated Ender badly, but on the inside he cared deeply for him.

8. Rising Action-The action leading up to the climax of a story. • Ender gets his monitor, which allows scientists to experience things from his perspective, taken off • Ender goes to school where he is picked on profusely by the bully, Stilson, for being a third child • Ender goes home and receives the same, if not worse, treatment from Peter, his older brother • Valentine is there though, so she sometimes makes the situation better by defending Ender • Colonel Graff comes to Ender’s house and proposes that he come to Battle School where he will learn to fight buggers • Colonel Graff manipulates Ender by telling him that though his parents love him, they never wanted a third child • Ender decides that even though he doesn’t want to go, he will (Climax 1) Plot! Ender hated school because school meant bullies.

9. Rising Action-The action leading up to the climax of a story. • On the launch ship to Battle School Ender gets targeted by Graff, leaving him prey to all of the resentful other children • Ender breaks Bernard’s arm when he wont leave him alone • Because of the affects of null gravity the injury was worse than it would have been if there was gravity, this marks him as evil with the other children even though Bernard hit him first • Ender gets put into a battle room where he has his own bunk and a futuristic desk that is like a computer with your own login • Bernard sets a tyranny before the launchies, but Ender humiliates him anonymously on the desk login imitating him and making a mockery of him, this breaks up most of the leadership he has, but not all of it • Ender becomes friends with Shen, who is also tormented by Bernard, and finally has a companion • The launch has there first day in a battle room, Ender exceeds everyone and is the first to gain control of the gravity affects and manipulate his body as well as the weapons • Ender becomes friends with Bernard’s best friend, Alai, and Bernard and Ender sort of call a truce • Ender gets stuck on The Giants Drink in the fantasy game he is playing and he has no idea what to do • Ender tears the Giants eyes out because he can never win, this kills the Giant, upset with what happened he logs off because he thinks that he is a murderer Plot! Which drink holds the poison?

10. Rising Action-The action leading up to the climax of a story. • Ender goes to help Alai set up a security system on his computer when he finds a note on his bed • He has gotten transferred to a different army, Salamander army to be exact, under the command of Bonzo Madrid • Bonzo is a jerk and acts as though Ender is ruining his entire army • Ender meets Petra and she becomes his only friend on Salamander Army • Ender is not allowed to participate in practices or battles • Battles are for any army above launchie, trying to defeat the army by freezing them • Petra gives Ender private battle lessons and Ender teaches private lessons with his old Launchy group • Ender outsmarts Bonzo when Bonzo tries to make him stop practicing with the Launchies • Ender is told by Madrid that he isn’t allowed to do anything in battle and they lose because of his stubbornness to not let Ender play • The second battle Ender can’t help it, he participates against orders and turns another loss into a tie Plot! Ender was moved from his launch group to Salamander Army, Commander Bonzo Madrid.

11. Rising Action-The action leading up to the climax of a story. • Bonzo hits Ender for disobeying him, in doing this unfair punishment he loses the respect of his army • Ender gets traded to Rat army and is regulated by Rose de Nose, he is then put under the control of Dink Meeker and his toon • All of the boys at Ender’s practice sessions are getting scared away by commanders who don’t want soldiers who have been trained by him • Ender beats up other soldiers who start a fight during one of his practice sessions • Ender gets to a part in his fantasy game Free Play where he is looking in the mirror and see’s Peter as his reflection, this event sufficiently breaks Ender Wiggin as nothing else has before • Valentine agrees with Peter to take over the nets and spread awareness on a Russian uprising, they also cover sensitive topics to slowly get famous under pseudo names Locke and Demosthenes • They use a nation password in which they cant be tracked and they get paid for their columns in security • Valentine gets convinced to write Ender a letter saying that he is nothing like Peter so that he will snap out of his trance Plot! Ender gets traded to Rat army, under the command of Rose de Nose.

12. Rising Action-The action leading up to the climax of a story. • A year has passed and Ender is given his own army, Dragon army • They are all beginners with no experience and Ender is not allowed to trade any of them • Ender teaches them well and is extremely hard on them, showing no lenience for anyone • He is really hard on Bean, the most intelligent one in the class, he treats him just how he was treated before • He makes a bunch of mini toons and works them really hard with no formations but perfectly executed plans • Ender is forced to stop his old practice sessions because he is now a commander • Ender is forced to give up his friendship with Alai and Shen • Ender is given a battle and he wins with his only three and a half week old team • He gets a battle every day and there are constant changes in the field and Ender starts to break apart at the hinges even though he wins every battle • Ender beats Bonzo’s army, but he gets frustrated about his 10 min. warning and how the Colonel Graff cheated Plot! Ender’s top soldiers a boy named Bean.

13. Rising Action-The action leading up to the climax of a story. • Ender also starts to get death threats from Bonzo and other jealous commander • Ender gets cornered in the bathroom by Bonzo and six other soldiers including Bernard, Ender fights Bernard and wins, he does it so thoroughly he kills him though he doesn’t know that at the time • Ender gets assigned two army’s to fight and that’s when he cracks, he beats them and gets graduated to command school, but he isn’t stable so he goes to a paradise island on Earth • Valentine meets up with him and convinces him to go to command school, and he does get convinced • He trains with Mazer Rackham, the old general of the second invasion, after he is flown of to Command School which is on Eros • Later on he meets up with all of his friends on a set of headphones, they are his fleet and he is fighting what he thinks are computer generated attacks by Mazer, but are really attacks from buggers • When he learns the truth Ender breaks down and everything comes crashing down on him (Climax 2) Plot! Ender is the commander of the bugger invasion.

14. Climax- The point in the story where everything changes for the character Climax 1 • Ender gets picked for Battle school, where he will train to become a commander to destroy the buggers • Man vs. Self is the conflict that occurs here. Ender knows that he should go to command school and learn to fight the buggers, but he does not want to leave his family behind. Valentine is his world and to leave her would cause him a great deal of pain. He wont miss Peter and though he loves his parents he can live without them. Ender has a severe mental struggle as to what is the right thing to do. In the end he decides that, even though he doesn’t want to, he will fight the buggers and make a better world for Valentine. Climax 2 • Ender wipes out the entire bugger race well commanding fleet ships. He doesn’t know that he is doing it well its happening, since he was tricked into thinking that it was just a computer generated event. • Man vs. Society is the conflict that occurs here. You can take the conflict to Ender vs. the Earth society or Ender vs. the bugger society. In both situations he has a tremendous effect on what happens in each. For Ender vs. the Earth society you see him trying to grasp control over his own life, but in the end you see that he is merely the puppet well others pull the strings. You can also argue that it is Ender vs. buggers, because despite his good intentions he must acknowledge that he is the reason that there race was wiped out. In both cases it is a tough conflict with not always great results. Extra Conflict • Man vs. Man is a prominent conflict. You see It between Bonzo and Ender as well as Peter and Ender. In both cases you see the fights that Ender gets into with both people. Before Ender goes to Battle School he experiences lots of difficulties with Peter and how he is treated because he is a better person then him and was wearing his monitor longer. When Ender got to Battle School the new antagonist was Bonzo who didn’t like Ender because he was a launchie with no experience, but could still best his system and outsmart him. Plot! Valentine is the reason he is fighting for a better world.

15. Falling Action-The action leading down from the climax of a story. • Ender goes to battle school and trains hard before finally taking control of commanding the fleet after the buggers (Climax 1) • After the battle is done with Ender is unable to get himself to get out of bed • A war on Earth has started and finished well he was in his trance • The Warsaw Pact was terminated and all is at peace under a different pact, the Locke Proposal • This proposal is giving Peter lots of power and he is the new Hegemon of Earth Plot! Peter becomes the ruler of the land (Earth).

16. Falling Action-The action leading down from the climax of a story. • Ender is not allowed to go back to Earth because he is better as an important name then a person living among them • He watches as each and every one of his friends go home, all bringing words of praise for there commander, Ender Wiggin • Ender is put on trial on Earth for the deaths of Bonzo Madrid and Stilson, but he is found innocent because of there provocation in the whole ordeal • Valentine comes to visit Ender and tells him of how she ensured that he would never go back to Earth and be one of Peters pawns • Valentine and Ender set off to settle in the empty bugger planets, to start a new life and restore old bonds Plot! Ender finds paradise on a beach house.

17. Mood-What you feel based on the characters actions or feelingsMood in Enders game-What I feel based on what happens to Ender or other main characters in the story Guilty • “I stole their future from them; I can only begin to repay by seeing what I can learn from their past.” (Card pg 314) • In this passage Ender feels guilty and resentful for all that has happened to the buggers because of him. He feels that if he had grasped an understanding of them he will be liberated from the guilt. I for one felt guilty as well because the way Card described how Ender was feeling made you feel the same. Throughout the story I have been rooting for the demise of the buggers, but once you feel what Ender is feeling you can’t help but to feel guilty for what happened to them. They were not the ones who attacked Earth, they left us in peace, but because of the need for revenge they were robbed of their future. I honestly felt guilty because the way Ender describes things you cant help but feel that you were the one in the wrong. You were the one who caused all of the trouble. Yet, you are the one who still lives. And that is why, just as Ender will forever carry the guilt of dead buggers, we also will feel it. Mood

18. Mood-What you feel based on the characters actions or feelingsMood in Enders game-What I feel based on what happens to Ender or other main characters in the story Sad • “Lying on his back, still soaking wet with sweat and water, he gasped his sobs, tears seeping out of his closed eyelids and disappearing in the water on his face.” (Card pg 213) • Well reading this described I felt really sad for Ender. He gets pushed so hard by everybody and you have to acknowledge the fact that at the end of the day he is still just a little boy. He is 10 years old and yet he has the weight of the entire world pressed upon his wiry figure. His pain in this passage just hurts your heart. As you read the book you become more and more attached to his character and you don’t want things like this to happen to him. He did not pick a fight with Bonzo, Bonzo came after him. Bonzo may have died, but he is still ever present to Ender because he has caused him so much mental and physical abuse. I feel that the treatment Ender is forced to endure is unjust and nobody seems to understand that though he is a genius he has limitations just like every person. This was a sad passage for every person to pick up this book. Mood

19. Mood-What you feel based on the characters actions or feelingsMood in Enders game-What I feel based on what happens to Ender or other main characters in the story Happy • “Ender didn’t wave when she walked down the hill toward him, didn’t smile when she stepped onto the floating boat slip. But she knew that he was glad to see her, knew because of the way his eyes never left her face.” ( Card pg 234) • When reading this passage I cant help but feel happy because it seems that a good thing has finally happened to Ender. He is happy that he is seeing Valentine and Valentine is happy to see him. This passage does not seem to express much emotion, but I find it to be very emotional and touching. Ender is seeing Valentine again for the first time since he was six. Though it may be hard to find this passage really touches on that even though Ender has changed certain parts of him remain the same. Like his love for Valentine. The mood evoked from these simple words and gestures such as eye contact really sum up Ender and Valentines relationship. Though there days of being extremely close to each other is gone, there is still a deep emotion they feel, a bond closer than just a brother and sister. All of this just made me feel happy, because it kind of represented hope for me. Hope that despite everything that has happened to Ender he will always still have Valentine to lean on. Mood

20. Resolution • Resolution- The resolution of the book is that Ender moves to one of the other Bugger planets with Valentine to start a new civilization, he doesn’t have to deal with things on Earth and he no longer will fighting be necessary now he will be rebuilding. He hopes that this trip will provide some closure for him, well she hopes that it will reconstruct the relationship she has lost with Ender the moment he got into the car with Colonel Graff and left for Battle School. • Theme- The theme of Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card is every choice you make comes with a consequence. These theme is very prominent in the book, you see it all the time with the affects of certain decisions Ender makes throughout the book. • One is killing all of the buggers. Though he didn’t do it purposefully he still has to reap the consequences of the seeds he’s sown. • “I stole their future, from them; I can only begin to repay by seeing what I can learn from their past.” (Card 314) This quote describes what Ender is going to do to make up for annihilating the bugger race. • Another example of theme is Ender killing Bonzo, he didn’t know he killed him, he thought he had just seriously injured him. But even with that knowledge he felt remorseful . He never wanted to hurt anybody, he just wanted to be left alone. When he learns that he killed Bonzo he starts to regret his decision to thoroughly hurt him so he wouldn’t come back later. So now he must live with that decision. Ender and Valentine start a new life. T R

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