Bookworms: Ender’s Game (1985) by Orson Scott Card
“All is fair in love and war.” – an old idiom
Ender’s Game is a book of contradictions. It is about children playing at war. It is about old men warring with children. It is about boys being boys and girls being boys. It is about the wisdom of the young confounding the knowledge of the old. It is about xenophobia and unity. It is about what is human and what is alien. It is about love as the best way to kill. It is about war as a game.
Ender’s Game stands as a paragon of science fiction. It does what science fiction does best: it makes the reader question fundamental beliefs. As long as there have been humans, there has been conflict, and sadly that conflict usually escalates into full scale violence: war. But is war really the best option, even in the face of annihilation? What does it mean to hate your enemy? What does it mean to love your enemy? If there can be no common ground, even between human and alien, what then does this show us about common ground between human and human?
Ender is chosen to be the last child commander of Earth’s galactic fleet in the last great war against an all powerful alien armada. He is chosen, ostensibly, because of his genius, his youthful creativity, and his will to survive. At least, that is what we are told. What we are shown is completely different. We are shown a commander that has no desire to command. A warrior who wishes he didn’t have to war. We are shown a combatant that only understands how to win combat when he loves his opponent. Ender only truly understands how to win when he understands what it means to be his enemy. The other things about Ender are all true: he will not back down from a fight if he is left no other choice. He is a genius. He is vastly creative. But none of those things make him Earth’s greatest commander. His compassion for his enemy does. His love for his troops does. His ability to feel the best emotions of humanity is what makes Ender a great commander.
Ender’s journey is one of a child who does not understand himself who grows into a teenager who understands himself far too well. Ender defeats the alien enemy, to no one’s surprise. But Ender does not consider himself the hero everyone knows him to be. In winning the final battle, in winning every battle, Ender is a hero. He saves humanity itself from extinction. But Ender doesn’t care. He knows he is, in fact, a monster, because he had to annihilate an alien race to save the human race. Survival is the one great equalizer. Given a choice, all species will fight for survival no matter what, whether bug, or fish, or bear, or human, or alien. But is survival at the cost of another’s survival worth it? To Ender, it is not. To Ender, there is another ideal, a higher ideal: coexistence. At it’s heart, Ender’s Game is a war novel masquerading as a poem to peace. Peace is better than winning in war. Peace is better than triumph in life. If one cannot live life at peace with themselves, then life is not worth the living. If victory in war comes because everyone else is dead, then there is no victory and the war was in vain. A battle in which no one loses and a war in which no one dies, those are the conflicts worth fighting. Those are the wars that breed heroes. Ender understands this, Ender exemplifies this, Ender is this: the hero that is the monster.
That is just a small example of what makes Ender’s Game one of the best works of literature of our age, and why it should be read and discussed. As long as there are wars there will be war games, and as long as there are war games, we should understand the lessons that Ender’s Game teaches: loving your enemy is the only way to win, and refusing to fight is the only way to triumph.