Ender's World Page 8

  “I’ll carry you,” said Ender. “I’ll go from world to world until I find a time and a place where you can come awake in safety. And I’ll tell your story to my people, so that perhaps in time they can forgive you, too. The way that you’ve forgiven me.”

  Forgiveness, the chance for redemption, hope, and peace are finally given to the monster—but not by the winners. These gifts don’t come from the people who shaped him and used him, whose world he saved. The gifts that let Ender go forward healed and at peace come from the losers. The people he beat. The people he destroyed.

  In Ender’s game, winning is the province of the enemy and brings only pain. True strength comes not from being the best—which Ender is—but from alliance, teamwork, friendship…and the losers. It’s a very stark world. But it’s one hell of an answer to those Nike commercials.

  Hilari Bell writes SF and fantasy for kids and teens, including the Farsala Trilogy, the Knight & Rogue series, and the Raven Duet. Her favorite hobby is “decadent” camping, because that’s the only time she gets to do enough reading—though when it comes to reading, there’s no such thing as enough. Her website is www.hilaribell.com.

  Q. If you could go back and re-write Ender’s Game, what would you change? Is there something that has always bothered you, something you wrote that you now think is silly, or something you wish you would have included?

  A. You can see which things I would change by noticing what I have changed in Ender’s Shadow and Ender in Exile, and what I have re-explained in First Meetings and other Ender-related stories. Ender’s Game was written with only one sequel in mind—Speaker for the Dead. Ender’s Game represented the best I could do at the time with the story I was telling, but it would be depressing indeed if I had not learned a great deal more about writing and everything else in the years since then.

  But it is also true that, while I have written many books that I regard as better—truer, deeper, more important, more technically expert, and more artistically pleasing—I have written no novel that has resonated with the public to the degree that Ender’s Game has.

  There is a novel that I completely rewrote after learning much more about my craft, and about everything else. My first novel, Hot Sleep, was structurally a mess. A few years later, after I had learned a lot about novel writing, I rewrote it completely as The Worthing Chronicle, which now forms the major part of the book The Worthing Saga. But The Worthing Chronicle did not resonate with the audience the way Hot Sleep did; despite all the improvements (and there were many!) between the versions, I also apparently lost something. Freshness, perhaps; the vigor of first-telling; the very naivete that was both flaw and irreplaceable virtue.

  So it is safe to say that, were I writing Ender’s Game today, it would be very different in the manner of the telling, but I do not have any reason to believe that it would be better, or more effective as storytelling.

  I am lucky, as a writer, to have one book that resonates with the public as Ender’s Game does. At the same time, I must point out that at some time every book of mine has been singled out by one or more readers as their absolute favorite, as my “best.” All these stories have a reason to exist; they all tell some kind of truth about human life as best I understand it; and if some have larger audiences than others, that is only to be expected.

  But I have no intention of doing a complete overhaul of Ender’s Game. I am preparing an edition that reconciles a few contradictions between Ender’s Game and the later-written books, just as Tolkien revised The Hobbit slightly to bring the ringlore of that book into line with what was required by the later Lord of the Rings. But these are changes of detail, not serious revisions. I am quite content with Ender’s Game as it stands.

  —OSC

  PARALLAX REGAINED

  Two Views of Ender’s Game

  DAVID LUBAR AND ALISON S. MYERS

  Introduction #1: On the Origin of Thesis

  My daughter and I have much in common. We both would rather lose a pint of blood than an argument. We both were raised by book-loving parents (heh, heh). And we both seem to have a knack for finding creative solutions to problems—especially those problems that would go away if left alone.

  When I was asked to write an essay about Ender’s Game, it dawned on me that, despite our commonalities and our 50 percent identical DNA, my daughter and I approach the book from a variety of opposed perspectives. As a writer whose books are often assigned to students for required reading, I’m on the supply side of publishing and education. As a teacher who has taught science fiction and AP English, my daughter is on the demand side. I’m male, she’s female. I’m her parent, she’s my (grown) child. I grew up in a world without the internet; she can text with her eyes closed. My speculative preference as a young adult was for science fiction, hers was for fantasy. Even where there are commonalities, we diverge. Though we both studied philosophy, having fallen in love with it at the first sip, my focus was logic and computability, hers was ethics, identity, and responsibility.

  I can think of no approach to this essay that is more exciting, and potentially more revealing, than to hold a discussion with her about our perceptions of and reactions to Ender’s Game. Our conversation will definitely be a discussion, not an argument. At the moment, I don’t have any pints of blood to spare. And I hate to lose.

  In the interest of starting off in a balanced fashion, I’ll now pass the pen over to her for the second introduction.

  Introduction #2: Speaker for the Daughter

  I grew up trying to foster everything that was the opposite of my parents: if they suggested a book, I refused to read it. If something was forbidden, it became all the more tempting. This benefited both of us: when I was told to go to bed, I thought that staying up to read under my covers with a flashlight was a great and noble act of rebellion (and it probably was part of my parents’ plan the whole time).

  I don’t remember my dad suggesting I read Ender’s Game when I was younger for this very reason: he’d never suggest such a sacred text to someone who’d reject it only because it was recommended by a parent. And although I discovered its brilliance only later, as an adult, it was as an adult who would be telling kids to read the book after being given Ender’s Game as one novel in the curriculum for a science fiction course I was teaching.

  My dad and I are coming from similar and dissimilar places, and a dialogue seems a natural way to approach these opposing viewpoints: much like Graff and Anderson’s discussions at the beginning of each chapter, a philosophical dialogue is a candid look at all of these viewpoints. Both of us are stubborn enough to refuse to be the interlocutor, so I’ll default to the older and wiser of the two of us to begin.

  D: I’m not sure when I read Ender’s Game for the first time. I re-read it in 1998 at the suggestion of my editor at Starscape (a Tor imprint that had just released a new edition of the book for younger readers). He felt the Graff sections would give me some ideas about how to reveal more of the world in the novel I was working on because my novel was written from the first-person viewpoint of a single character. I was definitely inspired by this technique.

  A: And I read it for the first time as a teacher. To teach about a six-year-old’s coming of age to a class of seniors in the spring is like handing them the best skydiving manual an hour before they’re going to be pushed out of the plane.

  These kids are about to experience the ultimate monitor-removal: leaving school. And just as Ender worries about becoming like Peter now that his monitor is gone, students graduating from high school are faced with radical freedom as well as with what could be debilitating responsibility to fulfill the expectations that have been set for them, and their new ontological status as “graduates.” The depth and extremity of Ender’s isolation from everything safe—his parents, his sister, his home, and even his planet—parallels the approaching graduation. Ender still has the choice of whether to go to Battle School. My students have a choice in their future, but it’s likewise unknown and scary. Stude
nts are also leaving what’s comfortable and familiar. By leaving home, they’re approaching complete responsibility for all of the decisions they’ll make in their lives.

  D: Though they may be leaving one home, part of growing up is finding your own home (even if you have to take a slight detour and save humanity from extermination before you get a chance to start apartment hunting). But to the parent, the child who moves out will always have two homes (unless the homes are separated by interplanetary distances).

  A: And this is part of the “master of two worlds” that my students become once they graduate: when they leave for college, they have a college “home” and a hometown “home”—it’s reconciling the two, much like reconciling being a soldier and a friend (like Ender), that’s difficult. Ender has to find a way to fulfill the expectations set for him by his soldiers as well as his teachers. He has an ultimate mission—saving humanity—and several local missions—peer acceptance, platoon success, and self-preservation—at the same time.

  What one could read as Ender’s goal, to be unforgettable, is cemented early in the novel. “They won’t forget me,” he says, after he beats the older boys at the holographic game. This is something that seniors can all relate to: part of embarking on adulthood is thinking about what you’re leaving at your high school. Students want to leave a mark on their school—whether they want to write the best paper you’ll ever read or be the worst-behaved kid you’ve ever seen.

  D: Those goals don’t end with graduation. Some writers write to be immortal, or at least, like your students, to make a mark. That creates a “be careful what you wish for” scenario. Most successful writers see a dynamic change in the way they are treated by their peers after they break in. (Writers are just as cliquish as students. We’ve merely swapped the cafeteria for conventions, pubs, listservs, and other gathering spots.) It’s okay to be successful but not too successful. I think the scene in chapter eleven where the commanders react to Ender’s success is a perfect metaphor for the way I suspect some writers responded to Scott after the rise of Ender’s Game. Revealing more of my dark side than is wise, I’ll admit it is easier for me to like and applaud books that broke out before I broke in.

  A: I often hear kids telling each other to be mindful of the pitfalls of success, especially envy—particularly when it comes to bullying. Unless they know they won’t be ridiculed for outstanding success, they want to stay safely in the middle, for fear of those who pick out and try to destroy the eccentric or the talented outliers.

  D: Ironically, it’s often the outlier who becomes the writer—assuming he survives the bullying.

  A: Growing up is painful.

  D: As is observing that growth.

  A: But it’s part of the “human condition” that I talk about so much in my classes, and the fear of the unknown, of not knowing “the plan.” In Ender’s case, and unbeknownst to him, the plan actually exists.

  Graff says, “He can never come to believe that anybody will ever help him out, ever. If he once thinks there’s an easy way out, he’s wrecked.” Throughout the years that I’ve been teaching, I’ve always had at the foundation of my pedagogy the idea that teaching is the gradual transfer of responsibility from myself to my students. Ideally, they all leave me completely comfortable in their autonomy, and ready to enter the “real world”—which is a phrase with intriguing implications in Ender’s Game. There’s an interesting relationship between practice and reality, where when you’re in “practice,” there’s still a degree of reality to it, but in reality—haha—all practice is reality. When we think we’re preparing for the next stage, we’re still in a reality.

  D: And in reality, we all strive to know the plan—which brings us to one of the many masterful elements of this book. Ender is facing the unknown. But we aren’t. One reason the book absorbs the reader is that we know the plan. Graff says what he is going to do to Ender. We’re now being prodded by a two-pronged suspense fork. We not only wonder what exactly will happen—how Graff will carry out that plan—we also wonder how much Ender will figure out. For Ender, the story is a mystery. For the reader, it is a suspense novel. Though we are both led blindfolded to the final twist. (The reader has a much easier journey than Ender.)

  The chapter openings are a brilliant way to show things that Ender doesn’t know because most of the book is written from Ender’s third-person limited viewpoint. I suspect that writers are much more aware of viewpoint shifts than most readers. For those who want to study such things, take note of the places where we see a scene from Valentine’s or Bean’s viewpoint, and take special note of the way Ender’s first-person thoughts are presented without the traditional use of italics.

  A: And stylistically, this makes his thoughts homogeneous with the narration.

  D: The very first use of first person for Ender’s thoughts takes place in Ender’s opening scene, and is introduced not with “he thought” or with italics but by smoothly transitioning from an action (“tried to imagine”) to the thought that arose from the action: “Ender tried to imagine the little device missing from the back of his neck. I’ll roll over on my back and it won’t be pressing there.”

  A: This sets the tone for the reader for the rest of the novel; it leads the reader to understand that she will be privy to Ender’s thoughts. Ender and the reader are intimate from the beginning—she can trust Ender to tell her the truth and the way that things really are.

  D: Speaking of trust and intimacy, I find it fascinating that we get the shift to first person for Ender, Valentine, and even Bean, but not for Peter. Peter, alone, remains shadowy, never fully revealed by the tools of viewpoint. The problem is, writers can do all these brilliant things, and then they wait for someone to notice them. Writing is one of the most difficult art forms for those who crave a response. (I plead guilty to this weakness. Validation is my drug of choice.) If I paint or draw, I can get immediate feedback or at least validation in the form of a gasp of delight when I unveil the canvas. If I compose, you merely have to sit back and listen while my music plays. No real effort is required. But if I want you to respond to a novel, I need patience on my part and effort on yours.

  A: And this is exactly what teaching is like—the time and patience that go into guiding a student to becoming whoever she will be doesn’t have immediate rewards (aside from the occasional parent-mandated thank-you note at the end of the year).

  D: Happily, most of your work stays in print for many decades. And if you teach for long enough, you’ll even get to work on sequels.

  A: And I frequently teach different editions. Sometimes I’ve taught several kids from the same family.

  D: Of course, like most analogies, this one offers interesting contrasts. A book reaches many people for a brief period (though the memory can last a lifetime). A teacher reaches fewer people but for a prolonged interaction.

  A: As a teacher, you may change a student’s life (for better or worse!), but part of the job is being okay with the idea that you might never know the impact you have. I can see how writers and teachers are both creators, but with a teacher, so much depends on the student. Two autonomous agents are working toward (again, hopefully) the same goal—learning, growth, and development. Creating a future.

  D: And just as teachers sometimes receive amazing letters from former students, either at graduation time or many years later, most writers can tell wonderful stories of getting “you changed my life” letters, like the one Scott shared in the introduction to the definitive edition of Ender’s Game.

  On the other hand, writing a popular book means you are forced to become, to some degree, a public person. The bigger the book, the more the world sees you as their own. Given that most writers tend to be introverts, this can be a painful transition. In many cases, the successful writer is asked to become a teacher. As in all things, some of us are better at it, and more comfortable with it, than others.

  Even if they never enter a classroom, writers are indirect teachers, both through the texts the
y create and the actions of their characters. For any writer who pays attention to what he reads, Ender’s Game is a classroom on viewpoint, plotting, pacing, and character development.

  A: Ender himself is a better teacher than I could ever hope to be, both to his Battle School troops and to my students—the lessons that he learns are everything that I hope my students take away from high school. I’m lucky to be able to lead my students to Ender, for them to gain these lessons through his experiences.

  D: Three responses, if I may.

  First, like Ender, you underestimate yourself.

  Second, only fictional characters can achieve such a high success rate with their plans. Writers have the pleasure of creating super-human humans. We also have the luxury of second chances. Our characters can succeed, even where we have failed. (I’m not saying Scott flunked out of Battle School or had his monitor yanked after only one week. I’m speaking of writers and life in general.)

  Third, the fact that you tied graduation to monitor removal shows you have the kind of creative mind we desperately need in our classrooms. (When I think about graduation and science fiction, the line that comes to mind is, “Danger, Mrs. Robinson!” This helps explain why I don’t belong in the classroom.) I can’t speak for Scott, but I love it when readers find depth and meaning of this sort in my work, whether or not I put it there, and I suspect most writers feel this way. I try to weave connections into my work at all levels, but readers constantly ask, “Was this intentional?” about things I never intended or even noticed. Making observations and connections, as you did when you linked monitor removal to graduation, is a wonderful activity that enhances the pleasure of reading. I trust you shared some of these observations with your students, and they shared their own observations with you.

  A: Definitely. My students have a field day with the names that Scott used—Ender (the one to end the war) is a gateway to a discussion like this, but they make the connection that Valentine is the one who loves her brother the most. Peter is the oldest, and many of my students have made a connection to St. Peter (as the foundation and rock of a faith).