Summary: A confrontation between buggers and earthlings once nearly lead to the destruction

of Earth. Expecting that the buggers will attack once again, various leaders of Earth decide on a

pre-emptive strike. As their previous victory depended on the tactical genius of a single

individual (Mazer Rackham), the leaders of Earth set out to find a young genius who will lead

the charge. They select Ender, one of a family of three geniuses; and, after he passes a few tests,

Ender is recruited for battle school. Battle school ends up proving how good a choice Colonel

Graff made in his selection of Ender, but it proves to be a very alienating experience for Ender.

In order to ensure that Ender becomes a competent commander, he is consistently set up to draw

upon himself the animosity of those around him. Largely without friends at battle school, he also

ends up spending years apart from his best friend, his sister Valentine. Eventually Ender is sent

to lead the battle against the buggers. He wins the battle, but is unaware that his battles were

against real buggers. Ender later learns that the buggers were not in fact intent on attacking

earthlings again. The novel ends with Ender and Valentine seeking a safe place for a surviving

queen bugger papa to spawn a new bugger civilization.

Assessment: On the back one of the older copies of this book, one of my favourite authors--

Gene Wolfe--writes that Ender’s Game will be a perpetual favourite because what it has to say

about human nature is true. I enjoyed this book, but I hope that my students find the book’s

repetitive “sink or swim” type scenarios hard to savour. I know what it was like to be bullied; I

know what it was like to have a group of peers wishing me harm; and so I could enjoy seeing

how Ender reacted to some of the similar situations I had been through. Those people who

haven’t known what it was like to be bullied, I imagine, might find these situations both jarring

and unpleasant. Perhaps they might, as I now do, wish, considering Card’s skill in crafting the
family relationship between Ender, Valentine, and Peter, that Card had crafted a book around the

three of them.

Since the earthlings really had no means of knowing that the buggers would not attack

again, their military effort, and their manipulation of Ender, in the end seem completely justified.

My concern is with Card: why, I wonder, did he chose to create a novel which makes military

force seem so legitimate? Is his message problematic? This is something I might want to

explore with a class.

I know that series books are often scorned by critics, but I would like to provide some

books such as Ender’s Game for a class to explore so that those who really enjoy it have some

obvious subsequent books to go to for more of the same.

Teaching: This book would probably appeal to those interested in military tactics. Assignments

could play on this. Get students to research famous battle victories from previous wars (or

successful tactical strategies sport coach’s [perhaps someone whom students have had experience

with] have used). It also emphasizes and maintains the idea of the need for a strong central

leader. They could be asked to do a journal entry on when (if ever) they think it might be good

to have a leader and when it might not be.

This is a book which seems to either really delight or strongly alienate its readers. Those

uninterested in the book could be asked to write out exactly why they didn’t like the book. Or,

alternatively, they could be asked to create a poster spoofing some of the scenes and/or

characters. Perhaps they could create their own cover (or a short comic of one of its scenes) for a

Mad magazine-like send-up of the novel (after being provided with a few examples of such send-

ups).