"Ender gets to strike out at his enemies and still remain morally clean. Nothing is his fault. Stilson already lies defeated on the ground, yet Ender can kick him in the face until he dies, and still remain the good guy. Ender can drive bone fragments into Bonzo’s brain and then kick his dying body in the crotch, yet the entire focus is on Ender's suffering. For an adolescent ridden with rage and self-pity, who feels himself abused (and what adolescent doesn’t?), what’s not to like about this scenario? So we all want to be Ender. As Elaine Radford has said, 'We would all like to believe that our suffering has made us special—especially if it gives us a righteous reason to destroy our enemies.'
"But that’s a lie. No one is that special; no one is that innocent. If I felt that Card’s fiction truly understood this, then I would not have written this essay."
This is a pretty interesting perspective on a book that I thought I knew a lot about. In middle school, I was in an English class that devoted a lot of time to reading and discussing Ender's Game. I even wrote a possible continuation as part of a final project. Thinking back on it, despite all the discussing we did, I'm not sure that we ever explored the idea that Ender was anything other than a heroic little boy triumphing over evil. It does make for an interesting re-read though. Maybe I'll stop by the library sometime soon...
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