Ender’s Game Book Report
Ender’s Game Ender’s Game is a science fiction novel which was written by Orson Scott Card. This novel is about a brilliant military strategist, Ender Wiggin, whose story takes place in the future where there is a constant threat of an invasion from aliens who have been given the slanderous nickname, Bugger. Ender’s childhood is not an easy one considering he gets teased at school for being a “third” only to come home to an abusive brother who is always harassing Ender and his sister Valentine and he has the weight of the world on his shoulders because they believe that he is the last hope for mankind to fight off the Buggers.
After many years of monitoring Ender the International Fleet decides they want to recruit Ender into Battle School, the story’s plot takes off from here where he struggles to cope with others who despise him, he struggles with the thought of leaving his childhood, Valentine and his home and he is also in the constant struggle to dominate the Battle Room. After a few years on this spaceship Ender becomes demotivated and has to visit Earth and see Valentine where he learns about Peter’s plot to take over the world.
After this Ender gets shipped off to Eros, the planet which Command School is on and where he meets Mazer Rackham, who was the hero of the first bugger invasion, and Mazer begins training Ender on a simulator that learns and gets harder as the Buggers learn from the past. Eventually Ender beats the simulator only to find out he was commanding the real thing and they didn’t tell him because they wanted to keep his emotions out of it.
He also finds out that Earth has been taken over by Peter so he and Valentine colonize the bugger’s old planet where he finds a bugger pupa where he then decides to try and help it. Ender was a young genius who was a third child or third in a time when having more than two children was considered bad. Because of this he was always teased but his birth was actually authorized by the government in an attempt to save the world form the Buggers.
Ender changed from innocent and trusting into a hardened and semi-emotionless machine by the end of the story. Ender’s brother and sister had a very big influence on Ender, if it weren’t for them being so smart the International Fleet wouldn’t have authorized Ender’s birth and if it weren’t for Peter he wouldn’t have known how to cry silently and Valentine helped him cope with Peter while also teaching him how to love and helping him when he visits Earth right before going to Command School.
The story has many settings. The first of which takes place sometime in the future somewhere on Earth where there is a constant threat of a bugger invasion and having a third child is considered bad which made life a lot harder for Ender which was one of many reasons why he left to Battle School. The setting then moves to the spaceship which Battle School is on which doesn’t really need to be on a spaceship unless Orson Scott Card wanted the spaceship to help with the feeling of isolation.
As the story progresses the setting moves to the planet Eros which is where he will be fighting the Buggers thinking he is just in a simulation but he is really fighting the Buggers. One theme that I noticed throughout the novel is how something small can represent something so big like the game that they played in Battle School was a simple game but it was everything they had so it meant so much to them. Another example of this theme is when Ender was in Command School working on the “simulator” and Ender viewed the game as child’s play when in reality he was fighting the real war without even knowing.
This book was interesting at the beginning because of the way Orson Scott Card introduces you to a new world where you have no idea what is going on and slowly reveals the setting as you need to learn it, not overloading you with information at the beginning of the book but not leaving you clueless wondering why something just happened. Overall I thought the book took too long to get to the point on certain occasions and I didn’t really find the plot interesting which made it pretty boring.
I find the idea of Ender always being up against opponents older than him or more numerous than him relatable because sometimes I feel like I am always ignored when I ask for a later bedtime because both of my parents look down on me because I am young. The ending was very interesting when he found out that he just defeated the Buggers without knowing and felt guilty but when he got to the Bugger’s planet he found the pupa and was trying to find a new home for it.
