Ender’s Game
Ender Wiggin is a special six year old boy sent to a special military school simply for the honor of the way he handles himself. The Government sees the great potential in Ender and sees the possibility of him being the one to save the world from the buggers (huge alien insects who almost wiped out all of humankind once upon a time). Everyone selected to go to this military school is to never contact their family ever again until they are eighteen. His brother Peter was jealous of the fact that Ender became a third longer than he did and punished him all the time by beating on Ender whenever the chance arose.
Ender has a sister named Valentine who by her name you could guess she was the love and good in Ender’s life. Their bond was of the strongest thing that Ender had to remembering the outside world. His brother Peter talks Valentine into using her special skills of persuasion to help him get the audience of the people to recognize his intelligence in order to try and gain a seat of power to run the world. They are all VERY gifted children; in fact most of these kids are not your ordinary six, seven, and eight year olds in this novel.
The government is searching for that one leader who will help them be prepared and ready to win a war against a fearsome opponent (buggers). In that, the ones who actually make it to battle school are put in battles against each other in order for the government to test the potential in every kid that is attending in situations where they must improvise and show leadership. Battle training called” Games” that all the boys lived for in battle school.
This story portrays emotions such as anger, love, and hate. It reminded me both of “Harry Potter” and “Cirque Du Freak” in its own way. It reminded me mostly of Cirque Du Freak when they were at battle school and Ender is all on his own and has to go through so many obstacles and overcomes them all with his intelligence more than just pure brute strength. In Cirque Du Freak when Darren had the trials to become a vampire prince where Darren also had to use intelligence seeing as every vampire prince was full blooded and much faster and stronger than he was. Even though he was only a half blood vampire he still succeeded, he did what no one else has ever done in the history of vampirism. Not only was he the youngest vampire ever to beat the trials, but he was not even up to par in strength, speed, and experience.
The part that reminded me of Harry Potter was how Ender fought himself from being so much like Peter and even saw himself as his brother in the mirror in the desk game. Harry also did not want to be like his counterpart Lord Voldemort for instance. He wanted to prove to himself how much he was NOT like him but kept finding faults. Ender too did this, even began to get discouraged as to where he would just give and not care until he got a letter from his sister which grounded him.
That’s one of my favorite parts of heroes, when they face immense obstacles in their way. Call me crazy, but it makes it that more special when the hero doesn’t have everything going for them. If anything, it’s backwards they have everything going against them. Yet they come out from the smoke of raging fire that is life simply because their hearts were too pure and thus strengthened by good morals. It is then when you can actually relate yourself to character knowing that life isn’t perfect like in fairytales. Life can be actually cruel, but when you can twist fate and become a shining star is what everyone dreams of.
There are some other young heroes we can add to the group. Like young Percy Jackson who found out his lineage to Poseidon (the god of the sea). He is a demigod which is half god half human. Out of the four heroes I’ve mentioned, three are half-bloods which is pretty intriguing. It could possibly be branched from one of the most famous heroes before superman, and that Hercules (also a demigod and the son of Zeus). Not sure if it is actually true, just a theory that just happen to come to me.
Although Ender isn’t a half-blood anything, he’s an amazing child. The story portrays emotions such as anger, love, and hate. The love between Ender and Valentine, the anger between Ender and his competitors, and the hate between Ender and his brother Peter. It goes in to detail about the events happening such as war, violence, and competition for power. The wars between the buggers and humans, the violence Ender has to go through against other boys, and the competition that the armies have against each other. These emotions and events that occur in the book take place in our lives every day. I only disliked a few things throughout the story such as Ender and his siblings being most intelligent children and the things they did at such a young age. I also disliked how Ender was sent to battle school at the age of six, and the fact that he became a commander and the world was relying on him at such a young age is pretty insane to think about. I mean, at least Harry was seventeen, and Darren around twenty-five. The pacing of the story was great though, there was never a time that I wasn’t guessing what was going to happen next. Great foreshadowing created suspense throughout the novel. I thought the character development was great especially for Ender because as a young boy he was very kind and loving but as he got older he developed evil and cruel characteristics like his brother which he hated. The sentence structure was mostly in third person perspective told by the narrator with the exception of the discussions at the beginning of each chapter. I feel a connection with this novel when it displays many examples of competition because I am a very competitive person and this enabled me to envision myself in these scenarios. At every beginning of each chapter it hinted that there was something exciting going to happen later in the chapter which kept me on my heels at all times. People who enjoy science fiction would definitely love this book and even people who aren’t science fiction fans because the novel has a lot of action, drama, and suspense.