...Winning at the Cost of Morality Winning always comes at a cost. Sometimes the damages come in the form of materialistic objects. Other times the cost is one’s own soul. In the book Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card, the main character, Andrew “Ender” Wiggin learns very quickly the detriments of his decisions. The choices he makes affect not only his own life, but the lives of his family, his friends, his adversaries, and the countless lives of the buggers. Winston Churchill once said that “A man does what he must – in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures – and that is the basis of all human morality.” Ender Wiggin is the epitome of this quote. Ender Wiggin was born to win. He was created in a lab by the government to have the ultimate genetic capacity—to have extreme intelligence, with just enough compassion and fury to save humanity. Being a third, which is a derogatory term used for a third child, implied that Ender was an ignominy to his family and to society. This title forced Ender to prove that he was better, that he could win when no one else could, including his own brother and sister. The first evidence of Ender’s intense need to win happened as soon as he had the monitor removed from his head. Upon his return from the infirmary, Ender’s nemesis, Stilson, approached him to torment him once again. Ender, who had received many beatings from this boy in the past, thought, “I have to win this now, and for all time, or I'll...
Words: 1187 - Pages: 5
... Though this was a major milestone in history, there was still many facts about space travel that scientists were not yet aware of. Orson Scott Card wrote Ender’s Game , a futuristic book where the main setting is in space, in 1985. He then rewrote it in 1991 to better the accuracy of certain facts throughout the book. As time went on, scientists continued to discover the realities of space travel; therefore, Card would need to update facts about how people age in space, traveling at the speed of light, and the effects of space travel on the human body to, once again, make Ender’s Game an accurate novel. Though people in space age slower than humans on earth, they only gain 0.007 seconds of extra life over a period of six months. The most important difference between aging on earth and aging in space is the aging process. This process typically includes bones becoming brittle, blood vessels hardening, muscles wasting away, joints stiffening up, bowels turning irritable, bladders becoming unpredictable, teeth decaying, vision growing dim, and skin wrinkling up. Jessika Toothman explains this when she says, “While for most people, it takes decades to really feel the effects of the aging process, humans stationed in space experience some of them in fast forward.” In order to help make Ender’s Game more accurate, Orson Scott Card would need to Fields 2 change the way Mazer Rackham aged. “‘Why aren’t you dead?’ Ender asked him. ‘You fought ...
Words: 1539 - Pages: 7
...homework or clean your room, but what if it was something damaging? What if you were forced to kill of an entire race or species? Ender Wiggin had to do just that at only eleven years of age. Orson Scott Card’s novel Ender’s Game demonstrates forcing children to go into wars and genocide, which have been issues in many other countries. Card presents genocide and forcing children to fight in wars through the character Ender; an eleven-year-old boy who is imposed into fighting and wiping out the whole bugger species. Card writes, “‘… You won every battle, and today you finally fought them at their home world, where the queen was, all the queens from all their colonies, they all were there and you destroyed them completely…’”(297). In this conversation, Ender realizes that it wasn’t a game, and all of the attacks he enforced were real. He actually committed genocide, something he clearly did not want to do. Another example is, “ ‘Of course we tricked you into it. That’s the whole point,’ said Graff. ‘It had to be a trick or you couldn’t have done it… But somebody with that much compassion could never be the killer we needed. Could never go into battle willing to win at all costs. If you knew, you couldn’t do it…’”(Card 298). With this detail, it shows that this was not Ender’s choice and that he did not want to harm anyone. Graff tricked Ender into doing this because deep down everyone knew that Ender could not really do it. However, a child had to lead the battle. “ ‘And it had to be...
Words: 984 - Pages: 4
... but the invention of new technologies is passing these laws. As complicated as the question gets, I believe that the government is justified to immerse itself into the private lives and decisions of its citizens for a multitude of reasons. First, government surveillance practices can save lives, put criminals behind bars, or even find missing people, which definitely warrants the need for cellular surveillance. Another example of this justification is that measures like pat downs, body scanners, luggage scanners, and security guards at airports may be inconvenient for the passengers seeking to get on the plane, but will greatly increase the preservation of live on commercial aircraft. The last example to support this argument is in Ender’s Game. Ender had finally realized that the administrators and staff at Battle School controlled...
Words: 1737 - Pages: 7
... Hrs 3 Semester I Aims: One of the objectives of this course is to inform the readers about the influence of historical and socio-cultural events upon the production of literature. Although the scope of the course is quite expansive, the readers shall focus on early 14th to 19th century Romantic Movement. Histories of literature written by some British literary historians will be consulted to form some socio-cultural and political cross connections. In its broader spectrum, the course covers a reference to the multiple factors from economic theories to religious, philosophical and metaphysical debates that overlap in these literary works of diverse nature and time periods under multiple contexts. The reading of literature in this way i.e. within the sociocultural context will help the readers become aware of the fact that literary works are basically a referential product of the practice that goes back to continuous interdisciplinary interaction. Contents: • Medieval Period • Renaissance and Reformation • Elizabethan Period • Milton, the Metaphysical, and the Cavalier Poets • The Age of Reason and Neo-Classicism • Restoration Drama • Augustan Satire • The Rise of the Novel • Romanticism Recommended Readings: 1. Long, William J.: English Literature: Its History and Significance for the life of English speaking world, enlarged edition, 2006. 2. Evans, Ifor. A Short History of English Literature. London: Penguin, 1976 3. Ford,...
Words: 14375 - Pages: 58
