Ender's Game: last review summary

In the explosive ending of Enders Game, Ender indirectly 'wins' the Bugger War during his final exam for battle school. In the last 2 Chapters, He and a select few students he's worked close with take part in a battle in this sort of flight simulator against what they think is another strategist and his program. Unknowingly, they are actually commanding earth's fleet from across the stars.

Of course, now Ender has to live with himself knowing he committed genocide, albeit indirectly. Which is a lot for a 12 year old to process.

Reflection 3 - A Book Is....

A book is a stage for ideas.

Your characters are your actors, your puppets. Your plot is the scene, the backdrop. Every experience you've ever had in your life is your material, which you use to write your story.

Most of us have acknowledge the fact that we get ideas from books, so doesn't it make sense that those ideas would have to be put there? When you write, you can take all your opinions, beliefs, and ideas, and wrap them all up in your plot and characters. Then, when a character is condescending of clergy, or judgmental of government, or expresses a certain train of thought about a hot-button topic of the modern day, it's really the writer's thoughts, making their way into the reader's brain, hopefully without breaking the 4th wall.

Of course, there's always the danger of being too blatant with using your character's behavior like this. I point to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales as an example. Most of his creations come through well, but his descriptions of the 'religious 'characters are so obviously critical that one can have a hard time actually enjoying it. When we write, let's try to keep our balance.

Review 2

Character Dissection: Peter Wiggin

Ender's eldest sibling is unstable, to say the least. It goes beyond being brought up in bad conditions, this kid is downright disturbing. Let's be honest, what 8 year old threatens to kill his siblings, and with such detail and cunning. Of course, he claims to just be kidding. He has bipolar episodes where, shortly after saying frightening things and being generally unpleasant, he comes to Ender at night and whispers, "Ender, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I know how it feels, I'm your brother, I love you." 

Show of hands, who believes him?

No one? Okay. Good. 

After Ender leaves for battle school, the Wiggin family moves to a more rural city in hopes that it'll soften Peter. He excels in his education, and begins taking day-long hikes with only a pocket knife and a couple sandwiches. Valentine knows better, though. She finds dissected, tortured squirrels in the woods, nearby some breadcrumbs from a sandwich. Dinner and a show for her brother.

Later in life, Peter does actually become more civil, but retains his sociopathic abilities. I've mentioned before the boy managed to anonymously establish a strong political figure before he was even 15. After Ender defeats the Formics (Buggers, the bad aliens), it is Peter that forms the Locke Proposal that ends the conflict between the Eurasian government, The Second Warsaw Pact, and the North American Hegemony. This leads to him becoming Hegemon (Leader of Earth), and in a surprising move, he does a pretty good job at holding the planet together as far as peace. In his last years, he turns to Ender to basically write his biography for after he dies.

Disclaimer; Peter is not as central to Ender’s Game as I just made him sound. There’s only about 2 chapters that really show him off, in the beginning and middle. Also, it’s not as political as it sounds here. There are spinoffs of the series that were written after that chronicle Peter’s time in office if that happens to be your cup of tea, but I thought I’d put this here so that people aren’t scared away from this book by twisted children and fictional politics.

Reflection 2 - Readicide

Is literary fiction relevant to our current culture? Is it preparing students for the job market you are about to enter? Does it serve other purposes?

"Literary fiction is what it is; a made up story." For this reason, people may come to the conclusion that it's irrelevant. Really, though, we can learn a lot from a made up story. Learning from fiction may even be better. Sometimes the alternative is learning from experience-the hard way. Even Jesus often taught with parables and stories, and if there’s an example to follow….Just saying, he’s pretty wise.

Fiction can also prepare kids for the real world. The experience related in the text, whether horrific or docile, can inform them of what's waiting for them out there.

Finally, fiction is quite relevant to culture. When an author writes, he or she has to draw from the world around them, and unless they are some sort pan-dimensional being, the world around them is “current culture”. Personal bias from the writer could come from how they were raised and what conditions they live in can influence their material.

Review 1

Ender's Game: Grown Up Children
The children that populate the pages of the Ender's Game series are all between the ages of 6 and 12 when they are introduced, but not one of them acts that way. Due to the society they live in as well as the lives they lead, the children each have minds far beyond their years. The high tensions of politics, war, and looming invasions from an unseen enemy make their world a place where you grow up faster.
 
Examples;
-Ender, capable of complicated tactics, figuring out the difference between what he should do and what the people controlling him want him to do, and, unknowingly; murder.
-Peter, the sociopathic brother of Ender and Val, who works with his sister to establish a very influential political figure, anonymously.
-Bean, who is specifically charged to come up with strategies that haven't even been thrown at him yet.
 

Wartime climate affects the behavior of everyone involved. Budgets get tighter because the economy is pouring money into developing weapons and training soldiers. In Ender’s Game, the military goes to great, seemingly desperate, attempts to get good soldiers. They surgically implant monitors into newborns so that they can see if they the child is capable of being groomed into the next brilliant strategist.

If and when they are accepted to the Battle School, they are subjected to grueling tests of their physical and mental limits. Because of the circumstances of how they think the war could have, the teachers want Ender to come to the conclusion that no one will ever come to help him, that he has to face everything thrown at him on his own, with no more resources than what he’s given. They take this to extreme point, even allowing multiple murders to go down as an alternative to intervening.

Reflection 1

I feel like the fact that a book is or is not on the bestsellers list should not be a defining factor for whether or not you decide to read it. All you can truly learn for sure from a book’s position on the bestseller list is how many more or less copies of it were sold than the next book on the list. There are so many other factors. Different people have different reasons to read books. A heavy romance novel may only attract a large fan base because there are so many angsty teens and lonely middle age females in the world. A science fiction murder mystery may get a big following because of how many nerdy budding psychopaths our society has grown. 

Another factor to consider is depth. There are several ways someone can react to how "smart" a book is. Someone may not understand it and be honest, or they might pull an emperor's new cloak and cast a vote for it so that they don't look foolish. Others may be able to understand a more highly intellectual book, and enjoy it, or they may feel it’s below them. Someone may have bought the book, giving it another tick for the list, but then lost interest before finishing it.

Finally, product placement is a big deal. A book’s sales can be affected by where and when it is released or promoted. For example; The Hobbit was originally released in 1937. The hype has had time to die down. I would bet the ranch that sales for the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, and other Tolkein books that pique people’s interest, will go up quite a bit a few months before and after The Hobbit’s 2012 release later this month. Another example is biographies. Few would’ve spent 30 dollars to read Steve Jobs’ life story a decade ago. When it was released shortly after he died, however, it became a bestseller.

Since an appropriate release date for a book could be more of a factor for it’s place on the list than the quality and depth of the text, I feel that the mere fact a book is on the bestsellers list does not automatically mean that it’s a good book. 

Why Read?

I love to read. I don't read as often as I used to, because of school and work and other things that get in my way, but I still enjoy it all the same. I don't read much nonfiction, I read to find a good story, and I like finding that secondary meaning. I feel like every story has at least 2 layers; the one everyone that can read and understand a metaphor could find, and then theres the one you have to think about, the meanings that are only revealed in underlying message the author is trying to get through your head.