Ender, when he contemplates violence against Stilson, Bonzo etc never for a moment thinks of the damage he may do to them. In both cases the violence is so excessive that it ends up killing them. But we are reminded again and again that Ender is good. Clean to the heart. The book seems to pronounce these actions to be moral. Of course Ender wallows in guilt afterwards (not because he killed them without meaning to, he didn’t know that. For hurting them) but one could wonder why, as his violence was completely calculated. He hurt exactly as much as he wanted.
I am not saying Ender should have allowed himself to be beaten to the pulp. I am questioning the need to pass moral judgment on this act, to approve of it. In Bonzo’s case, intense violence wasn’t needed. Ender could have told Bonzo ‘look, if I win you are not to bother me again.’ Bonzo, with his sense of honor and overconfidence would have bought that. ‘Hurting him so much that his fear would be greater than his hatred’ or ideas to that effect weren’t necessary.
But for Card, I suspect it was necessary, as were Stilson’s and Bonzo’s deaths. He is leading us towards a moral philosophy. This philosophy, imlicit in Ender’s Game is pronounced by Ender in the sequel ‘Speaker for the Dead’ :
“Speakers for the Dead held as their only doctrine that good or evil exist entirely in human motive, and not at all in the act”
We are quite cleverly lead to this bit of wisdom: When Ender kills Stilson or Bonzo we are not told that they are dead. The facts are kept from the reader. Should we have known them then we’d have probably passed a different judgment on Ender’s actions. However the circumstances of his action make us likely to sympathize with Ender : It wasn’t his fault, did what he had to do, not a bad boy even he can deliberately unleash intense violence etc. And so when it is later revealed that he actually killed the other two boys, the reader’s are unlikely to revise their judgments. From there we are almost inevitably lead to the above philosophy : Ender didn’t mean no harm, so he is entirely innocent.
Now if I was prepared to accept the moral absolutism (which I am not, who is to decide what is good or evil etc.) I have to object to the judgment based on motives alone. That would in fact make Hitler a good man – by all accounts the man didn’t want anything other than the good of the race. Is that an evil motive now? You could object and say Hitler also intended to kill people, which is bad in itself. However, so did Ender. He agreed to go and attack the Buggers when they weren’t bothering the humans at all. He didn’t say ‘Umm, why don’t we try some more communication?’ Mazer Rackham had a pretty good idea how the bugger hive-mind worked, so why not try to build on that? Ender may have been innocent of the actual killing (he thought he was playing a game) but he did agree to the attack. He agreed to kill innocent intelligent creatures in a pre-emptive strike and in the second book he would be absolved of this on the ground that he didn’t know the buggers were human. Similar arguments would work for Hitler, right?
So, yeah, I don’t much like the morality Ender’s Game tries to sell.
8 comments:
Setting aside the fact that the idea of 'the race' which Hitler subscribed to is not well-founded, part of the problem is that he conceived the prospects of 'improving it' as zero-sum, and even then chose to orchestrate it in an incredibly brutal manner. There are different levels of intention, and judging him by this standard, Hitler failed on several levels.
Ender's earlier violence is meant to be justified in context, and as someone who has been the subject of casual violence myself, I can sympathize. There is no honour among bullies, beside a respect for force: the conviction that they should leave you alone out of self-interest, or at least because you exhibit qualities they can understand and admire. Negotiation is seen as weakness.
The only question then is precisely what point Ender is meant to stop at. It was certainly uncessary for him to kill his earlier childhood bully, but it is less clear in the context of someone who (a) has martial arts training, (b) has organised it so that Ender has no escape, and (c) clearly means to kill him. Sometimes, the only way out is through.
Having said that, the end of the novel can be read as a rejection of the mentality that the death of your opponent is the only way out.
Indeed, the entire program which he has been crafted for, and against which Ender unsuccessfully rails, is his own mentality writ large: if slighted, to hit your foe so hard that they never get up again. He comes to realize that the original alien attacks were only meant as communication by a hive-mind assuming another hive-mind; what's more, Ender comes to realize that the Queen of the 'buggers' was trying to communicate with him. In the end, he performs 'Xenocide' without his immediate knowledge: his tactical choice was intended to convince his trainers that is is too dangerous to be allowed to perform the role he is chosen for. He is raised, in fact crafted, by his controlled environment to believe that lethal violence is the only solution to an irreconcilable differences; but even despite this he comes to reject that idea, and commits Xenocide only because of the additional layers of manipulation to which he is subjected.
Ender is not a morally static character; I would say that his later role as a Speaker for the Dead is a wish to have his own actions forgiven, because his intentions were twisted to yield consequences which he did not choose.
Hi Niel!
What I specifically take issue with is this philosophy: ‘good or evil exist entirely in human motive, and not at all in the act.’ and here I was trying to read the violence episodes of Ender with the interpretation that all this is meant to lead to this philosophy, and Ender’s acts are justified according to this philosophy.
I largely agree with all you say here, except that it is less clear to me that Ender undergoes a moral change at some point: he always felt guilty about his acts of violence. The book really doesn’t go into that in any detail, either. And for someone who hates to hurt so much, it is somewhat perplexing to me how easily he agreed to lead the Third Invasion.
Ender always regretted violence, but occasionally chose it when he felt it was necessary. I don't remember precisely the details of his agreeing to lead the third invasion, although I do remember that most of the 'practice' trials he did in earnest. But he has multiple crises of faith. It is towards the end, leading up to his decision to sabotage his own prospects as a general (and inadvertently winning the war in doing so) that I envision the decision to change taking place. It culminates with his writing the book of the Speakers for the Dead, which causes public opinion of Ender to swing from hero to villain --- in a sense, slaying the earlier conception of the necessity of his actions, and using words to do so.
As for the characterization of absolutes of 'good' and 'evil' --- while such simple, epic-style tropes are often necessary for a work to get broad appeal, doesn't the religion based on Speakers for the Dead more or less reject the idea of this evaluation, and devote themselves to a matter-of-fact recounting of the life and the intentions of the actor? But maybe this is from the later books.
Of course, it could be that Ender is just a chimera with properties which are convenient for the narrative, and for identification of readers with the character; and I am remembering the book through a haze.
Niel,
'..doesn't the religion based on Speakers for the Dead more or less reject the idea of this evaluation, and devote themselves to a matter-of-fact recounting of the life and the intentions of the actor?'
Hardly so in practice. For example in the second book Ender 'speaking' for the dead Marco makes plenty of moral judgments: stuff like he beat his wife, so he deserved the name of Co. ,he was not evil, (to the rest of the community) you are not to be blamed for your cruelty to him as children etc.
It is certainly very interesting to know your pov on Ender's Game.
Hi Niel,
I think it would be interesting to me and anybody else who might read this blog if you would like to share what you had liked about 'Ender's Game'.
Cheers.
(I deleted the previous post to correct a typo, unaware that it would leave a mark. Oh well.)
I read Ender's Game because I was aware that it was one of the classics of sci-fi. My taste in books has changed a bit since I've read it; I don't know whether I would enjoy it on a second read. Mostly, I enjoyed it for the same reasons why I like the early seasons of the show "House, M.D." --- I enjoy identifying with the character and seeing him overcome difficult situations. He is a 'Mary Sue' type character: there for the reader to place themself and feel empowered.
Having said that, there are some interesting ideas and tropes in there. For instance, "the enemy gate is down" is an excellent metaphor for the role in how the way one conceives of a situation --- even a when deliberately chosen --- on how one thinks and plans. The idea of performing potshots while ostensibly 'neutralized' as an example of how to reinterpret a situation to make the best of it. Basically, short anecdotes embedded in the story which prompt the idea that one should always look for news ways to interpret a given situation. I wouldn't say the book was moving, or very important to me, but this at least is an enduring message I have taken from it.
Thanks for sharing, Niel :)
Post a Comment