Character Analysis: Speaker For The Dead

“If I were you, I would have chosen one of the other essay prompts,” I hear from sincere mouths. However, all “if I were you” statements can correctly be completed with, “I would have done the exact same thing.” It is impossible to understand the innermost and ever complex thoughts, feelings, hopes, and reflections of others. To understand is to grasp the strife and pleasure of each moment’s depth through a set lens. Confined by my own lens, I have been and will always be the main character of my own book. Though I can never know another human’s cognitive glances, I can at least be mindful of the infinite complexity and reasoning of each human. Even the most empathetic cannot understand exactly how Claude Monet felt for Camille, how Beethoven felt for “Elise”, or how

Speaker for the Dead taught me that I have been and will always be my own main character, but that I should read the books of others. Ironically, Ender Wiggin, Ender the Xenocide, and the Speaker for the Dead are all the same person. Ender Wiggin: hero of the world who wiped out the entire Bugger race for the sake of mankind. Ender the Xenocide: the face of evil who slaughtered millions of innocent people just because they were different. Speaker for the Dead: the most understanding and truthful person who can tell all sides of the story of one’s life.

Three thousand years before Speaker for the Dead takes place, Ender Wiggin saves Earth in the Bugger Wars. Earth, three thousand years later, realizes that the Buggers were only killed because they are different than humans, therefore a threat to human hegemony. After wiping out the Bugger race, Ender speaks their deaths, telling the good and bad elements of their lives so that they are better understood—becoming the original Speaker for the Dead. No one knows he is also the murderer of the Buggers. This irony perfectly demonstrates the simple fact that there is bad in the best of