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

Pierre felt for Marie Curie.

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

humans and good in the worst of humans. Ender, though the embodiment of evil, is the epitome of empathy, truth, and understanding. “No human being, when you understand his desires, is worthless. No one's life is nothing. Even the most evil of men and women, if you understand their hearts, had some generous act that redeems them, at least a little, from their sins,” Card explains. Speaker for the Dead taught me that no one is just bad or just good. An enemy to one is always a son or daughter to another. Put in your circumstances, I would always do exactly what you chose to do. The proof? You chose to do it. There is no excuse for wrongdoing—for it is wrong—but it is equally wrong to ignore my own transgressions. Because I know all of my thoughts, feelings, hopes, and reflections, I find my transgressions to be the most excusable. There exists a perfect balance of acknowledging good and evil, yet preserving forgiveness. As a human, I am inevitably the main character of my book. The cameos of the lives of others may deem them to appear innately stupid or evil—but that is because of my limited and subjective point of view. Though I can never experience anyone else’s exact environment or mental state, I can know it is there. And for that reason, I can care for others. Realizing this within the pages of Speaker for the Dead turned my intolerance into mercy.