Ender's Game Theme Essay

The main characters are Andrew “Ender” Wiggin, his brother Peter and sister Valentine. Peter is murderous boy, bullying Ender and telling him and Valentine that he will kill them. [9] Valentine is the exact opposite of Peter, being kind and protective, watching over Ender. [8] Ender is told to be a mix of the two of them. All three are very smart and intuitive, the book calling them geniuses, and children of geniuses. Bean and Petra are two students at Battle School who become Ender’s friends and help him eliminate the Buggers. Bean is small with quick reflexes, a good soldier whereas Petra is a good leader, without any fear. These

Ender’s Game is a book written about the future planet earth and the war they are having with an alien race called the Buggers. The exposition starts with a view in Ender’s world: what it’s like to be a Third, the

torments he faces at home, and what the world is like now. Rising action begins when Ender is selected to go to Battle School, and his rise to being promoted to Salamander Army at the youngest age ever, and then switched to the Rat Army. Once he has gotten settled in there, he is promoted to being the commander of the Dragon Army, a retired army that the teachers have chosen him to revive, with all the misfit soldiers. His army and he soon rise to the top of all rankings, to never have lost a battle. Bonzo, the commander of the Salamander, along with seven other boys plan to kill Ender because of this. [146] They corner him in the bathroom wile Ender is in the Shower, and Bonzo and Ender fight. Ender wins, and we come to know later in the book that he actually killed him. Ender such graduates Battle School and moves onto Command School, where he is taught by the famous hero Mazer Rackham. He is trained to command a fleet to just a single ship, all through computer stimulated battles. The climax of the story is when Ender is given his final “test”, where he has to defeat the Bugger’s home planet. [203] He uses Dr. Device and causes the entire planet to be obliterated. The bombshell is then dropped that none of these stimulations were stimulations, they were all actual battles with the Buggers. He just killed an entire alien race. The falling action is Ender learning to live with his “success” and the way people treat him now. Valentine and Ender move to an old bugger planet in the Earth’s attempts to colonize, and while he is exploring he finds a world that the Buggers have left for him, with a queen hatchling for him so he can save the race. The exposition is that when Ender visits different planets he is looking for a new home for the Buggers, and it says “he searched for a long time” [226] which leads me to infer he did find one.
Ender’s Game has two stories: Ender’s and Valentine & Peters’. Ender’s story is the one stated beforehand but not Valentine and Peter’s. Valentine and Peter were busy when Ender was at school, they were becoming internet philosophers. They become known as Demosthenes and Locke, and over the years they get largely popular with quite a fan base. [96] Eventually Peter comes out and says that he is Locke, where Valentine never reveals her identity as Demosthenes but simply stops writing. She goes with Ender to colonize, and she writes stories about what she sees. Peter becomes Hegemon, the ruler of the world. [225]
The main themes of Ender’s Game are control and loneliness, along with two smaller themes of survival of the fittest and things may not always be like they seem.

Ender’s entire life has been shaped so he will be the one to beat the Buggers during the 3rd invasion. All of the special and intense training he received was to prepare him. The other main theme in Ender’s Game is loneliness. From the beginning the teachers and commanders at battle school have kept him isolated from the other boys, making it harder for him to have friends. For example, in the first launch Graff singles him out amongst all the other boys, saying he was the best. [25] Obviously this is not what the other boys want to hear. This ties in with the theme of control, because they knew they would have to isolate him if their plan was to work. The themes survival of the fittest is shown on many different scales, humans vs. the buggers, all the way down to Ender vs. Bonzo in the bathroom fight. Things may not always be has they seem is represented in the stimulations with the Buggers, which ties in with control because it was a way to control

Ender.