Ender's Game

I have to say, I am not one who often enjoys science fiction books. It is often hard for me to follow the deep technological aspects of them. However, I actually enjoyed this book more than I thought I would. Looking at the cover, I was a bit intimidated from the start. I thought there was no possible way I would get through three hundred pages of satellites and orbits and other things that lose me very quickly. However, the story behind the science in this book, as well as the overall themes, made it quite enjoyable at times.

But I digress from the endless chatter about the quality of the book and have to say that I found the most disturbing, yet entrancing part of the book to be the theme of corruption by technology that seemed to overwhelm the pages. By corruption, I do not necessarily mean the overtaking of another or the deliberate destruction of one’s morals or beliefs. Rather, I mean the way in which nearly everyone in this book seemed to use some sort of technology combined with a human influence to get what they wanted.

This is true in many instances in the book. For sure, the most obvious example of this is the matter of Ender being used by adults to play the “game” to destroy a world light-years away. In fact, the adults used technology to corrupt and use Ender from the very beginning when he was equipped with the monitor attached to his body. Had it not been for these high-tech devices, the authorities would have actually been forced to tell Ender “we are using you- a child- to destroy another population and take the lives of those you do not know.” However, they disguised their agendas with the mask of technology.

Peter also used technology to corrupt someone. With nothing but malice intentions, Peter wanted to be able to control the world. He knew he could do this using technology. He also knew that Valentine would have nothing to do with this unless she thought it was to do some good. Therefore, Peter corrupted Valentine into using higher forms of technology to take over the world for his own selfish benefits.

Another aspect that I found to be interesting in this book was the way in which, behind everything else, technology was almost portrayed as a bad thing in some instances. Though this was never mentioned in the book, it seemed as though nearly all of the poor decisions made in the book were accompanied by technology while all of the more beneficial things in the book were accomplished by human intent and self-doing.

To me, the book almost seemed to imply that technology ruined Ender’s life. The fact that his brother hated him due to the monitor that was attached to Ender for a longer period of time tore Ender apart. He desperately wanted his brother’s approval. In addition, the technology of the monitor was a visual implication to Ender’s genius. This made his acquaintances loathe him. This also caused many fights at school. These fights as a result of technology nearly ruined his life when he was put on trial for two murders. The technology that he used also caused him great hardships in life as he struggled with the fact that he killed off an entire population of buggers. Had he known what he was doing, he most likely would have objected.

This book was very good but also very difficult. Underneath it all, as with the other books and articles we’ve read in this class, was a meaning that you could definitely attach to current events. In the end, when Ender tries to figure out what was behind the war with the buggers and how to colonize the remaining buggers, I instantly thought of the war in Iraq. It almost seems to be the same situation. We have used our overwhelming technology to bring the country down and now, after most is said and done, we are trying to figure out a way to re-colonize the remaining citizens. Overall this book constantly reminded me of the amount of corruption and damage that technology can do without our knowledge.