Moral Justification In The Ender Series By Orson Scott Card

The Ender series by Orson Scott Card is a collection of literary masterpieces that explore various parts of human society and culture through a science fiction world. One key aspect of human society, definitely a controversial theory, is whether or not the end justifies the means. One extreme is that no matter what crimes or abominations are committed, they are all justified if the reason behind those acts was for the greater good, or morally justified. The other extreme is that no matter the reason behind one’s actions, if the act by itself is morally wrong, it cannot be justified. Neither of these two extremes are generally accepted, whether or not an act is justified usually depends on how “bad” the act is and how “good” is the reason

This creates a scale of justification, a spectrum that Orson Scott Card explores using the Ender series. Card uses the first three books of the series (excluding books from the Shadow series), Ender’s Game, Speaker for the Dead, and Xenocide to explore this concept of the moral justification. Through portrayals of alien species, the government and figures of authority, and his main character Ender, Card reveals various takes on the philosophy of moral justification. At the beginning of the series, Card’s main window into the subject shows that the end does justify the means. As the story keeps developing into the middle of the series, Card starts to change his ideology as portrayals of aliens, authority, and Ender start to side with the other extreme. By the end, Card seems to have flipped his philosophy as his portrayals of aliens, authority, and Ender prove that the end does not always justify

This proves that Card is intentionally using moral choices as a continuous theme in his books. One of those themes is Ender’s confusion on whether the end justifies the means. At this point, as Ender draws the line and decides that the end does not always justify the means, Card reaches the turning point in his gradual progression from one extreme of moral justification to the other, leading right into Speaker for the Dead. In Speaker for the Dead, Card explores how society changes over time. Throughout Ender’s Game, the buggers are viewed as evil aliens who were attacking them and the human race needed to defeat them at all costs. This perspective is flipped in Speaker for the Dead, which takes place 3,081 years later, after Ender publishes his two books, Hegemon, which is more about the life of Peter, and The Hive Queen, which exposes Ender as “The Xenocide,” or killer of another species. No one knows that Ender is the author of these books, however, or that Ender is the original Speaker for the Dead, a “minister” in a sort of religion that birthed from Ender’s writings. Thus, Ender goes by his birth name, Andrew