Ender's Game Analysis

“A good scenario doesn’t make a good science fiction story - but it’s setting within which a good science fiction story might be told.” - Jamais Cascio, an author. Orson Scott Card definitely paid attention to descriptive words and setting while writing the novel Ender’s Game, which portrays several young boys, and a few girls too, being shipped off to space. The novel Ender’s Game contains profound ideas of what will occur in the future; however, not all of the novel’s innovations and individual elements are valuable. Portrayed as a futuristic realm of ethical issues, the setting is efficiently described as the age of peace which seemingly manipulates time, alternate universes developing and evolving in somewhat unconventional places, and

Between the maturity level of the children at Battle School and the label put on the time period (the Age of Peace), it is obvious that time appears to be manipulated at this prison like school for children. Page 44 of the novel states, “...The ache was there, thick in his throat and the front of his face, hot in his chest and in his eyes, I want to go home.” These six year old kids may be geniuses, but that doesn’t mean they are emotionally developed as adults. Battle School is this place where either one turns to steel or gets ejected. Imagine the anxiety and depression of living alone at the age of six, they are being molded like clay into miniature replicas of adults. Decades of time seem to pass between the occasion when landing at Battle School and a week later as they’re beginning to become ideal adult citizens. During their evolution at battle school, the children become incorporated into the Age of Peace. Instead of starting a civil war, they overcome differences twice the size of a mountain to become this elite group of advanced geniuses destined to defeat humanity’s enemy,

Birthdays are wondrously celebrated occasions everywhere; however this is not the case in Ender’s Game. Pages 92 and 93 state, “They weren’t much for dates and calendars at the Battle School… But nobody told birthdays. It was childish.” Battle School is so hardcore that there is no rest for a single “Happy Birthday!” It just goes to show how ignorant commanders of the school are to what’s actually significant in children’s lives. On the other hand, without elements like this, the book would have no character and just be a colossal amount of words on thin paper. In addition, readers find it peculiar that uniforms are mandatory, there is no such thing as “weekend clothes” or “after school outfits”. As if the school wasn’t unwelcoming enough, imagine wearing a shiny, colorful, and restrictive jumpsuit of aluminum foil nonstop. While this statement describes another one of the peculiar demands of Battle School, the law that a couple can’t have more than two kids portrays the complete control the mind-numbing government has over civilians. Because Ender is one of the few authorized “Thirds”, he is always bullied, the government practically set Ender up for failure as an accepted child because he isn’t supposed to be alive. Page 17 of the novel