Ender's World

by Orson Scott Card

  It is also during this initiation phase that the hero meets a powerful goddess who is, according to The Hero with a Thousand Faces, “mother, sister, mistress, bride,” and who often comes to the hero in “the deep of sleep.” She is the “world creatrix, ever mother…the life of everything that lives. The death of everything that dies.”

  In Ender’s Game, this goddess is of course the hive queen. She is literally the life of all formics, the queen mother, the memory-holder, the queen-body as well as all the workers. Without her, the formics cannot survive. She is their life and their death. And she comes to Ender during this stage through the mind game and in his dreams, swimming through his psyche and examining his heart. Ender doesn’t know that his dreams and gameplay are influenced by the hive queen. That isn’t revealed until much later in Xenocide, long after Ender has discovered the cocoon and he and the hive queen have formed a strong philotic bond. But the significance of these initial connections with the hive queen cannot be overstated. They are the beginning of Ender’s journey toward greater enlightenment.

  That enlightenment is ultimately achieved in the final phase of the hero’s journey: the return. Following the hero’s initiation, he must face the final enemy and slay them in hand-to-hand combat. Then, once that victory is won, the hero earns a great reward, which he then must take back with him to the ordinary world and share with others, thus giving to them the same enlightenment that he himself has achieved.

  Ender is a unique case here because, after facing the formics, he doesn’t physically return to the ordinary world. He can’t, he’s exiled. Yet even so, Ender still fits the pattern of the mythic hero because he inevitably shares his reward with the ordinary world. He brings them enlightenment, even in his absence.

  His reward is actually two things: the formic cocoon and the wisdom and enlightenment he gains from the formics when he sees into the mind of the hive queen and finally understands them. The cocoon is a reward because it is the answer to Ender’s psychological burden. He has committed xenocide, and the grief and guilt he feels as a result are almost unbearable. With the cocoon he can restore the formic species and undo the wrong he has committed. Ender doesn’t give the cocoon to the ordinary world he left behind, but he does give it to the greater world, the universe, where in some small corner the cocoon can open and bring life anew to the formics.

  The second reward, the understanding of the formics, Ender shares with the ordinary world by means of the book The Hive Queen, which he writes from the hive queen’s perspective. The text brings enlightenment to all the world, opening their minds to who the formics really are and what their motivations were in invading Earth. As a result, the formics are no longer perceived as monsters but as “tragic sisters” of the human race.

  We’re only skimming the surface of the monomyth here, but it’s clear to see that Ender fits the pattern of the mythic hero to the letter. He leaves the ordinary world to embark on a greater quest, immersing himself into a strange new world, wherein he finds allies and enemies and a goddess. He overcomes incredible obstacles and undergoes a Supreme Ordeal. He confronts a seemingly insurmountable enemy and uses his unique talents and skills to slay that enemy. He earns a reward and returns to the ordinary world enlightened. Does he demonstrate courage? Yes. Self-sacrifice? You betcha. Perseverance? Brilliance? Goodness? Check, check, and check. He’s a mythic hero in every sense. Considering how child heroes were represented in the past, that’s a bigger deal than you might think.

  Child Heroes of Yore

  Prior to Ender’s Game, most child heroes in fiction were passive participants in their own stories. They were the victims, the ragamuffins, the tagalongs, the observers of the action, the character strolling through the magical realm, doing little more than soaking in the world around her (e.g., Alice in Wonderland). They were the people being acted upon, not the ones driving the action.

  Or, if they were taking a more active role, they were usually doing so only with other children. If they governed, they governed other children. If they outsmarted someone, they outsmarted other children. The class system between children and adults was in force. Think Lord of the Flies or The Great Brain or the Encyclopedia Brown adventures. Was Encyclopedia Brown a paid consultant for the police force? No, he spent his afternoons outsmarting Bugs Meany, a neighborhood punk about his age who committed petty crimes like stealing coins from some kid’s lemonade stand.

  Oh sure, there were instances in which Encyclopedia implicated a real criminal in a real crime, but by and large child heroes pre–Ender’s Game were heroes on a small scale. Their power was limited. Their reach was short. Their influence was slight. The stakes of their adventures were relatively low. And everything was coated with a glaze of childhood innocence or giggle-inducing silliness. Pippi Longstocking. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Little House on the Prairie.

  Ender’s Game was different. Ender wasn’t weak and powerless and always playing second fiddle to adults. He was smarter than the adults. He could do things adults couldn’t. You want him to fight two armies at once? No problem. You want him to transform a bunch of untrained launchies into an unbeatable army? Bring it on.

  With Ender’s Game, child heroes and our expectations for them grew up. Children, it turns out, can do more than return stolen coins to lemonade stands. They can also save the world.

  But rather than speak in general terms, let’s look at a few specific examples.

  Consider first the young hero of Oliver Twist. A textbook definition of the powerless child hero. You need not go any farther than the title of the book to see my point. Oliver sounds like a weak name, doesn’t it? It’s not Bruno or Buck or Kirk or Drago, big husky masculine names that put fear in a man’s heart. It’s Oliver. Poor, little, aw shucks Oliver. It sounds a lot like I’m going to walk “all over” you. Which of course is precisely what most of the adults in the story do. Then there’s the last name. Twist. Throughout the story, Oliver is twisted and manhandled by adults. He’s shoved through windows to help a burglar; he’s twisted and smacked around by schoolmasters and bullies and villainous adults. We should probably call him Oliver Twist My Arm Behind My Back.

  Then there’s Ender Wiggin. The kid’s name is Ender, for crying out loud. That speaks volumes, doesn’t it? This is the kid who finishes what he starts. This is the guy who puts the bad guys down for good. You want to start a fight? Fine, this kid will end it. Kapow!

  But let us go beyond the title page of both books, shall we? Consider the story of Oliver Twist. One of the most memorable scenes of the book—made famous by the musical adaptation of it—is poor orphaned Oliver, with his clothes filthy and tattered, his arms and legs as thin as twigs, shuffling helplessly up to the soup server, empty bowl outstretched, asking, “Please, sir. Can I have some more?”

  Well of course you can’t have any more, you little twit. Who are you to talk to an adult that way? How dare you question the portions I serve? Spank spank smack! Insolent little child. Spank spank!

  Poor Ollie. Talk about the short end of the stick.

  Now, compare that same scene to Orson Scott Card’s version of the hungry orphan, a.k.a. Bean, a.k.a. Ender’s shadow. Does Bean play the role of the powerless child hero and beg and plead an adult for more soup? No. He shows ruthless survival instincts and brilliant strategic thinking and he gets all the soup he can eat. Does he get smacked around? No, he and his crew do the smacking. He even wisely sees what Achilles truly is and gives the order to kill him. Can you see Oliver Twist doing that? Not in a million years.

  Note that the defining trait of the modern-day child hero is not violence. It’s initiative. It’s strength. It’s brilliant tactical thinking. It’s decisive action. It’s not passive behavior, taking whatever the adults give you; it’s making your own destiny and solving your own problems.

  Now let us return to Oliver, after his unfortunate soup incident. Eventually, Oliver is taken in by a mortician. And guess what? Spank spank! Abuse abuse! And then it’s on to the
streets of London, where he meets the Artful Dodger, Fagin, and the dastardly Bill Sikes. Good grief, can’t the kid get a break?

  Well, no, he can’t. Because, you see, he’s not driving the bus, he’s riding in it. He’s not guiding the story, he’s bouncing around it like a pinball. He’s the puppet with no control of his strings.

  It seems to be a running theme throughout Dickens’ work. Tiny Tim, David Copperfield, Pip of Great Expectations, Nell Trent of The Old Curiosity Shop. All rather powerless child characters whose skills rarely, if ever, exceed those of adults. Mythical heroes? Fuhgettaboutit.

  Consider also Jim Hawkins of Treasure Island. Jim is no pushover, but it’s the adults of the story who drive things and predominantly dictate the action. After all, Jim is just a child. What can a child do that an adult can’t do better? Answer: nothing.

  Oh, not true, you say. Jim Hawkins shows us that a child can do those noble, non-active things. A child can forgive. A child can be a friend. A child can let Long John Silver go in the end. And isn’t that all that matters really?

  Well, no, it isn’t. It’s important, yes. It’s part of what makes our modern child heroes so likeable and valiant. But these days, it’s not enough. Can you imagine a Harry Potter in which Harry runs to Dumbledore or Professor McGonagall whenever something is afoot and then follows them around while they solve the problem for him? What an exciting romp that would be. We could call it Harry Potter and the Adults Who Save the Sorcerer’s Stone.

  Pardon me while I stifle a yawn.

  But what about Huck Finn? you ask. Or Tom Sawyer. Aren’t they heroes? Don’t they drive the story? And I’d say, yes of course. Absolutely. But what can Tom or Huck do that an adult can’t do better? And what are the stakes? Tom wants someone to whitewash the fence. And Huck wants to escape his drunkard abusive father (again, the victim) and help Jim escape from slavery. Tom and Huck are heroes, no question, but much like Encyclopedia Brown, their reach is limited and their potential is low. They’re ragamuffins. Scoundrels. Uneducated troublemakers with bucketloads of charm. We love them for it, sure. We adore them, yes. We acknowledge their literary merit, absolutely. But neither Tom nor Huck is a child hero in the post–Ender’s Game sense.

  This isn’t to say that Ender’s Game is better than Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or that Mark Twain’s work would be rejected if it were submitted for publication today. I’m merely pointing out the shift in our perception of the child hero.

  With Ender’s Game, children were suddenly empowered. Adults still have all the authority, but the child heroes aren’t letting that stop them. They’re hopping into the driver’s seat and pushing the accelerator to the floor. So what if they have to sit on a few phonebooks or tie a block of wood to the gas pedal to reach it? They’re driving, baby.

  Granted, not all children in fiction these days are out there defeating Voldemort or fighting the Greek gods; small-scale heroes are as prevalent as always. And you could argue that Ender’s Game wasn’t the first to feature a mythic child hero. (The Chronicles of Narnia spring to mind.) But even in the instances that pre-date Ender’s Game, I’d argue that no child hero better demonstrated the character traits and story structure of the true mythic hero.

  The Divine Child

  We’ve discussed how Ender Wiggin is a mythic hero, but he also fits another archetype as well, that of the divine child. It was psychologist Carl Jung who first introduced the idea of the divine child, which manifests itself as a child god or a young hero. The divine child is a symbol of hope and a new beginning. He or she normally comes into the world by way of a miraculous birth, and often possesses a unique understanding of the world that grants special insight or power. The story of the Christ Child is a good example. Young Anakin Skywalker is another. Both are virgin births, both possess special abilities, and both bring new hope and promise to their universes. Another example is Jake Chambers from Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series. Jake is a boy who miraculously enters the world and who possesses supernatural abilities, wisdom, and heroic attributes that help bring order and hope to Mid-World.

  Ender Wiggin fits the bill as well. Consider Ender’s birth. He’s a Third, a statistical oddity. The population laws are explicit and stringently enforced. Yet because of the potential for greatness within the Wiggin home, the International Fleet gives its blessing and allows Ender to be born. He is, in that sense, a miracle. By the rules of the universe, he should not exist. And yet he does. That alone endows Ender with an aura of uniqueness. From the moment he leaves the womb, he’s special.

  In his book The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, Jung says that following this miraculous birth, the divine child can further be identified by four characteristics.

  1. The abandonment of the child

  Moses was set adrift on the Nile River. Paris was left abandoned on the mountainside. But Ender wasn’t abandoned, was he? After all, he chose to leave his family and go to Battle School. Well, yes, that’s true, but once he gets there, the International Fleet orchestrates his abandonment and blocks all contact from those he loves. He gets no messages from Valentine, no loving hugs from his mother, no words of encouragement from his father, and Graff works overtime to isolate Ender and keep him detached from other students. “His isolation can’t be broken,” says Graff. “He can never come to believe that anybody will help him out, ever.”

  2. The invincibility of the child

  In most myths, this is a magical attribute. Immortality. Super-human strength. Bulletproof skin. In Ender’s case, invincibility isn’t the product of a magic elixir or divine parentage; it comes from the power of Ender’s mind. He’s invincible because he’s smarter than every enemy he faces.

  It’s interesting, really. Ender’s story is a trail of battles in which the odds are stacked against him, with each battle being more fierce and more impossible than the one before. Yet never once does Ender fail. Not against Stilson. Not in the Battle Room. Not against Bonzo. Not against the formics. Even when Ender is wet and alone and defenseless and outnumbered a thousand to one, he never goes down.

  3. The hermaphroditism of the child

  Did I just use a variant of the word hermaphrodite? Why, yes, yes I did. We have Mr. Carl Jung to thank for that.

  And though it may strike you as strange, we can place a check in this box for Ender as well. Ender is a psychological hermaphrodite. He is the marriage of Valentine and Peter. Valentine is the archetypal female, demonstrating compassion and love and empathy, whereas Peter is the archetypal male, exuding violence and anger and dominance. Throw those two archetypes into the archetype blender and out comes Ender Wiggin.

  Valentine would argue this point, and does so in the novel. She screams at Graff, “Ender is not like Peter! He is not like Peter in any way!” But that’s not entirely true. In some ways, Ender is like Peter. They’re both strategically brilliant, and they both strike when the situation requires it. It’s for this reason that Ender worries throughout the novel that he is slowly becoming like his brother. “I am just like Peter. Take my monitor away, and I am just like Peter.”

  And yet because of the qualities Ender inherits from Valentine, he is not Peter. Her compassion counters Peter’s selfishness. Her calm counters Peter’s rage. So Ender has all of Peter’s greatness but none of Peter’s baggage. And he has all of Valentine’s heart and none of her trepidation. He is everything great that the Wiggin family can offer—all of the good and none of the evil—rolled up into a single human being.

  In fact, Ender exists for this very reason. The International Fleet wanted the best of Peter and Valentine, and so they rolled the dice and allowed John Paul and Theresa to conceive a third child. Fortunately for everyone, that bet paid off.

  4. The child as beginning and end

  The divine child is the beginning and end of life. The Christ Child is the beginning of Christ’s higher law and the end of the mosaic law. Young Anakin Skywalker is the beginning of the rise of the Sith Lords while at the same time promi
sing to be the one who ends the Siths’ rule and “brings balance to the Force” by killing the Emperor.

  Ender clearly fits this aspect of the divine child as well. He is the end of life because he annihilates the formics. And he is the beginning of life because he discovers the cocoon and with it the promise of a formic rebirth. He is, therefore, both sides of the coin. Death and life. Despair and hope. The tomb and the womb. Killer and savior.

  The Personhood of Children

  So yes, Ender’s Game fits the hero-myth formula, and yes, it’s filled with Jungian archetypes, but as anyone who has read the novel will tell you, Ender’s story is anything but formulaic. Formulas don’t move us. Formulas don’t make us cry one moment and cheer the next. Formulas don’t have soul. And Ender’s Game is dripping with soul.

  That soul of course is the soul of Ender Wiggin, the short Clint Eastwood, the modern child hero, the boy who showed us how significant a child’s contribution can be.

  And in the end, isn’t that the point of Ender’s Game? Card didn’t set out to create a child character who sounds and acts like an adult. He set out to create a true depiction of a child. Ender is who he is because Card genuinely believes in the capacity of children to think great things and achieve great things. It’s a belief Card has held all his life.

  Never in my entire childhood did I feel like a child. I felt like a person all along—the same person I am today. I never felt that I spoke childishly. I never felt that my emotions and desires were somehow less real than adult emotions and desires. And in writing Ender’s Game, I forced the audience to experience the lives of these children from that perspective—the perspective in which their feelings and decisions are just as real and important as any adults. (Ender’s Game, Introduction, 1991)

  Well, if that was Card’s intent, then he can give himself a gold star because that’s exactly what Ender’s Game does. It “asserts the personhood of children” (Ender’s Game, Introduction). It validates them. It challenges the belief that they are the weaker of the two classes. It opens the floodgates of child-hero stories, the effect of which we are still seeing today and will likely see for a long time to come.