Ender's Game

Ender doesn’t know anyone on Eros, and he has no opportunity to make friends. Before long, Graff assigns Ender a new teacher: Mazer Rackham, savior of the Second Invasion.

Ender now spends his time either alone or with Mazer, who establishes himself as both his teacher and enemy. Mazer lets him watch the uncensored Invasion videos and explains his theory: The buggers live in a hive controlled by the queen. If the queen dies, the worker buggers can’t function, which explains the Second Invasion’s rapid victory following Mazer’s strategic strike.

In a new simulator, Ender hears his squadron leaders’ familiar voices: Alai, Bean, Petra, Dink, and all the best students he knew from Battle School. They practice together, learning to operate as a team. Eventually, Mazer informs Ender that his real education begins now, and the simulations will resemble real bugger battles. Mazer starts waking Ender at strange hours to work in the simulator. Ender initially retains as many ships as possible, but he becomes more willing to sacrifice ships for victory. Everyone’s exhaustion deepens, which Ender doesn’t realize until he breaks Petra—his favored squadron leader—nearly costing the battle when she dozes off. Ender’s own health declines rapidly; among his physical symptoms, he develops nightmares that make his few sleeping hours unrestful. One day Ender faints during a battle and sleeps for three days.

Finally, decorated officers crowd Ender’s control room to observe his final exam. In this simulation, Ender must fight around a planet, and the buggers outnumber him by a thousand to one. Ender, feeling exhausted and uncooperative, abandons the game’s rules. Ender positions his squadron leaders to direct their primary weapon toward the planet without regard for ship losses. A fighter enters close range, launches the weapon, and the planet explodes, finalizing Ender’s victory. He expects angry lectures from the officers, but they are all crying and cheering. Mazer tells Ender that since he began the realistic simulations, Ender has commanded real battle fleets. Today isn’t only Ender’s final exam; it’s the Third Invasion’s final battle.

Instead of celebrating, Ender grieves the sacrificed ships and the buggers’ genocide. He sleeps through the League Wars, which rage for five days as governments respond to the new situation. Finally, world leaders ratify a peace negotiation called the Locke Proposal. When Ender wakes, his friends enter his room, laughing and comforting each other.

The courts declare Graff not guilty of crimes against the Battle School children, and the government appoints him Minister of Colonization. Demosthenes advocates for Ender’s return to Earth before leaving the nets. (Locke, naturally, argues the opposite.) In reality, Valentine and Peter oppose their respective alias’s opinions; Valentine knows Peter would use Ender like a pawn to achieve his own ends, so Valentine—bringing Ender along—joins the first colonists settling the bugger worlds.

Valentine first surprises Ender on Eros, though he doesn’t like the idea of colonizing his annihilated enemy’s home. Valentine suggests Ender can govern the new colony. Finally, Ender consents, saying, “I’m going because I know the buggers better than any other living soul, and maybe if I go there I can understand them better. I stole their future from them; I can only begin to repay by seeing what I can learn from their past” (219).

During their 50-year voyage to the bugger worlds, Valentine writes her first installment of the bugger war history. When they arrive, Ender works hard to establish a sustainable economy and learn what he can from the buggers. Years later, a new colony ship nears Ender’s colony, and Ender is asked to find them a place to settle. Ender takes a young boy named Abra to find a place for them to settle “near enough to Ender’s colony that the two colonies could trade, but far enough apart that they could be governed separately” (221). On the third day scouting, Ender recognizes the environment: It’s a hollow hill grown over the Giant’s corpse from the Battle School fantasy game. Ender realizes the buggers created it to catch his attention. Ender travels to the castle tower, where Ender finds a silky white pupa containing a fertilized queen bugger. He sees her species history as if from his own memory. He asks how he can save them, and the queen asks for peace; however, Ender knows humanity isn’t ready to forgive the buggers. He promises to find them a world where they can have a second chance.

Ender anonymously writes a bugger history—from their perspective—signed Speaker for the Dead. Most of humanity reads it, many accepting it as a holy text, and a religion grows from its messages. When a person dies, someone steps forward as their Speaker to “say what the dead would have said, but with full candor, hiding no faults and pretending no virtues” (225). Peter and Ender reconcile in Peter’s old age, and Ender writes a second book as Peter’s Speaker of the Dead, which is also accepted as a holy text. After establishing that first colony, Ender and Valentine travel the stars, looking for the cocoon’s new home.