(Ender is essentially asexual.) But there are girls at Battle School who play important roles there are characters who are dismissed by other kids because they’re too short there are Jewish kids who get mocked for the size of their noses. There are no gay characters, but that is presumably because most of the characters are prepubescent children. We all feel alienated at some point, but the book’s message resonates even deeper with those who really stick out from the crowd. Rany Jazayerli, a long-time fan of Card’s writing who grew increasingly pained by the author’s hateful rhetoric in real life, grapples with further complexities: It’s a shame that Card seems incapable of equal understanding, instead of grumpily complaining about the intolerant reception of his own intolerance. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.” Ender’s own horror at the realization that he has committed xenocide is born out of that empathy in the end, he realizes that the “buggers” were never truly the threat that everybody thought them to be.
To quote Ender: “In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. …Įnder’s ultimate strength isn’t his willingness to win at any cost, it’s his empathy. Or someone who seems consumed by hate, he has produced what is, in many ways, his own counter-argument. Harris O’Malley, who stubbornly refuses to see the film due to Card’s history of homophobia, points out that the book preaches a message of tolerance: It goes clear back to the invented legend of the first Thanksgiving feast and the apocryphal peace treaty between William Penn and the Lenape chief Tamanend (aka Tammany) in 1683. The sentimental idea that whites who killed or uprooted the Indians became infused with their spiritual or moral essence did not begin with New Agers in the 1960s. “Ender’s Game” can definitely be read as an allegorical treatment of the other American original sin, besides slavery: the destruction and replacement of Native American society, which stood in the way of our nation’s manifest destiny. This adaptation honors the text they grew up with while heightening the generational conflicts in it, going even rougher on the adults.Īndrew O’Hehir reads into a historical analogy probably not intended by author Orson Scott Card or the filmmakers:
They, after all, played a major part in propelling Ender’s Game to its canonical status. Millennials will likely be happy with the portrayal. He’s upset that he’s lost what he uses the technology for: meaningfully connecting with people he cares about.
When Ender feels outraged that Graff revokes his email privileges, the movie presents the hero’s anger not as lost entitled access to technology.
Technology is presented not as an indulgence, but a highly useful tool Ender wields to achieve productive results and self-exploration-not narcissism. Beyond the straightforward theme of sending young people to fight and die in war, Alexander Huls reads the new film as a partial defense of Generation Y, with Ender saving the world at the request of condescending and ungrateful Boomers:īoomers tend to represent Gen Y’s virtues simultaneously as faults (Millennials are great at tech! Millennials are narcissistic and distracted workers because of tech!) but the film understands the impulses behind them.