Ender's Game

Graff and Major Anderson (a teacher) discuss their plans to stack the odds against Ender’s favor, presenting him with opportunities to rapidly overcome challenges and speed along his training. Anderson worries such intervention threatens the school’s credibility, but Graff argues that if Ender doesn’t develop quickly, the school and its credibility won’t exist.

Ender meets the Rat Army’s commander, Rose de Nose, and is surprised to find their barracks in disorder despite their high game ranking. Ender quickly learns that his recruitment wasn’t Rose’s decision but that of a toon leader named Dink Meeker. Dink trains his toon separately from the rest of Rat Army, and Ender discovers Dink singlehandedly, though quietly, upholds the army’s reputation. Dink insists Ender practices with the toon and even implements Ender’s strategy, though he clearly doesn’t understand Ender’s logic. Later, when Rose learns Bonzo oversold Ender’s value during the trade, he punishes Ender by throwing him into the battleroom without reinforcements as soon as the game begins. Ender utilizes what little tactical advantage he has by shooting as many opponents as he can reach before he’s eliminated, abandoned to drift aimlessly for the remainder of the game. Once again, Ender’s handicap only impresses onlookers, and the game suddenly changes for the whole school: Instead of waiting a few precious seconds before entering the arena, armies enter instantly.

Dink reveals he has turned down promotions because he hates the school’s politics: “These other armies, they aren’t the enemy. It’s the teachers, they are the enemy. They get us to fight each other, hate each other. The game is everything” (77). Ender becomes more sensitive to his worldview, though he doesn’t agree with Dink’s conclusion that the bugger war itself is a lie. Against Dink’s request, Ender continues training with the Launchies, but they start receiving the older boys’ unfriendly attention. The older boys first start picking bathroom fights with the Launchies, then they escalate to a full-on attack in the battleroom. The Launchies, who have rehearsed coordinated attacks, have an advantage over the unorganized assault, and they (especially Ender) manage to drive them off. Ender hates how he continually chooses violence to get his way, both in that battleroom and in the Giant’s Drink game. Some of the other commanders encourage Ender to keep up the practices and send some of their bigger soldiers to both protect Ender and his training group and to train with him. that night, Ender sees the face of his brother when he looks in a mirror in the Giant’s Drink. 

Ender’s unprecedented progress in the fantasy game confuses Graff; nobody has graduated beyond the Giant’s Drink, and somehow the game knows to simulate Peter into the environment.

Valentine receives no response from the hundreds of letters she sends Ender. Still, she burns a small fire in honor of Ender’s eighth birthday. The Wiggin family has moved to North Carolina, far from where Ender knows to find them, and Peter starts releasing his violent urges on the forest squirrels. Consequently, he appears more palatable to other people, especially his worried mother, but Valentine sees through his façade. However, Peter presents an olive branch: He proposes that, together, they become a political force and adopt online personas using their father’s citizen access. Valentine resists at first, but the idea compels her. They spend time refining their writing style and ideas on the public forums before adopting aliases, Locke and Demosthenes, to write paid newsnet columns. Peter writes as Locke, the level-headed pacifist, while Valentine writes Demosthenes, whose ideology aligns more with Peter’s aggression. The backward personas ensure that one cannot diverge without the other. Valentine is disappointed when she hears her father quoting Demosthenes’s ideas at the dinner table, especially ones she particularly hates.

By age nine, Petra (now Phoenix Army’s commander) makes Ender a toon leader. Older students now also join Ender’s evening practices. Despite his ideal situation, Ender isn’t happy. The bond among his friends has strengthened, but they leave Ender on the outside: “He had so much damn respect he wanted to scream. […] with his old friends there was no laughter, no remembering. Just work. Just intelligence and excitement about the game, but nothing beyond that” (99).

Colonel Graff requests a meeting with Valentine while she’s at school. Graff drills her for information about her brother and why Peter is appearing in Ender’s Giant’s Drink game, but Valentine feels no goodwill toward him. Eventually, she reveals vague details about Ender’s relationship with Peter. She insists that Ender is nothing like Peter, though she confesses she might be more like Peter than she wants. Graff has Valentine write a letter to Ender reminding him that he is not like Peter.

Ender reads Valentine’s letter four times over, crying in his bed, to his army’s dismay. He reenters the fantasy game and conquers the level that no one knew existed: the End of the World.

Graff writes to Valentine, informing her that the IF has awarded her the highest military honor given to any civilian. Valentine regrets her involvement, feeling that she betrayed her brother.