Ender's Game: Essay

How did Ender Change throughout the Book

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card is a book about an intelligent and hard-working boy named Ender, going through difficult trainings to become a successful commander who defeated the Buggers. Students get isolated at school in this generation for many reasons. However, at the same time, other students make many friends easily at school. Ender in Ender’s Game is isolated, popular and famed, but at the same time, he becomes far away from his old friends, but at the end, he makes many real and reliable friends.

Ender is isolated when he first gets to Battle School. Graff, who Ender considers friend, isolates Ender by calling him the best of the boys all, and making all other boys jealous of him (P31). Graff isolated Ender meaningfully because Graff wanted Ender to have no friends to rely on, so he would be forever independent. “Ender wanted to go home” because he feels lonely and fearful because “no one sat by him in the mess hall” during dinner time (P41).

Ender becomes beloved and because he is one of the best students in Battle School and trains the younger students during extra practice time. Ender first befriends with Alai, Bernard and Shen (P59-61). As he was promoted into higher level of army, more students attend his extra practice (P139). “He liked teaching the boys (who) followed him loyally and “even the teachers were respectful” (P139). He was admired and esteemed. However, “he had so much respect he wanted to scream” (P139), because “with his old friends there was no laughter, no remembering. Just work. Just intelligence and excitement about the game, but nothing beyond that.” (P139) Ender’s old friends are considering him as their teacher, not their friend. He is frustrated because he thinks he was abandoned from his old friends. Later in the book, Ender becomes a commander of his old friends for the ‘stimulation game’, but is constrained to be merciless and harsh with them (P284-285). He is pressured and thinks he betrayed his friends.

      After Ender and his army win the war against the Buggers, his old friends cheer him up when he is enraged with Mazer and Graff for making him kill things he never wanted to hurt (P301-304). He is allowed to have companions because the war is over. Ender and the rest of them are joyful and delighted that they can all be together again.