” ‘The bugger menace. Save the world. Listen, Ender, if the buggers were coming back to get us, they’d be here. They aren’t invading again. We beat them and they’re gone.’
‘But the videos-’
‘All from the First and Second invasions. Your grandparents weren’t born yet when Mazer Rackham wiped them out. You watch. It’s all fake. There is no war, and they’re just screwing around with us’ “
The novel is based around a furturistic society that is no so unlike our own. The plot would not be possible if it was not for the lie that society is made to believe. Ender goes to a school to train for someting that essentially does not exist. Through propaganda, the government has made him, along with countless others, believe that this is what needs to be done in order to protect themselves. So in a word that the passage uses, the entire ting is “fake.” The people have been forced to live their lives in fear because since they were young it has been imbedded into their heads that the buggers were coming back. Generatoins have passed, those people lived their entire lives in fear and died in fear when nothing ever actually happened; they prepared and protected theirselves for nothing.
I feel that the novel is not in support of this kind of lifestyle. That Cars does not thnk this is how lives should be lived, they do not even get to have a childhood after all. I definitely agree with his thoughts, and I see it in our own society. Obviously it is not to the same extent, but the idea is similar. In the novel the media fills their heads with images of war and fighting. They watch videos of the first invasion and are made to believe that is what is going to happen. In our society we watch the news and see some pretty terrible images as well. The chances of something like that happening to us is not good, but we feel a need to prepare ourselves and live with that constantly. In Ender’s Game they train to fight in order to protect themselves, we prepare ourselves buy buying guns and things of that nature. In both cases it is violence followed by violence and fear.
September 18, 2007 at 1:43 am
I also like this post for the fact of the whole bugger invasion could be fake! It’s kind of like the world today. There is no way for us to find out what really goes on in the country outside of what we see. But then again if the bugger invasion was all just make believe then why would the government spend all the money to train all these kids and put monitors on them?
September 18, 2007 at 6:43 pm
same as above
I also like this post for the fact of the whole bugger invasion could be fake! It’s kind of like the world today. There is no way for us to find out what really goes on in the country outside of what we see. But then again if the bugger invasion was all just make believe then why would the government spend all the money to train all these kids and put monitors on them?