So assume that Ender's response was proportional considering the bullying he underwent. His fear of being attacked at first sounds like a child's paranoia, but when he kills his tormentors the reader sees that this scared little kid is quite lethal.
We're left to wonder why he's lethal and soon we realize that he's innately good at executing force in a strategic way. We question his judgment a bit -- should he have avoided killing the bullies at all cost? But we realize that his judgment is no worse than that of any other kid, only his execution (no pun intended) is far, far better. He would have been devastated if he'd known the bullies died.
I think this aspect of Ender was conceived as a great short story angle, but as the plot develops it gets a bit two dimensional. Card counters this by framing Ender as the embodiment of human ability -- justice, self-awareness, compassion.
Further into the book we find that Ender's ability is a function of his empathy -- much like someone who empathizes with us may find just the right words to hurt us, Ender empathizes with his enemy allowing him to vanquish it. Though because of his kind, compassionate disposition, he must be deceived into fighting an actual war.
I will admit that revelations about Card's homophobia are a bit concerning, but I try hard to separate the creator from the product of creation in all areas...
I not sure I see any point in separating them. Wagner's operas can't be separated from the notion of German exceptionalism that laid the groundwork for Nazi ideology. Ender's Game does not exist other than as an expression of Card's worldview. And he had expressed, through it (at least at the time that he wrote it. I am at least willing to grant the rare occurrence of change in people), that ignorance of the consequences excuses such violence, even violence that was executed under incorrect assumptions.
In the real world, Ender not knowing that the kids are being killed would not excuse his behavior. It merely changes 2nd degree murder into manslaughter. With the number of times he repeats this behavior, we'd maybe even try him as an adult, discarding even the basic notion within our culture that children are generally not yet to be held responsible for all of their actions. When we try children as children, we are not saying the crime was not their fault, we are saying they are not going to be punished for the crime in the same way as an adult. We still punish them.
But according to Card, nothing is ever Ender's fault. Ender doesn't kill them because he is so good. Ender is so good so that he can kill them. The causality in fiction is reversed from reality because there is a distinct narrative to portray, but reality doesn't have a narrative, it emerges. He wrote Ender to have misapplied violence on several occasions, so that he can then be excused for it. The aliens aren't destroyed because they invaded, the aliens invade so that they can be destroyed. They are aliens so that they immediately have the inhuman status that all genocidal maniacs need to assert before trying to cleans the universe of them.
To me, not only the revelation of Card's homophobia, but the vociferous manner in which he defended it, is just a corroboration of what Ender's Game tells us about who he is: an extremely rabid right-wing ideologue. We see in Card the beginnings of the Neoconservative movement with all of its contradictions nearly fully formed: the claimed reverence for both God and war, the clashing support for small government and large military.
And for the life of me, I just can't read it as 8 to 10 year old children. I have several nephews spread from 2 through 10 years old and there is an extremely distinct difference in basic maturity level between them all. Ender portrays qualities more like a late teenager and he yet is on the young end of the book's spectrum. I just don't see 10-year-olds having the capacity to hate someone else "because they are the best". Mostly because the concept itself is alien to me. I know of it only through its portrayal in the media.
It's one of the more dangerous ideas we teach kids. It tells them, "if you could just change, it will get better." And either the kid can change and tries, which is awful, or the kid can't and is stuck thinking life will always be like this, which is also awful. Real bullies are just jockeying for acceptance within their peer group and it has little to nothing to do with the victim. Bullying only ends when it's made to no longer be entertaining for the bully, a shockingly easy thing to achieve, if you just know that that is what needs to happen.
But also because that sort of hate takes fear. That's why we use the "phobia" ending on homophobia. Children don't know that kind of fear yet. You have to start to become aware of your own limitations, and the accompanying fear that someone else's success could have a detrimental impact on your own. Kids that age are only a few years into realizing the ball doesn't just dematerialize when you hide it behind your back, say nothing that there are limits on what they will be able to achieve.
These fights are fantasies in Card's head, projections of what he thinks makes for righteous cleansing of that which he sees as besetting him from all sides. It's the ol' "'Merica is going to hell in a handbasket". He feels like everyone is out to get him, his way of life, and he is surrounded, so escape isn't an option. And if someone dies in the process, it's not his fault, he was "just" defending himself. Because in his head, he's fighting for survival, and might makes right.
Suppose we found out that Gödel or Newton or Maxwell had held abhorrent social views, would that tarnish their obvious achievements? We'd still make just as effective use of their work. Similarly, the short order chef cooking my breakfast might have been an ex-con who did unspeakable things, but I can enjoy the omelette without thinking twice about its full origin story.
> expression of Card's worldview
Is the omelette an expression of the chef's worldview? Where is the line between creation and the so-called "world view" of the creator? A grad student in one of my math classes used to laugh with wicked amusement when a set was proven to be empty, as if its members had been physically and violently eradicated. Who knows what is going through the mind of the creator.
I'd argue that even if you view the Ender series as works of political rhetoric and Card as a card-carrying member of some worldview "team" (which you or I may agree or disagree with), the books may still be harmlessly enjoyed as works of fiction. The same could be said about the fiction of C.S. Lewis, Ayn Rand, Lewis Carroll, etc. It's also possible that authors of books that are indisputably measured and reasonable turn out to have personal quirks that some would find abhorrent.
Disclaimers aside, I'll focus on the gist of your comment. Have you ever seen a kid around junior high age get treated so cruelly you think it's a miracle he doesn't go Columbine on his tormentors and those who allowed it? I've seen that kind of thing and known some friends who were horribly mistreated... worse than Abu Ghraib kinds of acts. They lived in constant fear of the tormentors. Such scenarios are quite common, at least in the US.
That kid who is getting picked on in schools all across the US may have a pet that is diabetic and may fully know that if he were to inject the bully with a syringe full of veterinary insulin the tables would turn and depending on where the injection took place, he might not ever be caught. Perhaps that kid also contemplates arson or other tactics that are every bit as physically brutal. But due to his small size the victim is forced to suffer humiliation and physical pain, or (if he's aware of the ramifications) contemplate the jail time he'd receive.
Card addresses this reader, the person who knows well the day-to-day injustice of the real world, and indulges him/her in a fantasy about a world where the strong really do win -- sadly in our world the kid is likely too sensible to dispense justice with his syringe of veterinary insulin, and the schools too understaffed and teachers too cynical to lift a finger to stop horrible bullying.
So the framing is just as much about a arriving at a definition of strength and justice as it is about turning traditional notions of power on their head. These themes get stronger through the book as Ender beats and earns the respect of the older kids at Battle School and then eventually turns out to be the individual upon whom the future of humanity is gambled, a decision made by older, "stronger" individuals.
Is there a way to connect the notion of Ender's military skill and his ascent to command as a political narrative? Certainly. But consider that when the book was written the US was in the midst of a massive, cold war full of bureaucracy, and the population was subject to tremendous jingoism and fear-mongering. In light of this, the kind of video game, kids battle school that Card invents is utterly sci-fi and imaginable only in the mind of a kid or an adult who empathizes with kids in a unique way.
I think this empathy is why the book has sold so well, and really why the series has sold so well and inspired so many people. Card's expressed views are in my opinion wholly incongruous, almost to the point where I wonder if the Mormon elders have dirt on him and forced him to make those claims... either that or perhaps he's early in the throes of demential.
>These fights are fantasies in Card's head, projections of what he thinks makes for righteous cleansing of that which he sees as besetting him from all sides. It's the ol' "'Merica is going to hell in a handbasket". He feels like everyone is out to get him, his way of life, and he is surrounded, so escape isn't an option. And if someone dies in the process, it's not his fault, he was "just" defending himself. Because in his head, he's fighting for survival, and might makes right.
Any animal is willing to kill the other, said Ender, but the higher being includes more and more in things within their self story, until there is no other. Until at last the needs of others are more important than any private desires. The highest beings of all are the ones who are willing to pay any personal cost for the good of those who need them.
- The classically fundamental, right-wing demagogue Orson Scot Card.
We're left to wonder why he's lethal and soon we realize that he's innately good at executing force in a strategic way. We question his judgment a bit -- should he have avoided killing the bullies at all cost? But we realize that his judgment is no worse than that of any other kid, only his execution (no pun intended) is far, far better. He would have been devastated if he'd known the bullies died.
I think this aspect of Ender was conceived as a great short story angle, but as the plot develops it gets a bit two dimensional. Card counters this by framing Ender as the embodiment of human ability -- justice, self-awareness, compassion.
Further into the book we find that Ender's ability is a function of his empathy -- much like someone who empathizes with us may find just the right words to hurt us, Ender empathizes with his enemy allowing him to vanquish it. Though because of his kind, compassionate disposition, he must be deceived into fighting an actual war.
I will admit that revelations about Card's homophobia are a bit concerning, but I try hard to separate the creator from the product of creation in all areas...