week 7:3
In the intro to the chapter, the commander of the IF is asking Graff if he knows about how there is a plot to beat the living hell out of Ender, if not kill him. Graff says that he does, and yet he will do nothing about it, and reaffirms his philosophy that if they help Ender, he’ll never reach his full potential.
It’s been 4 weeks since we last saw Ender, and his army has had a battle every day. They haven’t lost, even though the games are increasingly more stacked against them. After beating an army that won’t stay frozen, Ender goes to the showers during lunch. While he’s in the shower, Bonzo Madrid, Bernard, and others come in to “persuade” Ender to start loosing some games. Ender taunts Bonzo, saying that his father would be proud of him, bringing six friends to beat up a naked little kid in the showers. Bonzo is enraged, but he evens the odds, he forbids his friends to join in, and takes off his own clothes. Dink Meeker comes in to try and save Ender, but they stop him. Ender uses the advantage of his soapy skin to escape Bonzo’s grasp, and then proceeds to beat the ---- out of Bonzo. Bonzo is laying face down in a pool of his own blood when Dink takes him from the bathroom. Dink keeps reassuring him, but Ender feels terrible, he cries and says that he never wanted to hurt him.
Ender goes back to his room and sleeps for about ten minutes, when he finds another battle notice, a battle against two armies. They go out, and realize that the Teachers have situated the lights and stars in the battle room so Ender couldn’t see any of the opposing armies. Ender has Bean take his group to go find out what’s happening on the enemy’s side, and using an invisible deadline Bean found, they do. The other armies are just waiting for Ender to do something, so Ender shocks them all and makes a formation, a shield around other soldiers that they drove into the mass of the enemy just when things were looking the worst for Ender, the lights come on and Dragon army is proclaimed winner. Everyone wonders what happened, while Ender was creating the huge distraction with the rest of his army, Bean took his group and opened the enemy’s gate, winning the game. Ender yells at Major Anderson, asking him when they’d start giving him even odds. Anderson ignores him, but one of the enemy commanders says that as long as Ender is on one army, they teams would never be fair. All the soldiers, enemy and Dragon army alike, start cheering for Ender.
Ender goes back to his room, to find from Bean that they have disintegrated his army, making all his toon leaders and assistants commanders of armies whose commanders they had graduated. Ender finds that he’s been graduated, to command school. Before Graff takes him to command school, though they have to return to earth first.
After the battle that night, Ender calls Bean into his room. It’s 10 minutes from lights out, and Bean wonders why. Ender tells him how he knows that the teachers are trying to break him and Dragon Army, but he also knows that he can take it-for a while. He tells Bean that he can’t keep coming up with new ideas indefinitely, so he wants Bean to. He reminds Bean of his request to be a toon leader weeks ago, and how he denied him. Ender tells him that he needs to choose 5 boys from a list that Ender gives him, and that those would be his toon. It is to be a “special force,” where Bean thinks of the most…unexpected tactics, and to train them apart from the regular army, to be called on only when needed.
The lights go out, and Bean stays rather than try to find his way back to bed. Ender laughs as he tells Bean that if he listens carefully, he would hear the teachers drop off their battle announcement for the next day.
I like this part, because it shows how Ender knows that he can’t go on forever, and yet he can’t loose a single game.
week 7:1
Ender keeps winning all his battles. It’s been a week since their first one, and they’ve won all seven of their games. Dragon army is at the top of all the standings, and people have finally started to talk to him, to try and get some of his genius to rub off on them or something, but more hate him even more for being the youngest and best, for making all their battles look pitiful. Other armies have started catching onto his tactics, but he’s still way ahead of them. In order to get some new tricks, he watches vids of the past bugger wars. Other commanders copy him, but they don’t understand.
Ender gets called to go talk to Graff that afternoon. Graff asks him how his army is doing, and Ender tells him that they’re tired, but they haven’t broken yet. He asks Graff when they’re going to give him a good army to fight, and Graff chuckles as he hands him the notice for a battle with Salamander army (Bonzo Madrid’s army) in ten minutes. Dragon had already fought one battle that day and had practice, and most of them were just getting back from the showers when Ender told them to suit up. They went to the battle room and found that Salamander was nowhere to be seen, even though Dragon was 5 minutes late for the battle. Ender figures that they are lined up around the outside of Dragon’s gate, and so he puts together groups of 4 boys, one using another as a shield and the other two throwing them through the door. They do this and destroy all of Salamander in about a minute. Ender is outraged, he thought that the teachers would at least give him someone who knew how to use an advantage. He has Bean, the smallest in Dragon army, tell everyone what fatal mistakes Bonzo made. Ender realizes too late that Bonzo wouldn’t realize that this was actually directed at the teachers. If Bonzo didn’t hate Ender before, then he certainly does now.
week 6:3
`Ender heads to the commanders' mess for lunch. New commanders aren't allowed in until they have won a battle, and it is unheard of for an army to win their first battle. He walks in, and when people see the Dragons on his uniform, it goes silent. pretending not to notice, he gets his food and starts eating. Dink Meeker comes to talk to him, and tells him that it was a fluke, that Ender's not going to beat him. Other commanders glare at him, but Carn Carby, the commander who Ender had just beaten, comes over and talks to him. He tells Ender how everyone was being messed up, how usually new commanders are cheered when they first come to the mess, and how no one deserves cheering more than Ender. He also tells him about how no one believes him when he tells them how Ender's doing things people have never seen before. As Carn leaves, the respect Ender had for him tripled.
Ender decides that once he beats a few more of them, they will calm down a bit, that they'll stop treating him as if his army being at the top of the standings was a fluke.
This is where I can't believe how stupid Ender the genius is being. They hate him for doing well, and he thinks that by beating more of them he'll get them to stop treating him like trash.
The next morning Ender comes back from the showers and finds that he has another battle in a half hour, against his friend Petra's Phoenix army. They go and win, but not by the same margin that they had when they beat Rabbit army. Ender saw the hate radiating from Petra's eyes as he walked through the portal, past her defeated army.
After a month of practice, Ender is itching for a battle, even though most armies are given 3 months to prepare. He gets one, against Carn Carby's Rabbit army. They go to the battle and see Rabbit army come through their portal quickly. Ender smiles and enters slowly, knowing that Rabbit army is busy making complex formations and such, while in his army his gives much of the tactical power to his toon leaders. While he decides what needs to be done, he gives his toon leaders freedom in deciding how to do it, and is pleased when Crazy Tom (C toon leader) is intuitive enough to have his toon freeze their own legs in order to shut off the lights that the suits have when not frozen.
Right here, Ender is already showing his superiority to Bonzo Madrid, his first commander. Bonzo would resent anyone in his army for doing something that wasn't his idea, or for coming up with a good idea that wasn't his. Ender uses all the talent that his men posses, he wants them to become great leaders as well as himself.
It is a quick and furious battle which involves C toon getting caught on an enemy "star" (large boxes floating in the battle room), but when all is said and done, Dragon defeats Rabbit army with only one soldier completely frozen. While most commanders have to scrounge up people to open the gate at the end of battles, Ender has almost his entire army to choose from. He unfreezes his army completely, and they march of in a very military and proer manner. As he is leaving, he sees Carn Carby, Rabbit's commander. Carby is holding his head up high, showing that he is accepting his defeat graciously. Ender respects him for it.
Ender tells them all to be back to practice in 20 minutes. He tells them to throw food at breakfast to celebrate.
After Dragon army's first practice that morning, Ender doesn't go to classes. He stays, planning what his army needs to work on the most, etc. He goes to go to one of his evening practice sessions, and when he gets to the battleroom, he finds Major Anderson there. Anderson tells him that they have changed the rules so people can only practice during the times scheduled, and only with their own armies. Ender is angered by this, and after hiss regular practice4 with his army, he goes to the game room, not knowing what to do.
There he sees Alai, his old friend from his launch group. They exchange friendly talk, although both of them know that they can never be the friends that they were before. Alai says that Ender will never find peace, which is all that Ender has been fighting for his entire life. They leave, and Ender realizes that Alai was the only person besides Valentine that he would truly miss. He vows to show the teachers that they can take away his friends, his family, but they can't break him.
week 5:3
At battle school, they give Ender command of an
army. They revive the old Dragon army (which was discontinued
because no Dragon army ever won even a third of its games). He
goes to his new barracks and sees that none of the soldiers have much
experience in the battleroom at all. Most are fresh out of their
launch groups, and many aren't even supposed to be advanced to an army
yet.
When the go to the battleroom for practice, he gives
the "the enemy's gate is down" lecture, and sees that one particularly
tiny boy (called Bean) is catching on quick. Ender singles him
out, making Bean appear smarter than the other soldiers (which he
probably is), doing exactly the same thing that the teachers did to
Ener when he first came to the school. He lectures them on his
basics of fighting, and makes them all hate Bean a little more by
having him answer all the questions. They learn quickly, and he
is grateful to the teachers for giving him a group that learns quickly.
He stays after to help some of the younger kids with
technique, and Bean corners him on the way back. Bean corners him
and tells Ender to give him a toon. Ender laughs and tells him
that until he proves himself, Bean's not going to get anything.
That part made me think about how in doing this,
Ender may seem mean, but he's really just trying to get Bean to exhert
himself. Ender had to work for everything that he ever had at
this school, and now he's showing Bean that unless you can do it for
youself, you don't really deserve it.
At the Battle School, Ender is now 9 years
old. He is now a toon leader in Petra Arkanian's Phoenix
army. Alai was a toon leader also, and Dink Meeker had finally
accepted a position as commander, taking over Rat army when Rose the
Nose left. Ender still holds his evening practice sessions, but
now everyone's elite attend them (launchies are still invited, of
course). Ender is still at the top of the standings.
Everything is going well, and yet Ender realizes that he is very
unhappy. He sees other soldiers converse with each other, and
sees their comradery, that he doen't have. Even when he's with
Alai and Shen at the evening practices, they make jokes and feel guilty
because he's all about business. And he can't get past the "end
of the world" in the fantasy game.
In order to get Ender on top of his game once more,
the leaders of the school get Valentine to write ender a letter (they
have previously been deleting all the letters she sent) to try and get
ender past his little "plateau." Graff comes down to get her to
do it, and asks her why Ender would see Peter in the mirror at "the end
of the world." She is reluctant to tell him, but she says that
ender and peter are opposites; Peter is cruel, Ender is kind.
They figure that Ender feels that he has become an awful person in the
battle school, and needs reminding that he's not like Peter.
She writes the letter, and Ender kows that they made
her do it. He cries tears of anguish (shocking the other soldiers
in Phoenix army) and goes to teh fantasy game. He goes to the end
of the world, but instead of killing the snake under the rug like he
always had, he kissed it. To his horror, the snake that he had
killed so many times turned into his sister, valentine. they look
in the mirror and see a dragon and unicorn instead of peter. The
mirror fades, and he and Valentine walk from the end of the world arm
in arm as a crowd of peters applaud them. he doesn't notice this,
though, he just knows that wherever he goes, Valentine is with
him.
Valentine privately recieves a medal from the IF the
next day. She feels like she has sold out Ender to them, and in
response goes home that night and writes a column about the stupidity
of population laws, and how overpopulation could be solved by sending
colonies to other worlds rather than forcing each family to only have 2
children. remembering the taunting name that had been given to
Ender by bullies on earth, she says that the most noble title someone
could have is Third.
I loved that part, because it talks about how peter
totally misses the point of this statement, thinking she was just
trying to be contrary, not that she actually cared. while ender
still dwells on him, Peter has long since forgotten ender.
As Peter and Valentine start their scheme as
political journalists on the nets, they quickly become popular in
certain regions. Valentine, calling herself Demosthenes, mainly
publishes articles on the west coast, while Peter, as Locke, mainly
publishes on the east coast. Demosthones takes the standpint that
Peter actually has, that of one who believes that the second warsaw
pact (Russia) is planning ot take over after the bugger wars
and calling for a free flow of information from them. Locke
takes a standpoint of a man with conservative beliefs who thinks that
Demosthenes is being foolish and is causing an unnecessary fear in the
general public.
I think it's quite funny here, because Peter and
Valentine are each writing with the other's views, but they can't write
for each other, to maintain that Demosthenes and Locke are not the same
people. It also helped the authenticity of their writing, because
with their contrasting views they are able to sympathize with the
others.
Valentine as Demosthenes rises to popularity faster
than Locke, gaining different columns with net publications and other
things. Locke does also. They recieve pay for their columns
in net hours, so they eventually are able to stop using their father's
net account, making it harder for people to find out who they are.
Valentinte feels horrible when her father starts
quoting her columns at the breakfast table and saying that this
Demosthenes is one of the most intelligent men out there. She
doesn't feel as bad about lying to him as she does that people actually
believe what she's writing.
That part made me laugh.
week 4:3
In the intro to the chapter, Graff and someone are talking about how they don’t have a clue how the computer had gotten a picture of Peter Wiggin to put in the game that Ender was playing. They determine that they don’t really know why the computer did it, except that it feels that Peter is very important to Ender’s growth and development. They just wonder why.
Back on earth, Valentine Wiggin is celebrating Ender’s eighth birthday alone, out in the woods by their new home in North Carolina. She is all alone out there; the rest of their family seems to have forgotten. She thinks about her family, about how everyone thinks Peter has changed when he’s really just stopped tormenting people, he’s found a better way to get what he wants. She tells how she is the only one who sees through his façade of having calmed down. Then Peter turns up, starting a conversation with his usual death threats. She laughs at him, she realized a long time ago that Peter would only kill her if the benefits outweighed the consequences, which they never have, and Valentine planned to stay on the side where he needed her so that would never happen. He tells her that he’s been monitoring Russian troop movements (they aren’t published, but he’s been monitoring train schedules) and has found that the Russians are preparing for a land war. She is skeptical at first, but eventually he convinces her that the Russians are preparing for a take over of all of Europe and Asia, possibly the world, in the chance that the buggers are either defeated, or turn out to be already defeated, and the IF is just pretending that they still exist in order to maintain peace. Peter tries to persuade Valentine to get their father to get peter a citizen’s passport to the nets, and to help him write, so he can try and tell people about the Russian threat, he knows that Valentine has better powers of persuasion than he does. Valentine doesn’t want to at first, as she is just picturing Peter as a young Hitler, he compares himself to Hitler, someone that intends to win power with his words, except that he doesn’t want to do terrible things with that power, he wants to join the human race together into one peaceful government that will never break apart. Valentine agrees to help him.
week 4:2
After practice one day, Ender stays behind to watch Dink. He talks to him, and finds out that Dink is really the commander of Rat army, that Rose keeps winning and he doesn’t know why. Dink tells Ender that he’s been promoted to commander twice and ha refused. He’s seen what being commander did to Rose, Bonzo and others, and he doesn’t want to go crazy like them. He also finds that Dink, like Ender, hates how no one talks about home up here, but that he feels that that is one thing that shows how home is so important.
That night at his launchy practice, Ender finds that many of the regulars are not there, due to some commanders saying that they won’t take any launchies who go to Ender’s practices. Some Commanders come in and start taking peoples’ names down, and other come and start mocking the launchies and Ender. He tells the group to not get mad, and they don’t, which makes the older boys even angrier, they head toward the launchies, looking for a fight. Ender and the others take one of the frozen launchies and throw him into one of the bigger boy’s faces, using this distraction to get out of the room. As the others are moving along the wall to get out, Ender goes after the boy they threw. He is able to get the boy out, but is caught in the fray with the older boys. They aren’t wearing flash suits, so Ender uses his helmet and feet to break one’s nose, tear one’s ear, break one’s ribs, etc. The whole time Ender feels horrible for hurting them, and feels like trash afterwards. On the school computer system, it has the hurt boys causes for medical attention as “accidental collisions.”
Ender has some free time, so he goes back to that game he always plays. He gets through it, until he sees a magic mirror that compares him to his cruel brother Peter. Terrified, he is killed.
week 4:1
In the intro to the chapter, Graff and Anderson talk about how they’re going to ruin the game to make Ender better. They just hope that he’s worth it.
Ender goes to the Rat army barracks, his new home. There he meets his new commander, Rose the Nose, a Jewish kid who was probably only there because ever since the international fleet was formed, the strategos (or strategist) of the fleet had been Jewish. Rat army’s barracks were a mess; the sheer lack of discipline among the men and from Rose shocked him, coming from Bonzo’s strict Salamander army. Ender finds his new toon leader, Dink Meeker, who seems to be a good guy who wants to teach Ender. He’s not quite the friendly type, but he is a good guy.
At their first practice, Dink has Ender show his toon how to attack from Ender’s favored position, which was with the enemy’s gate down. People complain (even dink doesn’t really get it) but eventually they see how hard it is to hit someone when all you can see are their feet, and they listen. I thought that Dink’s willingness to learn stuff from a little launchy showed how he’s much more favorable than Bonzo was; pride has not overcome him. At his practice sessions with his old launch group, he sees Dink watching him.
Rose gets mad at him for using his desk (Rose had told him that he couldn’t use his desk until he had frozen two enemies in a battle). To punish him, he makes Ender enter the battle room first as the enemy was coming out, thinking Ender would just be immediately frozen and wouldn’t have a chance to freeze anybody. Ender throws himself through the open gate, tucking his legs underneath him and pointing them at the enemy. He fires at them from between his legs, and is able to freeze three, disable two, and damage seven of the enemy before he is frozen. Rose doesn’t speak to him for a while, and Ender is still first in the standings.