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.