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QUESTION:
I am writing an analysis essay for Ender's Game for my High School
English class. After reading many reviews and interviews, I put together some
ideas that somehow worked. You have said that history is usually doomed to
repeat itself, as well as that you have been influenced by American history. In my
American History class we just finished studying World War II, and as I thought
about both, some things began to click. My thesis is that Ender is symbolic of
American involvement in WWII. Obviously, you did not write Ender's Game with
that in mind, however you have said that much of your writing is influenced by
subconscious ideas. Although the idea is not perfect, many parallels are there. For
example, the fact that Ender's life is controlled from his birth parallels American
foreign policy, in which America was almost controlled by European events.
Ender's growth and development through the story-learning to use his resources
for war-parallels the industrial development of the United States. Mazer's victory-a
turning point in the bugger war, could be paralleled to the key victory, caused by
only 12 lost bombers, at Midway. The buggers could be the Japanese, and
therefore, the invasion could be paralleled to island hopping. Finally, the final
bomb dropped on the bugger world could symbolize the atom bombing of
Hiroshima. These are just a few of the possible parallels between the story and
American history. Am I completely wrong? Do you think that the story could not
be interpreted in this way, or that it was unintentional and should not be
interpreted in this way? Or is it possible that, at least subconsciously, you were
making these parallels in your book to learned history?
-- Submitted by Mike
OSC REPLIES: - September 30, 2002
The parallels with the campaign in the Pacific are interesting. Technically,
the "island-hopping" strategy was to bypass islands and leave Japanese forces
stranded there, unable to be resupplied while Americans did not waste any of their
own men or materials in trying to take the island. This is not at all what the overall
human strategy in the Hive Queen war was: There, they had to destroy EVERY
enemy fleet, regardless of cost. None could be bypassed. Still, the
Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombs might be viewed as a parallel. However, even though
they were aimed at industrial cities, these bombs were still meant as a
demonstration, not a final, nation destroying bomb. The real equivalent might have
been to drop A-bombs simultaneously on all Japanese cities at once, effectively
wiping out the Japanese nation and people all at once. Which we did not do, and
one hopes would not have done.
The main reason that the wars cannot be seen as parallel is that in WWII, we
held a slight technological and military-intelligence edge over the enemy. In the
war with the Hive Queens, humans were definitely technologically inferior. Our
one devastating weapon was based partly on technology we learned from them. If
we were going to use it, we had to use it to effect a complete victory - otherwise,
they would quickly return with such a weapon to use against us - and we were
confined to only one planet ourselves.
My military thinking in my fiction is based on the situations I posit at the
time. Patterns of history repeat themselves, because human behaviors remain
constant as to principles of strategy and tactics. However, none of my stories is
meant to be a "disguised" treatment of a real world event. If I want to write about
WWII, I'll write about WWII <grin>.
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