ender's game characters/maturity

[unic0]

I really enjoyed this book; it was fast paced, entertaining, and smart. The main problem I had was visualizing the characters..In my head, I know they are children, but unconciously I kept picturing them as young adults.. It just doesn't seem believable to me! Yes, they are genetically engineered military geniuses, but does that also make them mature beyond their years? The characters, Ender especially, seem so rational and logical; I don't think any modern day child geniuses possess these traits. Apparently the military also did something to mature their minds? And if they are capable of maturing their minds, wouldn't they also be able to mature their bodies.. to make grow into adult bodies to match their minds? You would think that would be a big benefit in warfare. Any thoughts?

[Psudo]

Children don't think they're immature. Ender's Game is written from the children's perspective, so it's their own reasoning that looks rational and the adults' reasoning that looks muddled and inattentive. Don't you remember a childhood of watching grown-ups ignore things that seemed profound and provocative to you? I certainly do.

Graff is the bridge between the two views; an adult who believes that the uniqueness of that childlike perspective is the only way to beat the buggers. He walks a fine line between convincing the adults of the I.F. to go along and forcing the kids to give up unhelpful childish traits and learn unnatural but useful grown-up traits without losing the useful childlike traits. He molds the children into something unique, mature in some necessary ways and immature in other necessary ways. And Ender is his masterwork, the most capable of the grown-up kids.

I like the side-by-side comparison of the adult/kid relationship with the human/alien relationship. Teaching Ender to think in both human ways probably helped him think in that third, alien way as well.

[Janus%TheDoorman]

Ender and Bean are the only ones that seem exceptionally mature to me, at least when they came to Battle School. Achilles, too, but that's a whole other set of issues. Most of the other kids are scared, confused, and easily manipulated by the teachers - that's the whole point of Bean's rallying them together when they begin to rig the games against Dragon Army.

Bean is a special case, but Ender was brought into the world for the sake of the IF, a social pariah for being a Third, living in constant almost prey-like awareness of his brother's aggression. When the IF finally comes to pick him up, he's given a much fuller "briefing" of the situation on his way up, the other kids are thrown into a boot camp situation whereas Ender knows from the start that this is only the beginning.

Bonso certainly is something of a classic middle school bully - he's been at Battle School for a while, thinks he runs things, and lashes out violently when that claim is contested.

The psychology driving Ender's jeesh, in my estimation was a sense that Ender was the closest thing to a parent they had in Battle School, this is why Graff is so insistent that Ender can't develop dependent relationships with any of the older kids - he has to get them to depend on him for validation and support, to the point of breaking under the stress of the "final test".