Reaction to Ender's Game

[lindseyl]

The hardest time I had with Ender's game was picturing very young children doing very adult things. It was hard for me to picture their size and what their faces may look like.

[Rei]

That really is probably the most surreal part of the story. Looking at most 6-year-olds, it's pretty hard to see them doing anything that happened at battle school.

[Luet]

Watching the new Karate Kid actually reminded me of Ender's Game. I know that Jaden Smith was 10 or 11 when making the movie but to me, he looked more like 8ish. I found it difficult to watch some of the fight scenes when he looked so small and young. If they can do that, they could do EG.

[neo-dragon]

Interestingly, despite the blows that kids take in that movie there's not a drop of blood shed.

[Dirt E Harry]

If you have trouble picturiing children saving the world, may I suggest a really fantastic animated series (now a motion picture), Avatar: The last Air Bender.

[neo-dragon]

Well the series is good anyway. The recent film is less than stellar.

[Psudo]

OSC argues in the introduction to Ender's Game (written long after the book) that he wasn't intending to write childhood as it appears to the audience, but childhood as it appears to children. When you were little and a bully picked on you at recess, it didn't seem trivial. It seemed like a mugging, a narrow escape from real violence. Or, in unluckier cases, like real violence. OSC was describing in adult terms what childhood feels like to children. And, in that sense, the children doing such adult things is not just an acceptable distortion of reality but a revolutionary, innovative kind of honesty. In my view, it's what makes the book so fascinating.

Compare that to Little Nemo or Alice in Wonderland, where the kids act silly and childish. You don't empathize with them as much because they're strangers, acting less mature than you would, doing exceptionally silly things you would never sink to do in their position. In Ender's Game, however, they feel as mature and as smart (or moreso) than yourself. You empathize with them, perhaps even aspire to be that quick-minded and capable. It makes the story more real, not less.

[descaladore13]

Ender's game was the first real science fiction novel I had ever read, and it got me hooked on that genre. I was eight when i first read the book, and at that point I thought it was a great book and tried speaker for the dead. This bored me and I left it alone for awhile and then I heard of the shadow series and started reading that. Later, I heard Ender in exile was coming out so I read enders game again to refresh my memory, and then read EiE. At this point, I was eleven and tried speaker for the dead again. This time I read the entire series and am currently waiting for Shadows in Flight to come out.

[spanish_rockette]

My reaction is that, i didnt think they were kids at all. until i read the book all over again. I'm like, "OH! THEY ARE KIDS!!!!"