Ender and Novinha

Discuss all things pertaining to the EnderVerse milieu.

Was it a good idea fro Ender to marry Novinha?

Yes
11
42%
No
7
27%
Maybe, I don't really know.
8
31%
 
Total votes: 26

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Ender and Novinha

Postby spanish_rockette » Wed Sep 01, 2010 8:30 am

I know some of you don't like that Ender married her. I mean he married into a horriable family. What do you think?
"leaving both her husbands behind, the one whose life had a monument and a book, and the one whose only monument was in her heart."

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Postby spanish_rockette » Wed Sep 01, 2010 4:02 pm

i thought it was a that it was a surpise twist. I mean she started showing her love to him in a way in the end. sorta? but i was pretty confused about it.
until i reread that part like 100 times, i finally i got it. kinda.
"leaving both her husbands behind, the one whose life had a monument and a book, and the one whose only monument was in her heart."

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Postby neo-dragon » Wed Sep 01, 2010 4:22 pm

I never understood what Ender saw in her, but they seemed to make each other and the kids happy, so I'd say it was a good thing.
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Postby spanish_rockette » Wed Sep 01, 2010 4:38 pm

[quote="neo-dragon"]I never understood what Ender saw in her, but they seemed to make each other and the kids happy, so I'd say it was a good thing.[/quote]

I agree. and they didnt seem happy. Novinha was jealous of jane fro i long time. and ender wouldnt let her go. ender felt he had to protect her. and when did they decied to het amrried. if she had bear him a chikd, then maybe. but then again she has like 6 kids. and they have 4 half siblings. and one more would ahve been werid. maybe i the beginning of the marriage they were happy. but the kids were happy thoguh outm i guess.
"leaving both her husbands behind, the one whose life had a monument and a book, and the one whose only monument was in her heart."

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Postby neo-dragon » Wed Sep 01, 2010 4:50 pm

Remember there's about 30 years between Speaker for the Dead and Xenocide. I got the impression that they were mostly happy together during that time. Happier than they were apart, at least.
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Postby spanish_rockette » Thu Sep 02, 2010 7:30 pm

true, that is very true.
"leaving both her husbands behind, the one whose life had a monument and a book, and the one whose only monument was in her heart."

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Postby Janus%TheDoorman » Thu Sep 02, 2010 7:47 pm

A lot of Card's characters seem to edge toward the "Stable, Settled" side of the spectrum that Valentine and Ender discuss at one point, as opposed to the "Wandering Inseminator" archetype. I forget where it happense, but John Paul and Theresa, too discuss how they were intent on having a large family despite the population restriction laws even before Ender was requested. I think Card just views family life as the expected choice for people and that comes through naturally in his writing, and Novinha and Ender were at least partially compatible, and frankly unless Ender's wife was more or less Valentine without the squick, I think she would have seemed a little odd as Ender's choice for a mate. Novinha was a relatively simple choice compared to writing in an extra character, and it that extra would have stuck out like a sore thumb, anyway.
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Postby neo-dragon » Thu Sep 02, 2010 8:44 pm

I think Card just views family life as the expected choice for people and that comes through naturally in his writing,
Very much so. It's an aspect of his writing that annoys many people. The notion that no one's life is complete until they start a family, or at least acknowledge that they wish they had. I don't mind it, but he does over do it a bit at times. Even Anton in the Shadow books who is strongly implied to be homosexual (if not stated outright) marries a woman and fathers a child with her.

I'd certainly defend the argument that human beings in general are hardwired with certain family making instincts, but they're not necessarily as strong in every single individual as Card tends to suggest. Many, many people have very different priorities. After all, as human beings developed intelligence we gained the ability to choose which instincts we want to follow.
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Postby Janus%TheDoorman » Thu Sep 02, 2010 10:58 pm

I don't mind that Card is big on family, it's just the way Ender's marriage is just pre-supposed that caught me off guard, and completely tears away my suspension of disbelief. Here's Ender who grew up with parents who were distant to the point of reckless endangerment, a brother who tortured small animals and made him fear for his life, and a sister for a mother figure who he's ripped from at the age of nine and doesn't see again until the military gets her to coerce him back into service, where he was intentionally denied any parental guidance and support, and the idea of marrying into literally the most unstable family on the planet gets no introspective from him.

If he had even given a throwaway line like "I didn't want to see another family pulled apart the way mine was" or SOMETHING, I probably would have been okay with it, but his entire thought process seemed to be "Hey, you guys seem to be missing an adult male in this equation, and here I am!"

And then there's no question of what kind of father Ender would be. His only real father figure is Mazer, if anyone, and Mazer is there to put him through hell, but then Ender acts as, within the confines of the story, as a perfect father. It ruins the narrative of the story. The whole point of the Necessitarian philosophy that Card keeps going over is that the Xenocide was a terribly, horrible thing that HAD TO HAPPEN, and that Ender's transformation into the perfect killing machine is a terrible, horrible thing that HAD TO HAPPEN, and the rest of the series is part of his struggle to come to terms with it. However, Card continually places Ender into the context of a father through most of the later books, where he SHOULD be at the very least emotionally distant, and carry a host of other "battle scars" but Card refuses to show the damage that Battle School did to Ender in this context because it would subvert the Marriage & Family shtick. Consciously or unconsciously, he subordinates his protagonist's emotional journey to his family life, and makes Ender's character in those sequences incredibly bland.

Ender doesn't even feel like he's the same character from Battle School in the later books because he's so busy being a family man.
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Postby neo-dragon » Thu Sep 02, 2010 11:06 pm

You're forgetting that Ender's greatest gift was his ability to understand people and love them. He's not the type who would be emotionally distant. He's more the type who would, either consciously or not, seek out a family that needs healing and provide it for them. I wonder how much he was really in love with Novinha as opposed to being compelled to fix her family, while finally fulfilling his need to be a part of one.

Also, I think that part of the purpose of Ender in Exile is to give a bit of insight into the transition from Battle School Ender to Speaker Ender. By the time of SftD, Ender had more than 20 years (subjective time, of course) to deal with his childhood scars, and he's a very resilient individual.
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Postby spanish_rockette » Sun Sep 05, 2010 2:53 pm

i agree. that is so true.
"leaving both her husbands behind, the one whose life had a monument and a book, and the one whose only monument was in her heart."

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Postby Janus%TheDoorman » Mon Sep 06, 2010 3:31 am

You're forgetting that Ender's greatest gift was his ability to understand people and love them.
As I understood it, this was precisely why the Bugger Wars took such a toll on him, I thought this was the reason he took his mini-retirement. Having to love something and destroy it would have been incredibly painful. Painful, I would think, to the point that Ender would have been somewhat reluctant to engage that part of himself again. This is why he writes the Hive Queen and the Hegemon, because he needed the world to know his crime. He understood that the Xenocide was a terrible thing, and needed the world to understand that, too. It'd be like having someone be your secret best friend who commits some small crime, but your society compels you to kill them for it. Everyone would be congratulating you and celebrating you, but it's be killing you on the inside. Hive Queen was Ender saying "No, I didn't kill them because of what they did, I killed them because of what you demanded. I loved them, and you should have, too, and this is why."

This is who Ender was coming out of Battle School, and nothing in EiE makes me think he's really any different from that by the end. In fact, I don't remember the details, but I think Ender basically confesses to this after his fight with Randall, and Valentine realizes that he's felt this way the whole time, when all the world though he'd done something great.

Then, we get to SftD and the rest, and Ender seems to have simply accepted that his crime was great, and it was the crime of an ignorant child, and his method of atoning for what he did is to try and stop other people from committing similar crimes of ignorance by sorting out the truth of people's lives when they've died. I think he picked Novinha's case out of a sort of pity, recognizing that, like him, when she sent out the request for a Speaker, she was a child dealing with issues far beyond what she was properly emotionally prepared for, and he wanted to go there to help her through it.

Maybe I've completely misinterpreted everything I just went over, but it seems to me that either Ender underwent some intense emotional development that we aren't privy to (in which case, What the hell OSC?), or his entire relationship with her is one of pity and condescension. The tension in their relationship and much of Ender's attitude when dealing with her in CotM seem to support this. Throughout their entire relationship he deals with her like a parent would with a child more than a husband would with a wife.

So, without the idea the OSC left out massive character development for his protagonist, (possibly for a later book, which I can understand, but a throwaway line from Ender about his growing up period would have been useful), or Ender dies an emotional cripple who never fully engaged with the rest of humanity because he was unintentionally made a pariah by the IF. Not because he was a valuable military asset, but simply because he was the only human that loved what they all hated, and they had to be shepherded to his understanding.

That's what makes me uncomfortable with their relationship. Ender comes off as having completely removed himself from life, and having just accepted everything. It's a sad, sad state to die it, and he wouldn't have had to, if he wasn't insanely forced into marrying Novinha by the author.
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Postby spanish_rockette » Mon Sep 06, 2010 1:27 pm

i think Ender being married to novinha just ruined his storyline. i felt that ender wanted to be loved. he loved the children. but i think novinha was best thing ender could love. but the marriage was more like friends.
"leaving both her husbands behind, the one whose life had a monument and a book, and the one whose only monument was in her heart."

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Re: Ender and Novinha

Postby UnnDunn » Wed Dec 21, 2011 12:42 pm

I don't get this argument. From the second Ender got Novinha's call to go to Lusitania, it was clear they were going to marry (at least, to me.) The saga with the piggies was as much an elaborate courtship between Ender and Novinha as it was anything else.

I mean, Ender left Valentine, the closest person he'd ever known until that point, specifically to go to Novinha. Yes, Jane begged him to go, and yes he was curious about the Piggies and yes he was looking for a new home for the Hive-Queen, but those were almost fringe benefits. None of them were reason enough to pull him away from Valentine, not with the urgency with which he left. Only Novinha was, because he loved her and yearned above all to be with her. Ender knew he would marry and grow old with Novinha even before he left Trondheim. He knew because, dammit, he's Ender. The only question was whether Novinha would marry him. He would have to win her love, which he did because, again, he's Ender and that's what Ender is good at.

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Re: Ender and Novinha

Postby Zaph » Sun Apr 21, 2013 1:03 pm

Novinha is a horror, one of the worst characters in any media I have ever encountered. I don't know if I can fully express how offensive I find her. That being said, Ender's relationship with her happened completely offscreen, which was a stupid choice. His falling in love is completely unexplained and unexplored. He flew to Lusitania and BAM! Love. We are given no basis to believe this was ever a functional relationship, because all of it but the ending are skipped over. When they interact with each other, she's throwing a fit and he's passively taking it. She treats him like stepfathers have no rights, even though they've been married for thirty years. Their relationship is hamfistedly forced by the author, and it ruins Xenocide completely. Seriously, that book was drowned in that awful family screaming at Ender for no reason. Also, the fact that Novinha just quite her job as senior XENOBIOLOGIST in the middle of the worst plague in human history deserves more than an "aw shucks, I guess it worked out because God." She is never punished for it. None of her victims' problems matter because her feelings are the most important thing in her world. Her need to be punished put her children through the hell of her marriage, and they are all obviously damaged by it. She did nothing to help them, because she was getting exactly what she wanted out of it. Her feelings are always more important than anything, and that is despicable. Her behavior towards Jane is juvenile and disgraceful, and I cannot believe any grown person would take that asinine crap seriously. But of course we are forced to, because the main character is being held hostage to her insane selfishness. She does not do one single person one single iota of good, and I can see that the author has set it up so that she HAD to be a terrible mother and scientist so Ela would... etc etc, but that is cheap writing, and I thought the author was better than that. I'm reading Children of the Mind now, and the book is drowning in the same determinist nonsense that Ender was deconstructing in the second book. But it's different this time because HER FEELINGS.

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Re: Ender and Novinha

Postby elfprince13 » Mon Apr 22, 2013 5:46 pm

I've never looked in on this topic before, but am somewhat shocked at the way that about half of the people posting in it seem to have read this relationship.

However, Card continually places Ender into the context of a father through most of the later books, where he SHOULD be at the very least emotionally distant, and carry a host of other "battle scars" but Card refuses to show the damage that Battle School did to Ender in this context because it would subvert the Marriage & Family shtick. Consciously or unconsciously, he subordinates his protagonist's emotional journey to his family life, and makes Ender's character in those sequences incredibly bland.
Ender's casual conversation about killing a couple of people as a motivation for learning to keep an even keel is a very obvious discussion of that emotional journey.
The appearance of nu-Peter/Val in Xenocide is specifically because of his battle scars and the ongoing damage to his psyche from his horrific childhood.
Ender's death in CotM is specifically the result/conclusion of his emotional journey and finally being able to cut loose some of his inner demons.
Ender doesn't even feel like he's the same character from Battle School in the later books because he's so busy being a family man.
To the contrary, he spends most of them trying and failing to be a family man. Which is pretty consistent with some other famous figures who are widely seen as heroes. Read up on the troubled family life of, for example, Gandhi, or MLK Jr., or Paul Farmer.
"I have nothing to say to you,” Novinha said, “We're still married under the law, but that's all.” … “I love you,” Ender said. … “As much as you're capable of love,” she said. “And then only when you've a little time left over from looking after everybody else. You think you're some kind of guardian angel, with responsibility for the whole universe. All I asked you to do was take responsibility for my family. You're good at loving people by the trillion, but not so good at dozens, and you're a complete failure at loving one.”
"But the conversation of the mind was truer than any language, and they knew each other better than they ever could have by use of mere sight and touch."

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Re: Ender and Novinha

Postby BobbyOodle » Tue Jul 09, 2013 9:07 am

It was more about the kids than Novinha, I think. If he hadn't have done that, some of my favorite characters either wouldn't have been there, or just wouldn't have been the same people. Case and point, Olhado. Because of Ender he made it his life goal to become a good dad. And his side story had to be the most heart warming thing. How in private he called Ender "Papa" and Ender called him "son". Olhado is the man!
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Re: Ender and Novinha

Postby Rootersfriend » Tue Jul 09, 2013 9:57 am

I feel like it was an acurate depiction of what happens a lot with love and relationships, from the outside they looklike stupid decisions, but it doesn't have to make sense, in fact it rarely does I would say. Plus ender was a fixer, a healer, and like BobbyOodle said, a lot of it was for the kids. Ender wouldn't have been Ender if he hadn't followed through with his word and with his almost obligation to heal that family through whatever means possible. Not that I'm discounting his love for Novinha, I think it's clear that was real, but I think Ender was a man of principles, and there was no way he was going to let that whole thing just go becuase she was being stubborn.
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