Ender's Game: A Look into Society

Franklin Roosevelt once said, "We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future." I believe that everyone has a responsibility to try and make their world a better place whether it is socially, politically, or environmentally. But it always seems that we are shifting the responsibility of our world to another generation. We are always going to have the problems we have if we do not learn to take the responsibility into our own hands and make the changes we need to.

In Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, the reader follows Ender, an exceptional boy with exceptional abilities. Ender at the age of four exhibits intelligence the most developed adults. He is recruited by the government to become a military genius and save the human race from their mysterious buggars. In the book, the reader follows Ender's journey through the trials, that the government has put before him, (such as putting him through military school at seven, and trying to exclude him from the rest of the boys.)

In addition to Ender, we see his older brother Peter tries to save the world. But unlike Ender, Peter does it wholeheartedly and knowingly. This is why I admire Peter, even though he is portrayed as the bad guy, he really is not. Peter simply is just misunderstood. Peter realizes that the people that are in charge are not making any positive changes, and he takes measures into his own hands by faking an identity and writing about how the government should change.

At the beginning of each chapter there is an excerpt from conversations of this government. As the reader reads these conversations one thing becomes very clear, they are desperate for someone to save them. In one of the chapters one of the adults basically says," if I could I would save the planet, but I can't, we need someone young someone who is not as feeble as us that are why we go through training these young children, because they are our hope." This book shows over and over that government and even the citizen adults rely on the younger generation to "save the world." So in parallel to one of the themes in the book the reader has to ask, "Does today's older generation of society rely of the younger generation to save the world as they do in Ender's Game?" The answer is yes, and this is evident through examples through history, present, and steps that are being taken for the future.

In history we see how the government has used the open minds of the younger generation to fight racism. And save the world from disunity. When segregation first appeared the biggest impact was in the schools, the government banned segregated schools in hope that it would unify this country by using the next generation. In May of 2004 we saw the celebration of fifty years in segregation of schools and the unity of our country. Even today Colin Powell acknowledges what segregation is doing in our schools, saying that it continues to unify our country. (Sales, 2004) We still look to the younger generations to become more open to other races, and with every generation it seems that the racial prejudices are becoming less of an issue because we have become more of a unified country.

In the present we see how the older generation is using the younger generation to fight many different things in order to "save the world." One of the causes that the younger generation is expected to fix is the problem of global warming. A newspaper in North Carolina states that this is generation green, that they are young, well researched and mad as heck, and they contribute this fact to the outpouring of movies, TV shows, books, Web sites and "green classes" at school. They even go on to quote third-graders who say that their parents don't do enough. And even go on to state how these third graders want "green" birthday parties because society is appealing to them and making it "cool to go green." (Italie, 2008) This was not as relevant to our country thirty years ago, but because our environmental problems got so out-of-hand and each generation refused to make the changes needed. So now it is up to this generation to make the change. Another way that the older generation is trying to get the younger crowd to change the country is through voting. Rock the Vote (a website dedicated to getting the younger generation to vote.) states that the younger generation has the opportunity to change the face of this country through politics and the economic system, just by voting. And they encourage not just voting but getting involved with the politics in their community, so that they can make a difference all the time, not just at the voting booth. They state that the younger generation has to take control of its own future. Because the younger generation is the future. As we can see in the most recent presidential race the younger generation did make a huge difference in the choice of Obama. We have been dubbed "the generation of change" because we are expected to make the changes needed to get this country thriving economically again. (Winning the Young Voters, April)

But as rock the vote stated, the younger generation is the future, so how is the older generation trying to get the younger generation to save the world? The older generation is using education to change the minds of young people for the future to transform and save the world. In Ender's Game, the government uses the school they send Ender to as a way to train him to show him and instruct him on how to save the world.

Paulo Freire once said, "Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world. (Freire) Education covers many things and it is still being used in the examples I mentioned before. Though racism has come a long way in fifty years, our country still has a long way to go. It will continue with the open minds of our younger generation. Those third-graders mentioned earlier they still have to continue to make the green choices when they get older to really make a difference. And the young voters need to continue to have the strong voice through their adult years in order to really make long term change. Because temporary change doesn't change the world. Change needs to be instilled in our very being, that is when it will really last.

I did not realize how much society relies on the younger generation until I started examining the themes of Ender's Game and when I realized it I came up with numerous examples of how this is evident in societies. All through the book Ender deals with this inward emotional of what his superiors want from him. They put these expectations on him that he does not know if he can meet up with him. Ender struggles with this idea that he is not good enough to handle everything his superiors throw at him. Just like the society today really wonders whether it can really handle all the current problems thrown at us.

In Contrast, Ender's older brother Peter takes the problems face on even though he was not picked as the special one like Ender was. He had to pretend to be someone completely different and went on to change the entire country. He enlisted the help of his sister Valentine. At one point he said something in the book how the country will go to ruins if he does not help them. Peter inspired me to take charge and try to make the changes I want to see in my country, I really wish a lot more people were like Peter (only nicer) and took their generation's problems into their own hands.

At the end of Ender's Game, Ender has his child army go on to fight and save the world. The adults jump around and celebrate because the children they had faith in, pulled through and saved them. Because they had trusted their fate to the younger generation their world was saved.