One of the most interesting elements of Ender's Game is its treatment of children as opposed to adults. In the study of children's and adolescent literature we begin with a time when the child sphere of existence as we view it today didnt really exist. Children were seen merely as small versions of adults with no other seperating attributes. For this reason, they were not treated differently than adults and were not catered to in literature seperately than adults.
Ender's Game, in many ways, harkens back to that mindset. Children are expected to handle many challenges, both physical and emotional, that would be considered difficult even for adults in today's society. The "games" that the students at the battle school partake in become so serious that they are not really games at all. On an intellectual level, children in the story are expected to perform at an even higher level than adults.
At the same time, children are not nurtured at all by the adults in this story. Indeed, the opposite is true. Ender is specifically and purposefull kept from any kind of nurturing behavior from adults so that he may learn to wholly and completely rely on himself. The idea of self reliance is a common element of YA but in Ender's Game, it is taken to the extreme.
The children are also capable of evil acts, as we see most clearly in Peter, but also in Bonzo and even in Ender. The Romanticized innocent little angel is nowhere to be found in Ender's world. Children are not innocent, they are not protected by adults and they are not treated any differently than adults.
2 comments:
So, Nick, do you think the novel overturns our beliefs about children, that it suggests that children are much more capable than we generally take them to be?
Or, on the other hand, is it your sense that Card is critical of the adult authority figures in the novel precisely because they do not nurture and protect the children in the proper way?
In other words, is there some sense in the novel that Ender and the other children are just that, children, and that therefore they are being abused? Or does the novel side with the idea that these children are capable, independent beings who don't need to be nurtured and protected?
Do you believe Card means to overturn the Romantic view of the child, or that he means to critique a society that has no place for such a Romantic view?
This leads to a larger question, which is, what do you think are the implicit cultural politics in Ender's Game? Can the book be characterized as radical? Reactionary? Liberal? Conservative? None of the above?
they should be taken care of
I think that Card is completely overturning the Romantic view of childhood and he is certainly making a political statement with the idea of a common enemy keeping peace on earth but his statement about modern society's attitude towards children is less clear. He puts the story in the future and in a radically different society so it is removed from today's society.
I do see, however, that today's society does not protect children in the same way that it used to. TV and the internet make it impossible to do that in the same way. Perhaps Card's use of the future in this story serves as a look of where this trend is heading.
As far as the book being radical, it is to some degree. But it might just be "before its time," as they say.
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