Ender's Game: A boy's coming-of-age epic

What do you do when someone hurts you at any cost?

Some say they will fight back, and some say they will back down appropriately.

One boy said, "I didn't want to hurt you, but I was afraid you would hurt me again, so I had to hurt you until you never dared to hurt me again." ”

This boy is Ender, the protagonist of ender's game, a science fiction novel published in the United States in 1985.

In its second year of publication, the novel included two of America's most prestigious science fiction awards, the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award. In 2014, the novel was adapted into a film of the same name for worldwide release.

His author, Orson Scott Card, was a science fiction genius at the time, and after the publication of this novel, "Ender's Endorsement" and "Ender's Shadow" were published successively, of which "Ender's Endorsement" once again won the two science fiction awards mentioned earlier.

This novel mainly tells the growth history of a gifted boy and is an inspirational novel about growing up.

The background of the novel is as follows: in the future, there will be a big war between the earthlings and the alien insect race, and the earthlings will get a temporary respite because of an outstanding commander who luckily defeated the insect tribe, whose technology is far more advanced than that of humans.

In order to protect themselves, the earthlings have united for the first time in history, fully prepared in terms of technology, weapons and talents, built and continuously dispatched long-range fleets, and strived to preemptively attack.

It was in this context that Ender was chosen to join the Combined Fleet Combat School, where he underwent a series of brutal trainings unlike other cadets so that he could become a supreme commander with courage and resourcefulness to lead the Earth fleet.

Today we will talk about this top science fiction novel of the last century from three parts: "I want to turn fate into a mission", "Let the unfairness come more violently", and "I will spend the rest of my life looking for hope for you".

Part I: I want to turn fate into a mission

This is ender's inner cry after knowing his fate.

Ender is the third child in the family, and he has an older brother and an older sister in front of him. At school, Ender was often derided by his classmates as a "superfluous little fart."

Why is it redundant?

It turned out that in that era, due to the full development of science and technology, the manufacture of fleets and weapons by the people of the earth, resulting in a shortage of resources.

As a result, governments began to implement a system of birth approval, and only the first two children in a family could enjoy public services such as free education. If a third is born, it will be despised and ridiculed by society.

Ender's older brother and sister, both gifted children with high intelligence, were noticed by the fleet since childhood. But because the brother was too violent and the sister was too weak, both of them were eventually eliminated.

However, earthlings need gifted children too much to help them win, so the government asks the highly intelligent Ander parents to have children again.

This child is Ender, a transliteration of The English Ander, which means Terminator. His birth was saddled with hopes from both earthlings and parents, hoping that he would put an end to the threat of the Zerg race on the one hand, and that he would put an end to the shameful supernatural life on the other.

Hope you can put an end to all this, and that's it, Ender, that's your destiny.

Then some people have to ask, why do you have to start with the doll? Can't adults?

The reason set in the novel is that at that time, the people of the earth felt that children were young, intelligent, responsive, and reckless. At the same time, they can be trained to embed their command and stress resistance into their intuition so that they will be more explosive than adults.

Therefore, the alternative target is targeted at the children.

In anticipation, Ender was implanted with a monitor at the age of 3 and began to monitor him in real time. It wasn't until one day when Ender was 6 years old that the monitor was removed for no reason, and the story officially began.

Generally speaking, being removed from the monitor for no reason means not being selected, so Ender's classmates and brothers begin to laugh at and bully him until something happens.

It was an after-school afternoon, and Stetson, the campus bully, led his accomplices to intercept Ender on the road, laughing and provoking with all the possible.

Ender endured and watched until they didn't pay attention and flew up desperately and kicked at Stevenson's chest. After Stetson fell to the ground, Ender did not follow the rule of the period that "opponents can't fight again after falling", kicking and punching Stetson over and over again. For his intuition told him that if he wanted to prevent the revenge of this gang in the future, he must have a complete victory.

Ender's kindness made him despise his own actions and begin to blame himself and reflect. What he didn't know was that this preemptive instinct had allowed him to pass the selection of the combined fleet.

Because for the Combined Fleet, isn't it considering what Ender did? Instead, consider what drove him to behave in this way. And this preemptive, no-show instinct is the concept of combat pursued in that context.

The headmaster of the Combat School, Graf (a man who will train Ender in the future and at all costs), personally comes to his home and invites Ender into the Combat School, tells him that this is his fate as the third oldest, and asks him to make a choice that has no choice.

Go, he'll be brutally trained. If he doesn't go, his entire family will be despised by society, and the Zerg will invade and destroy the earth in the future.

For Ender, on the one hand, he does not like to fight, and on the other hand, he wants to protect the people he loves, especially his sister.

Do you submit to fate or ignite a mission?

Ender's choice was: "I don't want to go, but I will go." ”

Yes, since fate cannot be changed, it is better to stand up and face it bravely and transform it into my mission, all for the people I love.

With that belief, Ender entered combat school. What he didn't know, however, was that what awaited him was eternal injustice.

Part TWO Let the injustice come more violently

Earlier we mentioned that Graff wanted to train Ender to be a leader who was not dependent on others at any time and had extraordinary command skills.

To this end, he will stop at nothing to strike Ender and expose him to all kinds of unfair treatment.

He once told other instructors: "On Ender's issue, we have to strike a balance. On the one hand, we must keep him in a certain degree of isolation so that his creativity does not disappear, otherwise he will completely identify with the system and we will lose his talent; on the other hand, we must also ensure that he has enough ability to lead others. ”

When boarding the spaceship bound for the combat school, Graff became the target of everyone by praising Ender from time to time in front of the recruits.

When the recruits made real friends and life was just going well, the school announced that Ender had advanced to advance to the older child's Salamander team at the age of less than seven, leaving the Captain of the Salamander Team with a lingering prejudice against him.

When he became the captain of the Wyvern Team at the age of 9, Graf constantly broke the rules of battle, giving Ender a double physical and mental torture by arranging non-intermittent, continuous rotational battles, and battle arrangements with obviously unequal strength.

Faced with such a life, Ender has also been angry and struggled like ordinary people, and has been so fragile that he almost gave up. However, he never conceded defeat.

Because he clearly knew that his original intention here was to keep his beloved sister from being harmed by the insect race, and for the sake of the little entanglement on the earth, he had to fight and grow for it, and he could not lose.

"I can do it, I can handle it. Let the unfairness come harder! This is Ender's heart-wrenching inner monologue in the face of loneliness and pressure.

Instructors can create isolation, team allocation can be unfair, training can be unfair, and fighting can be unfair. The more this happens, the more they can't let them succeed!

I can endure and observe, and I can choose the opportunity to break through; I can turn anger into a positive force that can be controlled and used; I can effectively use the tools of cruelty, meanness, and breaking the rules to maintain goodness and seek victory.

In the recruit team, he seized the training opportunity to break the ice, make good friends with reason, and overcome isolation.

In the Salamander Team, Ender used the rules to organize the recruit team to participate in actual combat practice, obtaining a win-win situation and enhancing his prestige and value. Through the game with the captain, I learned how to establish authority and how to destroy it, forming initial leadership skills.

In the Wyvern Team, he turned pressure into strength, defeating one unfair battle after another by giving trust, downward decentralization, and daring to sacrifice, without a single battle being defeated.

At Battle School, Ender completed a rapid improvement in ability and mind. He transformed the fate of injustice into a warm mission in his heart, turned artificial harshness into the strength to move forward, and pursued light and hope with masculinity, courage and tenacity.

With excellent results, Ender set a precedent for graduating from the Combat Academy in four years and entered the Command Academy.

Here he will meet the final battle in a lie.

Part III: Spend the rest of my life looking for hope for you

The final battle was to exterminate the Zerg, a battle that the fleet considered cruel to any commander who could achieve victory.

The reason is simple: to direct the war requires understanding the enemy, making the enemy's motives your sword, and when you really understand their ideas and beliefs, you will like them, and when you like them, you will destroy them.

How cruel it is. To avoid the risks posed by this paradox, the fleet weaves a lie for Ender.

They told Ender that the wars you led at the Command Academy were all games in a game console.

Here, there is a key figure called Maze Rehan. It is the hero who turned the tide of the Zerg war mentioned earlier, a good commander.

His only purpose in surviving is to pass on his Zerg knowledge and combat experience to his successors, constantly cultivating and training them. However, Ender's former successors collapsed under the pressure of training, and then became cowardly and incompetent.

So, under such demonic training, Ender led his team to direct the drone on a simulator like a game console to fight the insects in the game, constantly being challenged to the limit and breaking through the limit.

He watched the video of the last war over and over again, and over and over again sensed and experienced the thoughts of the Zerg in the building of Eros (the site of the Command Academy, the outpost of the First Invasion of the Zerg, and later occupied and exploited by the Earthlings). So much so that he saw the insects dissecting him in his dreams many times, trying to understand him.

The Zerg torment him while he is asleep, while Maze persecutes him while he is awake.

Ender was on the verge of collapse tentatively. But he never complained, because he knew that there was no word "mercy" in Maze's dictionary. His only focus is on constantly improving himself and winning.

Until one day, Ma Ze announced that in the next training, the enemy army would no longer be controlled by computers, but by himself.

This lie really begins. Since then, every drone has become a real fighter, piloted by a real pilot. Every time the enemy is not Ma Ze but the real Zerg.

All this, Ender knew nothing.

In the face of the true power of the Zerg Clan, the battle is becoming more and more difficult to win. Ender began to devote all his energy to fighting, his teammates collapsed one after another, and his own body began to show signs of collapse, such as not eating, fainting while commanding, shaking his hands, and so on.

He even hoped to fail, so that Ma Ze would abandon him and let him go home, just like his previous students. However, this idea is always fleeting.

The last strength comes from Ender's sanity. His intellect told himself: Someone needs me, and if I fail, maybe I'm homeless at all, because the person I love is gone.

In the final battle, he exploits the Zerg mind and pays a great price to destroy the Zerg's mother star with a suicide attack.

Everyone was cheering. Ma Zebo can't wait to tell Ender that the world he exploded and shattered is the real world of the Zerg Clan.

What the? Is the world destroyed in the game the real Zerg world? The drones he used as suicide attacks, the real fighter jets, each with a real pilot inside?

Ender was furious, but what could he do? The soldiers who have passed away will not be reborn, and the Zerg clan will be destroyed.

What is even more ridiculous is that less than twenty-four hours after the end of the Zerg War, the United Earth against the alien race is once again in war, and the Earth interest groups have begun to wage civil war, each side wants to get the greatest military commander in history, Ender, and each side wants Ender to die.

Ander couldn't even go back to Earth. I wanted to go home, but I didn't know where it was.

After the war, the good Ender suppressed a heavy sense of guilt. He explores the facilities left behind by the Zerg on Eros and begins to delve into and perceive the story of the Zerg.

Until one day, Ender was summoned by the Zerg Clan.

The summon comes from the white silk cocoon of the Zerg Queen left behind in Eros. It connects with Ender through thought waves and tells the story of the Enders, the ant-feud between the Zerg and humans, the non-existent Third Invasion, and the Zerg trust in him. It hopes ender can help the Zerg find a future and hope.

The kind Ender agreed, and he wrote down the story of the Zerg and wandered the universe with the white silk cocoon.

Yes, to compensate, I spent the rest of my life looking for hope for you.

This is the main story of the entire novel of Ender's Game.

Some people say that this is a similar boy fighting monster upgrade story dressed in the guise of science fiction.

Indeed, from today's point of view, the space battle scenes, the training scenes in weightless states, and the use of game simulators seem to have become common in literature and film. However, looking back at the work of 1985, it feels very advanced.

In fact, what is really intriguing and enlightening about this novel is that the author, with his incredible understanding of human nature, brilliantly interprets for us the whole process of a boy's growth into a real man, which is very inspirational and full of positive energy.

Ender concentrates too many human contradictions: strong and weak, killing and saving, violence and peace. However, how to make the right choice in these contradictions, turn the initiative into passivity, and always maintain a positive and upward motivation, Ender gave us inspiration, and also brought some enlightenment and thinking to the current popular "lying flat" and "mourning" culture.

I hope that the little Ender in everyone's heart can lead us to find the light and hope of the future.