Ender

In Orson Scott Card’s Speaker for the Dead, I can’t help but admiring Ender throughout the book. Card really brings out the qualities of Ender that make him such an exceptional commander in Ender’s Game: his charisma, compassion, his ruthlessness, and his amazing perception of the human spirit.

It is impossible to not be swayed by Ender’s charisma. One can easily understand the devotion his soldiers showed Ender in his Battle School days. Everyone seems to be taken with his winning personality, including Novinha. The first time she meets him she thinks, “I could be seduced by that voice” (127) and “his eyes were seductive with understanding…I could drown in his understanding” (129). She senses his uncanny perceptive ability, the ability that has already won over her family members. Even I could not help but be taken by him and admire his ability. His charisma comes not just from his perceptive ability, but the earnestness of his character. Ender is incredibly genuine, especially in his desire to uncover the truth; and the simple way in which he speaks the truth, with no pretensions, is captivating. He does indeed have a manipulative side to his character, but I think beneath that there remains a bit of his childhood innocence. He still has that boy in him who just wanted his brother, and everyone else for that matter, to love him. In class, we spoke about Ender as a mix of Valentine and Peter, the compassionate and the ruthless. But, out of anyone in his family I believe that he has the most compassion, proved by his assumption of the role of Speaker of the Dead.

Ender made an amazing sacrifice in choosing to write The Hive Queen and the Hegemon, sacrificing his good name for the sake of the “truth”. He speaks the truth to set the friends and relatives of the dead free, but ironically, it sets everyone free other than himself. He continues to live with the guilt of his childhood actions for years to come, and even more, he experiences the pain of each of the dead he speaks for. In his role as Speaker for the Dead he makes use of his compassion, empathizing with the dead by loving them. At the same time, he is incredibly ruthless, sparing nothing in his effort to uncover the truth. That same ruthlessness that allowed him to defeat the Buggers allows him to bare the truth. Why is that ruthlessness that sets everyone else free constantly turned towards himself? I pity Ender for his inability to forgive himself for his childhood mistakes.