Regina Bertilson yammers obsessively,

I wrote this analytical review of the book Ender’s Shadow last fall. If John still has that ridiculous limit on words, well, Psha to him. He deserves a Psha anyways. If you haven’t read Ender’s Shadow (and/or Ender’s Game), I would recommend that you do before reading this, as I spoil a good many things in the story. If you have read the books, well, I hope this will give you more of an understanding of the book. Also, expect more analysis from me in the future. I may analyze an episode or two of Star Trek, since they provide very good material for pondering upon and discussing.

Here you are:

Orson Scott Card has written many books, but I have only read a few. Of the small number I have read, however, every one has been full of the characters’ fascinating thought processes and diabolical conflicts of good and evil. I did not really appreciate his books because I found them depressing, so I thought evaluating one would help me understand and enjoy his writing more—and it certainly has.
The book I read was Ender’s Shadow, by Orson Scott Card and published by Starscape. It is about Bean, a four-year-old urchin from the streets, in the future (approximately 2170 CE), who is extremely intelligent and survives tragic ordeals by his cleverness and determination. He has been genetically engineered to be brilliant beyond normal standards and he is discovered and sent to a military school in outer space for genius children. There they are to be trained to fight the Buggers, aliens who attacked the Earth years ago and who supposedly need to be destroyed to save humanity. Bean is the smartest child in the school and, more than likely, the most ingenious of every person—including the adults—there. Ender, though, seems to be everyone’s favorite. Bean endeavors to be like Ender, but does not succeed since he cannot quite emulate Ender’s humanity, since he and Ender grew up in very dissimilar environments. Also, like many of Orson Scott Card’s other works, the novel focuses on and examines the psychological effects of killing.
Orson Scott Card has written many different works, including fantasy novels, religious novels, plays, and musicals. His favored genre is science fiction, though. He has said that “…it is only inside the science fiction community that you will find room to write all that you want to write and still find an audience for it.” He has written many novels in the series of books based in the world or, rather, universe of the famous Ender’s Game, which includes its parallel novel, Ender’s Shadow, and both those books’ many sequels.
When he was just ten, he read The Rise and the Fall of the Third Reich and it shook him up, showing him how evil mankind could really be. “That was the first time I had really confronted evil. I was deeply disturbed by the notion that men could create rational motivations for doing such things.” His works often expand upon these thoughts and he always provides the thought processes of his main characters which makes his writing very intriguing for anyone with a mind that likes to analyze why humans do what they do. Also, he tried to start his own theater company, which didn’t work out, but acting—figuring out why the person you are acting does what he does—has influenced his writing greatly. He approaches his characters the same way, letting his readers see inside their heads to understand their actions better.
As I mentioned before, Bean is smarter than Ender (the main character of Ender’s Game), but Ender still has an advantage over him in that he has more humanity. Ender knows how to get people to follow him devotedly and trust him as their leader. Ender has had the blessing of being raised by loving, caring parents, whereas Bean has had to survive, since he was a tiny babe, by his own cleverness. He has had to hide and become hardened to killing early on. Ender, on the other hand, was not in the streets and did not have to see people die and he did not have to save himself from the selfishness of humans when he was a small child.
Bean, throughout the book, compares Ender to a character from his life as an orphan in the streets: Achilles (pronounced ‘ah-SHEEL,’ as in the French), who had similar qualities that made him a good leader. Both Ender and Achilles inspired very strong loyalty in their followers. What worries Bean, though, is that Achilles killed to keep his position. Or, rather, he hates people to see his weaknesses, either physical—he is a cripple, in the beginning—or psychological, so he kills them so there is no one to attest to times when he looked weak and pathetic. When Bean first sees him, it is when he joins one of the gangs of children, and he encourages the gang leader to kill Achilles, because he knows something about Achilles is not right. Later, when Achilles is the leader of the gang, he kills the previous leader because she had seen him weak, because she had once been in a position over him—able to kill him—because of his weakness.
Ender also kills, but not for the same reason. He is not trying to hide his weakness. His biggest weakness is the anguish he gets from having taken a life and that does not manifest itself until after he has killed, or deduces that he has. One of the other children at the school absolutely despises him and Ender ends up killing the boy in the shower, in self defense. Afterwards, Ender is driven to rebel against the school officials, who are, essentially, the ones who caused the whole ‘accident’ of Ender killing the boy to happen. Later in both books, he is pushed into such deep despair and anguish, from ending a whole race unknowingly, that he ends up in a coma.
Ender and Achilles may be similar, in that they both kill—though Ender usually does it somewhat unintentionally—and they are good leaders (though one could dispute the good of Achilles’ leadership—he killed mercilessly, but he also did help the children in his gang survive), but the stark distinction between them is that Ender does not enjoy killing or even try to do it. He is just trying to win, to help or save others. Achilles is trying to hide all evidence of his weaknesses. He is vengeful.
Ender’s Shadow (and Ender’s Game) are each fascinating studies on human character and how humans respond to killing, in war, revenge, or in self defense. Even though the main characters are hyperintelligent children, you can relate to them even if it is hard, sometimes, to understand exactly what their motives are. Also, I think, since Orson Scott Card doesn’t look well upon assigning certain very specific motives to characters, it’s a rather useless occupation. In real life, we don’t have one specific motive. You may want to, say, go to heaven, but that is just something that shapes all of the other motives. Humans have hundreds of reasons they do what they do and none of us have the same reasons. They may be similar, but there’s always something that isn’t quite the same. Both Ender and Bean have a similar goal—to win—but they both grew up so differently that they go about this goal by following completely different paths. Bean tries to emulate Ender’s humanity, because he feels inhuman since he was genetically engineered, and Ender just tries to do the best. Bean wants to be better, but can’t, since he doesn’t understand why, or even how, Ender does what he does. He analyzes it to try to figure it out, but you can’t completely understand motivation just by analyzation.
All in all, Ender’s Shadow, and Ender’s Game, are exceptionally absorbing books that you can learn a lot about humanity from. Orson Scott Card is one of the few very wise writers who really know how to develop characters and let us inside their heads to help us understand them. He shares the thoughts of his characters with us and, through them, we can learn to be better writers, and better learn how to understand our fellow man.