I loved the book in middle school. Like, it was one of my favorite books ever. I once reread it in the course of a few hours at a party that my parents took me to, it was that good.
However, rereading it in high school I was disappointed. It was less relatable, and at parts his victimization felt much more forced, and his intelligence more of an informed attribute. The plot seemed a bit more contrived, and I didn’t identify as much with the parts of me that empathized with Ender.
What I ultimately think was most condemning though, was the vacuousness of almost everyone else in the book. The bullies were clearly there just to be knocked down, and his friends (or “jeesh”) in the book were just in support roles. The bullies were indistinguishable from each other, as were the friends, and the whole book seemed set up to gratify Ender’s superiority.
It would actually be pretty interesting (but tangential to your main point) to address that issue—namely how a supersmart protagonist often wants to be the only motive force in the universe, but isn’t. Ender gets kind of pwned at the end of the book for failing to realize that, but its not particularly emphasized.
So I guess the take-home advice here is to have the other people in the story actually be other characters, rather than plot devices with names.
Count me as another one who liked the Bean series better. He seemed smarter, and less of his power was due to black-box people skills. Bean was a somewhat low-status, somewhat socially inept kid who used intelligence (and a willingness to break the rules) to succeed at what he did. And I liked the sections from the other kids’ POVs.
I loved the book in middle school. Like, it was one of my favorite books ever. I once reread it in the course of a few hours at a party that my parents took me to, it was that good.
However, rereading it in high school I was disappointed. It was less relatable, and at parts his victimization felt much more forced, and his intelligence more of an informed attribute. The plot seemed a bit more contrived, and I didn’t identify as much with the parts of me that empathized with Ender.
What I ultimately think was most condemning though, was the vacuousness of almost everyone else in the book. The bullies were clearly there just to be knocked down, and his friends (or “jeesh”) in the book were just in support roles. The bullies were indistinguishable from each other, as were the friends, and the whole book seemed set up to gratify Ender’s superiority.
It would actually be pretty interesting (but tangential to your main point) to address that issue—namely how a supersmart protagonist often wants to be the only motive force in the universe, but isn’t. Ender gets kind of pwned at the end of the book for failing to realize that, but its not particularly emphasized.
So I guess the take-home advice here is to have the other people in the story actually be other characters, rather than plot devices with names.
Did you read Bean’s parallel novel?
Yeah.
I liked that one more actually, but I haven’t reread it recently.
Bean seemed waaaaay smarter (and less mopey) than Ender when I last read it, but I’m not sure how well his thinking was shown.
The other characters in it had far stronger personalities than in the Ender series, though.
Count me as another one who liked the Bean series better. He seemed smarter, and less of his power was due to black-box people skills. Bean was a somewhat low-status, somewhat socially inept kid who used intelligence (and a willingness to break the rules) to succeed at what he did. And I liked the sections from the other kids’ POVs.