Expendable Little Munchkins
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
Rather than picking a quote I thought I would compare the real world to this book (thus far).
Children are being forced to grow up quickly and take on adult responsibilities like dying for your country. However, in order to do this, the government (Big Brother, those people inside your head, whatever you want to call the people behind the monitors) is trying to suck the emotion out of these children and failing miserably with Ender who actually shows compassion (he cries after beating up Stilson who, quite frankly, deserved the crap beat out of him).
Now it is my belief that Card wrote this story for children who 1. feel like they are being forced to grow up to quickly 2. refuse to grow up and take on responsibilities or 3. need a source to prove that children rule the world. I base this belief on the fact that I bought this book several years ago in the pre-teen section of Barnes and Noble.
As I was reading this, I couldn’t get over the fact that Andrew (Ender), Peter, and Valentine are so young. They talk like adults and have the mental capacity (if not in excess) of many adults. Their government encourages this, partly because they want to breed and use these children like robots (or suicide soldiers) to fight a war. Sadly, they see these children as expendable pieces of machinery rather than precious little gifts from whatever deity you ascribe to.
The first few chapters of Ender's Game were very reminiscent to me of 1984 by George Orwell. The sense that the government is watching us all the time creeps me out! But the common theme that I find among the science fiction books that I have read is that they always want to shock us in some way...and they will usually do so by presenting a scenario that could possibly happen. 1000 years from now could the government have the capability to read our minds? Maybe. Will they use children as soldiers? Maybe. We never know...which is why science fiction is so suspenseful; it is almost always referring to the future.