GREAT book.

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Holy. Crap.  I really was not expecting this book to be as good as I thought it was.  I went into this assignment dreading the amount of reading we would have to do, but I ended up loving it and I sped through this novel much quicker than I thought.  Good choice, Dr. Jerz.  I approve. :)

I couldn't choose just one quote this time:

"'We train our commanders the way we do because that's what it takes -- they have to think in certain ways, they can't be distracted by a lot of things, so we isolate them.  You.  Keep you separate.  And it works.  But it's so easy, when you never meet people, when you never know the Earth itself, when you live with metal walls keeping out the cold of space, it's easy to forget why Earth is worth saving.  Why the world of people might be worth the price you pay'," (Card, 267).

Sometimes, all it takes is for someone to be reminded of why they're doing something hard - something outside of themselves.  Ender wasn't fighting for just his life up at Battle School and breaking himself down just for some kind of masochistic pleasure.  He was struggling for the entire human race.  To know, at least subconsciously, that the entire fate of the human race rests on your shoulders -- the shoulders of a child -- has to be an overwhelmingly heavy burden to carry.  But it's probably like when soldiers come back from leave and are able to spend even a little time with their loved ones -- they are reminded of why they're risking their life fighting a war.  People put their lives on the line all the time for our freedom.  I hope a time doesn't come when we're forced to send little children out to save the entire human race.


"'So what do we do now?' asked Alai.  'The bugger war's over, and so's the war down there on Earth, and even the war here.  What do we do now?'

'We're kids,' said Petra.  'They'll probably make us go to school.  It's a law.  You have to go to school till you're seventeen.'

They all laughed at that.  Laughed until tears streamed down their faces,"
(Card, 335).

I thought this was just a very important quote to kind of end the main part of the story.  In the end, these soldiers aren't even old enough to have graduated high school yet.  They're younger than even my sister, who's 17.  These kids just saved the entire human race, but yet they would still have to go back to school and try to lead a "normal" life.  hah.  How would anyone expect these kids -- especially Ender -- to ever be "normal" again? 

2 Comments

Stephanie Wytovich said:

Great entry hun! I couldn't agree with you more, especially on the last quote you chose. I always find it amazing how people who having extremely tramatizing situations happen to them are expected to just return back to everyday life and be normal. I know that after my dad got in his motorcycle accident, and thankfully was ok, it was so hard to return to normal everyday life. I had to take off a week of work and just reflect because I was so traumataized. I give people like that mad props because I certainly have a hard time pretending everything is ok when it def. is not.

Thanks for the feedback. Yes, this book has plenty that's worth analyzing, and it's also a great story.

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