by Joshua Summers

A rudimentary reading of Orson Scott Card’s book Ender’s Game would provide little eco-critical responses. One would likely focus on the moral and philosophical dilemmas that are the backbone of this work. Several key ideas that Scott Card presents are, do the ends justify the means? Hell, are the ends justified regardless of the means? How far can a human, a child, be pushed before they break? What do humans do in an impossible situation? None of these questions are inherently ecological; however, Scott Card answers these questions in a way that can be interpreted eco-critically.

Ender’s Game takes place in a fragile world held together by the existential threat of an alien species, called buggers, looming over. The buggers had launched two invasions on Earth, and at the start of the book it was believed that there was little time before a third invasion. Ender was born a third child, something not allowed by the governing body of the world. He is supposed to be a mix of his brother, who is too violent, and his sister, who is too empathetic.

At six years old Ender is taken by the International Fleet, the army in charge of defending earth, to begin his training. Ender spends the next five years of his life in battle school in orbit around Earth. At battle school Ender is pushed to the edge of what a child can do. At the end of those five years Ender graduates early and is sent to command school. There he meets Mazer Rackham, the man who miraculously defeated the buggers in the second invasion. Unbeknownst to Ender, the ‘simulations’ he plays at command school are real battles.

The book ends with Ender killing all the buggers and falling into a deep depression. Back on earth with the threat of the buggers no longer looming, the world falls apart and Ender’s brother ends up in control of the world. Ender and his sister go on the first colonization mission to a Bugger planet. There Ender finds the larva of a bugger queen, the start of a recovery whose destruction was at Ender’s hands.

Outside of the larger murder of the buggers, Ender unknowingly kills two boys throughout the story. The first murder is of a boy in his class, Stilson, who had bullied him throughout his years at school. Ender successfully beats both boys, yet he decides to keep attacking the boys. On page seven Scott Card writes, “Ender knew the unspoken rules of manly warfare, even though he was only six. It was forbidden to strike the opponent who lay helpless on the ground; only an animal would do that.” Despite this knowledge Ender still strikes Stilson multiple times while he is down, unknowingly killing him. Ender cites his reasoning for this as, “’Knocking him down won the first fight. I wanted to win all the next ones, too. So they’d leave me alone.’” (Scott Card 19). When humans are pushed to the absolute limit we often respond in extreme ways. As Ender says he responds in an animalistic way, yet he sees this as the only way to prevent further violence. Orson Scott Card presents us from the very start of this novel with the question of ‘at what point does our humanity fail us and do we have to become more primitive.’ Ender breaks what he considers to be one of the most fundamental parts of humanity. Despite this, his acknowledgement of his lack of humanity shows how Ender has not succumbed to his animal side.

Later in the book Ender once again sees himself face to face with a larger foe, both physically and hierarchically. At this point in the book Ender has been pushed closer and closer to the edge, and his humanity has continued to be challenged. With this murder, Scott Card uses the environment and descriptions of the body to show the decrease in humanity. Scott Card writes, “The bathroom wasn’t large, and plumbing fixtures protruded everywhere. … It was obvious what their tactics would have to be. Throw the other boy against the fixtures until one of them does enough damage that he stops.” (209). In this environment there is no room for anything but brute strength. Whoever wins this fight will be the person who let go of their humanity the most. This does not mean letting go of intelligence, instead this means thinking only of the fight at hand and doing everything possible to win this fight.

Ender does win the fight, and once again he faces the need to end not only this fight, but all those that follow. He continues to embrace his lack of humanity, which ironically makes him more human, and to hurt his enemy when he is down. Scott Card describes the way Bonzo’s (the attacker) body reacts as:

Bonzo did not cry out in pain. He did not react at all, except that his body rose a little in the air. It was as if Ender had kicked a piece of furniture. Bonzo collapsed, fell to the side, and sprawled directly under the spray of steaming water from a shower. He made no movement whatever to escape the murderous heat.

(Scott Card 211-212)

Bonzo is declared dead later in the book; however, the language that Scott Card uses can lead us to that conclusion earlier than stated. Bonzo has no reaction to pain and discomfort, instead his body ragdolls. The comparison of the body to furniture shows us once again that our bodies are matter stitched together with a consciousness. When we die, and our consciousness leaves our bodies, our bodies simply become part of the world around us.

One’s body becoming part of the environment is another theme that Scott Card uses multiple times throughout Ender’s Game. In a video game that Ender plays in battle school the ending is supposed to be a game of chance in which you always lose. Ender, faced with an impossible situation, again acts in an animalistic way. Ender, “jumped at the Giant’s face, clambered up his lip and nose, and began to dig in the Giant’s eye. … Ender’s figure burrowed into the eye, climbed right in, burrowed in and in.” (Scott Card 64-65). This situation can also be read as a social commentary on how violence is bad yet sometimes is necessary; however, this scene from an ecological perspective is a rehash of the return to animal motif that occurs when faced with the constant abuse that I have discussed already. This scene is important for an ecological reading since the body of the giant and how it becomes part of the environment is a recurring theme.

The next time Ender plays the game he is at the place where he killed the giant. Scott Card describes the scene:

The Giant’s corpse had essentially finished its decay. What could be torn by the small scavengers was torn; the maggots had done their work on the organs; now it was a desiccated mummy, hollowed-out, teeth in a rigid grin, eyes empty, fingers curled. Ender remembered burrowing through the eye when it had been alive and malicious and intelligent. Angry and frustrated as he was, Ender wished to do such violence again. But the Giant had become part of the landscape now, and so there could be no rage against him.

(Scott Card 70-71)

Here there is a mix of Ender’s animalism alongside the environmental effects of those actions. Ender has done great violence; his fight or flight overrode his pacifist instinct to avoid conflict. The giant has become part of the environment. The word “usage” from Scott Card gives a very gruesome image of the corpse. The corpse taunts Ender, so despite its death it wins. The giant brought out the worst in Ender and haunts him. This excerpt also shows what happens to our bodies when we die. In nature the body is reclaimed by nature, the meat and organs are used as food for carrion species. The bones become homes for species; the novel states, “Instead, he began by the Giant’s corpse. Only now, it was hardly identifiable as a corpse at all, unless you stood off a ways and studied it. The body had eroded into a hill, entwined with grass and vine. Only the crest of the Giant’s face was still visible, and it was white bone, like Limestone protruding from a discouraged withering mountain.” (Scott Card 117). The giant, who used to be a force of evil and death within this game has now become his own antithesis. The earth has reclaimed the body, where the only thing left visible is the skull. The grasses and vines become a habitat for animal species. Following the ecological ideas of succession eventually trees will grow, and the area will become a thriving ecosystem.

The depths of space are filled with vast swaths of nothingness occasionally occupied by stars, planets, or other pieces of matter. In this vast expanse of the known universe, humans are the only sentient life forms we are aware of. Other life forms existing and living in their homes can sometimes make us uncomfortable. As Scott Card writes, “Now Ender understood why the rooms had always felt wrong to him, ‘I knew this place wasn’t a human place.’” (270). Plus, the rooms themselves were places where “the ceilings were too low for the width, the tunnels too narrow.” (Scott Card 257). The idea of other sentient lifeforms has always fascinated humans; however, we often assume other beings to be humanlike. This is a very anthropocentric view on life, and challenging that is ecologically critical. The buggers are an insect-like-hivemind who have no individual thought. The queen of the hive is the only bugger capable of intellectual thought. The comfort of each individual bugger does not matter to the queen, whereas with humans, each of us strives for our comfort. These caves on Eros are not comfortable for humans because they were not designed with comfort in mind. This environment has effects on Ender later when he feels as though the walls are closing in on him, and how he has no place to run.

For a book with such a desolate setting, Orson Scott Card uses environmental and ecological factors to further his psychological horror and moral dilemmas. Scott Card uses the idea of humanity vs animalism multiple times throughout Ender’s Game to emphasize the internal plight of the protagonist. The environment of the Giants game and of Eros are both used to show the effects of life and violence on the environment. Eros specifically indicates the possible differences between humans and other possible sentient lifeforms. There are several other environmental and ecological events that occur throughout the book. The largest of these being the complete genocide of the buggers alongside the thought of their return considered in the last chapter of the book, as well as continued in two of Orson Scott Card’s other books.