Enders Game--enders Empathic A
Orson Scott Card's work of science fiction, Ender's Game, is the exciting and poignant tale of a genius, Ender Wiggin, whom the Government takes from home at an early age to mold into a military commander. From his turbulent childhood, to his days at the physically and psychologically taxing Battle School, to his conquest of the buggers and ultimate colonization of their world, the most essential and useful aspect of Ender's prodigious genius is his incredible empathic ability. From the portrayal of his early childhood in the novel's first chapters, it seems that Ender developed this empathic ability as both a physical and psychological defense against the many truculent characters in ...
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for the dead".
From the very beginning of the novel, Ender's extraordinary empathic abilities are quite conspicuous. The first time the reader encounters Ender, in fact, he is making a very perspicacious observation about the way adults lie to children. A woman in charge of the maintenance of a monitor attached since birth to the back of Ender's head had told him that it was at last time for the monitor to come off, and that "it won't hurt a bit." Ender's response is a clear reflection of his empathic abilities. He ruminates, "It was a lie, of course, that it wouldn't hurt a bit. But since adults always said it when it was going to hurt, he could count on that statement as an accurate prediction of the future. Sometimes lies were more dependable than truth." Ender, here, has not only essentially read the mind of the monitor lady, but has also demonstrated his personal knowledge of a universal habit of adults' lying to children about certain things, such as pain. A ...
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behind him saying, "Geez, Look at him, He's wasted."
Perhaps even more than at home, Ender's employs his empathic abilities often and with great success at battle school. By the end of his stay, it has become clear that, of all his extraordinary abilities, his empathy is the most useful and necessary to his survival. One of the most obvious and significant reflections of Ender's empathy in battle school comes in his fight with Bonzo in the shower. Bonzo, a Spanish boy of modest ability compared to Ender, had had a vicious vendetta against Ender for a long time, in large part because of jealousy. Eventually, Bonzo and a group of his friends who shared his jealousy corner Ender in the ...
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"Enders Game--enders Empathic A." Essayworld.com. April 7, 2004. Accessed April 28, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Enders-Game-enders-Empathic-A/5829.
"Enders Game--enders Empathic A." Essayworld.com. April 7, 2004. Accessed April 28, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Enders-Game-enders-Empathic-A/5829.
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