I am not a fan of video games, unless you count “Just Dance,” the interactive live-action dance game for the Wii. I would rather scrub my toilet than play “Call of Duty.” Most of the female population would at least admit to enjoying a round of “Nintendo Mario Cart” every now and then.Not me.
The only thing worse than video games may be science-fiction films. I’d rather be locked in a closet with Jar Jar Binks than have to sit through a “Star Wars” movie.
So imagine my horror at having to read a book about a space war in which a boy commander, Ender Wiggin, must save the world from aliens by playing virtual games – a book that’s about to become a movie, no less. I wasn’t looking forward to reading Orson Scott Card’s “Ender’s Game.” But a professor made me do it.
Yet just as Ender saves the world by breaking the rules, Card broke my preconceptions about science fiction and delivered a message that transcends mere literary genre. Ender’s game, first published in 1985, is really a story about freedom, happiness, and sacrificial love.
The movie, which premieres on Nov. 1, will have to break the rules and conventions of typical sci-fi action movies to make good on the book’s meaningful story of inner warfare.
Card describes interstellar combat in vivid detail, but “Ender’s Game” is really about a young and gifted boy’s ethical struggles to balance a dutiful killing instinct with a nagging desire for kindness. The movie trailers show a lot of high-tech battle scenes, which were shot in a NASA complex in New Orleans, and dramatic one-liners, like “I’ll do everything I can to win this war.” I hope that director Gavin Hood preserves the book’s deeper meaning beneath the alien spaceship explosions.
Ender breaks the rules of traditional alien fighting with the unique tactics he employs to win battles. He has a foresight and an approach to battle that others lack, and it enables him to defeat opposing Battle School forces like the Centipede Army. The United States Marine Corps values Ender’s strategic mind so much that it lists “Ender’s Game” on its recommended reading for Privates First Class to Lance Corporals, due to its “lessons in training methodology, leadership, and ethics,” according to the United States Marine Corps University (USMCU) website.
A deeper look reveals that Ender breaks the rules of warfare in an even different way: he can’t help but empathize with his enemies. His genius allows him to understand the motives and personalities of his enemies, and it prevents him from wanting to kill. A line from the book sums up Ender’s dilemma: “In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.”
While I may not own a Gameboy or play “Battlestar Galactica,” if that’s even a thing, I can appreciate the wisdom of these words. Time and time again I have experienced a strong dislike of people who annoy me or have been rude or hurtful, only to catch a glimpse of their humanity, their struggles, or their similarity to myself and then feel completely ashamed and instantly compassionate.
The way that Ender justifies his innate compassion with his role in the war is his final way of breaking the rules, but you will have to read the book or see the movie, if it’s any good, to find out how he does that.