Creating the Innocent Killer (2009)
I find this essay to be poorly written and wrongly positioned. Ender is an anti-hero. He does what he has to because he is a useful tool, a pawn in the hands of people more powerful than him. His motivations are intertwined with theirs because he is fighting to save the same people they are (for him it&#x27;s his sister Valentine really).<p>The author of the essay recognizes Ender&#x27;s portrayal of guilt, but suggests that Card wipes the slate clean with every incident. It is quite the opposite. Much of Ender&#x27;s internal monologue is about him trying and failing to rationalize his actions. He has nightmares. &quot;Speaker For The Dead&quot; and &quot;Xenocide&quot; are about Ender struggling to come to terms with his xenocide, inventing new ways of assuaging that guilt. It is telling that Ender carries his burden for roughly a millenia (a terrible punishment), and only &lt;spoiler alert&gt; sacrificing himself allows some manner of redemption. He also &lt;spoiler alert&gt; saves the buggers after all. No one except Ender knows the location of the young queen&#x27;s cocoon. He could easily let her be captured or killed, yet deliberately places her in a secluded part of the galaxy where she can grow and repopulate. These are the actions of an ethical human being, not an amoral, cold-blooded killer.<p>Good sci-fi builds on moral conflicts in present-day society. Card is keenly aware of this. Ender&#x27;s Game is an unrealistic sympathy card? The pilots of the Enola Gay pushed a button and instantly exterminated 50,000 people. How do they feel about this? Does one think it was just another day at the office for them? Just another flight? We have drone pilots kill people daily. They burn out after a few years, suffer from PTSD. Xenocide has a very tense scene where the Admiral &lt;spoiler&gt; has to make an Ender-like decision. People like Ender exist because we as a society demand that they exist. That&#x27;s ultimately Card&#x27;s moral message.