Notes

[3:03:46 PM] Nicole Allen: Choice Made By a Literary Character
Choice: a selection, an option. To choose seems like a simple request: chocolate, or vanilla? Pink or blue? People rarely stop to think about the true meaning behind a choice - the affect that choice can have on a person's life. However, Orson Scott Card stopped to think about it in his science fiction adventure Ender's Game, a work symbolizing the pressure that can be placed on one boy's shoulders. This boy's mind was too kind to want to cause harm, yet too strong to let an action go unpunished. A large part of this novel surrounds doubt, as well as the effects that an action instigated by doubt can have. In the novel, Ender makes the choice to continue his education in Command School, which leads to the effect of him annihilating an entire alien race.
The source of fear is doubt, doubt which stems from the reality of facing, choosing, or achieving something. Doubt can also be mental confusion - whether something is as it should be, as when Ender explained his nightmares to Valentine. "I dream I'm in the battleroom, only instead of being weightless, they're playing games with gravity. They keep changing its direction. So I never end up on the wall I launched for" (Card 236). These nightmares give Ender a terrible sense that people are constantly trying to control him, making him feel somewhat like a trapped animal. Unlike mental confusion, which is associated with instincts, self-doubt causes one not to believe in his or her capabilities, and can have a much more damaging effect on a person and their self-esteem. For instance, Ender was uncertain he could defeat the Buggers and save the world, as almost everyone was counting on him to do, because he lacked information on them. "I don't know anything about them, and yet someday I'm supposed to fight them" (Card 237-238). Along with doubting oneself, a person often has misgivings about someone else. Throughout the novel, many characters had moments where they did not believe in Ender. Such as Valentine when she visited Ender on the lake. "And now the fear came again, worse than before. Peter has mellowed, but you, they've made you into a killer. Two sides of the same coin, but which side is which?" (Card 238) Here Valentine starts to believe that Ender may be as or more dangerous than Peter, and isn't sure if she can trust him. Also, on multiple occasions different officials question if Ender is the one to save them. Despite her seed of doubt, Valentine is still the only one who can come close to getting rid of Ender's.
Ender's decision to continue his training was encouraged greatly by his older sister, Valentine. However, Valentine needed some courage in order to accomplish that. When "he touched her cheek so gently that she wanted to cry," she became weak (Card 239). She remembered "the touch of his soft and innocent hand on her cheek" and nearly lost the nerve to send Ender on to become a potential killer. Despite this, Valentine found the nerve again, and though she hated herself for it, used Ender's love for her to persuade him to go. He couldn't deny her, not after she told him "what Peter used to do to her because she stopped him from hurting Ender" and how "she didn't lie back and wait for Mom or Dad to save him" (Card 241). It was because of this influence that Ender finally relented, then set off to discover the outcome of his choice, whether it would make or break the fate of Earth.
Now was the most important stage of Ender's training: Command School. Before the full effect of Ender's choice could take place, he needed help. Ender was first introduced to his newest teacher, Mazer Rackham. Mazer was to be his "enemy" at Command School because "there is no teacher but the enemy. No one but the enemy will tell you what the enemy is going to do. No one but the enemy will ever teach you how to destroy and conquer. Only the enemy shows you where you are weak. Only the enemy tells you where he is strong" (Card 262-263). Then he connected with his squadron leaders over the simulation headset - Alai, Bean, Petra, Dink, and "all the best students Ender had fought with or against, everyone that Ender had trusted in Battle School" (Card 274). Throughout the simulations Ender and his team learned to trust each other more, and finally, it was time for the last battle. However, they did not know it was the real battle against the Buggers until they had destroyed the planet and Mazer told him "you made the hard choice, boy. All or nothing. End them or end us. But heaven knows there was no other way you could have done it. Congratulations. You beat them, and it's all over" (Card 296). It was not all cheers and smiles for Ender, though. He deeply regretted murdering the entire Bugger race, and saw himself as someone transformed into a killer by "bastards who had wanted Peter but tricked him into doing it" (Card 298). Ender's ultimate result and cost of being the world's hero was relocation - to the Bugger's deserted planet. And while "Ender's idea of freedom was not living in the house of people he had killed, he went in order to understand the Buggers better, to repay them by seeing what he could learn from their past" (Card 312 & 314).
For some, to choose does not just mean judging whether something is good or bad, wrong or right. Sometimes there is no easy way, and Orson Scott Card highlighted this fact through his character Ender Wiggin in Ender's Game. There are many factors that go into making a choice. One is doubt, and distrusting your or others' abilities can seriously affect the quality of the choice. People also often forget that individuals besides themselves are involved in their choices, and might have a more dramatic result than even the chooser. Furthermore, a choice can have very mixed outcomes. For example, in the novel Ender saves the world from a possible invasion, but on the other hand, he destroys a race of living creatures and has to live with himself knowing he is a murderer. He couldn't possibly choose himself over the world, but that doesn't mean he was okay with what he had to do. Card tells us that the easy way isn't always the right way, and proves author Oscar Wilde's famous saying "no good deed goes unpunished."