Expectation Games
In light of the recent conversation on united Mormon fiction and literary genealogy, I thought I’d try and rein the conversation in a bit by focusing on a specific piece (albeit well-known) from the Mormon Literature Database. Specifically, I want to look at Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, my reaction to it, and the type of expectations that seems to reflect; all wrapped up in the notion of “Mormon Literature.”
I’ve always heard good things about Ender’s Game and must profess to being a prolific fantasy writer (and lesser so, reader), but never really dabbled much into science-fiction, unless it was Heinlein’s Red Planet. Ender’s Game was on my list for quite a while, but I finally picked it up over the Christmas break and read it voraciously.
When I was finished, I must say I was a bit bothered, but that may be more about my expectations than anything else. After finishing, I was left feeling…dissatisfied. I reread the introduction to the book in the hopes of calming myself, but to no avail. So I wrote about it. That’s always helped me wring out my emotions in other cases. Unfortunately, I finished while I was on a plane back to Utah and I had no paper, only a pen. So I wrote my initial, reactionary thoughts on (of all things) an airplane throw-up bag:
This is going to eat at me until I get it out of my system. I hate the way my stomach feels right now. I just finished Ender’s Game. I’m speechless. It’s…brilliant, genius, utterly terrifying. The complete and utter breakdown of optimism. Ender is a tragedy. Chaim Potok was right about human nature. We are dualistic and hold within us two powers: create or destroy (see My Name Is Asher Lev). Love or hate. The greatest tragedy and betrayal then is when he who loves most is used to hate more. Ender, used for 10 billion deaths…. I want to hate Ender’s Game more than any other novel I have ever, ever, ever read. Or will read. It sickens me, frightens me, appalls me, and yet I cannot turn away. Ender’s Game is the best depiction of humanity ever to be conceived that I’ve read. We are driven, instinctual. I love and love and love. But when I get angry? Power. If I were manipulated in the same way I cannot — as much as I would love to be self-deceived — admit that I would do or be different. The will to survive and with that, power. Ender’s Game to me is a dark book rife with bitter truth. We may be miserable, awful, and selfish beings but we can learn and that makes us decent. Well, what if I don’t want to be decent? What if I want to be good? Where does that happen? Ender captures the notion, but there is no indication he ever achieves it…. Where is his redemptive nature? In the knowledge that he can bring back that which he unwittingly obliterated? I only feel all the optimism in me killed by the understanding of power I now have. My last breath of humanity died with Ender’s last tear. […] Power. That which is gained must be kept. And that requires the submission of all which could be a threat. So where is hope? Where do I glean joy and peace from this book? Serenity? In death? If there is something happy and optimistic here, where is it? How did I miss it? And what does that say about me? Maybe that’s why I revile and recoil so vehemently against this book; I recognize how entirely close I am to being that killer — that hater. Did Ender win? Did he “save” humanity? Or did he break the very instant he was challenged? Should he have let Stilson take advantage of him? Cede power for love? This book has left me wholly without answers. Only questions. I hate questions because they teach me too much about what I’m supposed to be learning here without ever giving me any answers.
Looking back on that gut reaction to Ender’s Game, I think much of my uneasiness was due to my expectations. And Card definitely fed into those expectations as he jabbed at his upbringing: mentioning Mormons as well as having characters from Utah. That reinforced my preconceptions; this is a book by a Mormon–”LDS literature” –therefore it must have a message of hope. Surely Card wrote with eternal principles in mind, right?
Now I have new questions about the way I’m reading literature. Being a Mormon, and knowing he was a Mormon, I tried to put this book in a “genre”/”category” without even reading it. When it explicitly rebelled against my conceptions it was deeply unsettling to me, more so by the fact of how plausibly he crafted his characters and plot. So I’m brought back to my earlier comment on Liz’s post, with the problems of trying make a “Mormon Literature” genre. Attempting to categorize literature into a “genre” inherently brings with it a set of expectations (both on the part of the author and reader), so how do we define something accurately when the expectations that warrants implicitly (or explicitly) subvert the very categorization? I don’t really have an answer for that (and don’t expect you too either). It could just be a matter or redefining the expectation set that comes with the category, but how possible is that? Is it even conceivable to redefine the construct of “fantasy” to not include pointy-eared creatures? I also already argued that we could just expand our expectation set to include more expectations, but then the clearly-defined lines of genre and category become blurred and still deconstruct themselves, so we again flounder in trying to create a “Mormon Literature” genre.
This seems to posit a need for adaptation; just like Ender got people to think differently about the Battle Room challenges. “The enemy’s gate is down.” We need to figure out a way to look differently at that which is already in place, and use that to gain the victory we seek. With expectation, definition, and purpose.
In an attempt to allay my disconcertions, I immediately went out and got Speaker for the Dead, sure that if Card didn’t allow Ender to be redeemed in the first novel, he would give him that chance in the second. It ended up being a good read, but I felt much of the same. How could Card write such hopeless novels? And if there really was hope in them that I was missing, again, what did that say about me? Am I just a pessimist? Is it because I have misplaced expectations? How does the approach we take with a novel affect the way we read it (you know, that whole “lens”/perception rhetoric)?
Some may argue that it’s not Ender who is hopeless, but the society. And yet, I have trouble completely separating Ender from the society. He is already in many ways, but ends up being a product nonetheless of their exploitation. That raises a whole other set of questions on the problems underlying agency and responsibility I can’t hope to address in this post. All the same the issue of redemption remains unfulfilled, even at the end of Speaker. I’ll admit I never got to the third book, but I missed a sense of Ender’s penance/atonement for what happened along the way. Is helping the Hive Queen find a new home enough? What if they just get destroyed again? (And can we even feebly try and pass judgment on such things?)
Likewise some would assert that Ender is not entirely hopeless, only possessed of unfulfilled hope when it comes to the Hive Queen. He wants a place to put her, and this will bring the difference he is looking for in the universe. Yet from the clashing cultures of the pygmies and humans, as well as humanity’s attitude toward the Hive, hope still gets lost for me. Will a book really alter their mindset that radically? How do you hold onto hope when everything that exists cries out against it? This causes me to pause and think about our world today and the downward cycle we seem to be in. The idea of peace is essentially moot because of the power construct Card so lucidly depicts. Even if a country elects a leader who stands for peace, it only leaves them in a position to be taken advantage of by everyone else. It would take everyone at the same time deciding to adopt peace and harmony in order for such ideology to survive. Even looking at the Bible affords the same bleak outlook; we all know that it’s not going to get better before it gets worse. The world just decays to the point where it ends. Apocalypse anyone? So what place can I give to hope?
The blatant irony here is that I’m really not a pessimist! Anyone who knows me would vouch for my optimistic disposition. I cling to hope more fervently than I would my baby blanket when scared as a kid, that’s just part of the way I live. But in order to have such with regard to Ender’s Game I’d need to (re)place my beliefs (expectations?) on the book and I’m brought full circle back into the problems I’ve already proposed, which is most of the same I see for Ender and the Hive Queen. A vicious, hopeless cycle…to which I can apply hope.
I’m interested to hear other people’s experiences with Ender’s Game (and/or Speaker), the set of expectations you had going in, and how those two played off each other (are they reconcilable?) to create problems/questions in your mind. Also any thoughts on my thoughts are welcomed.
February 29th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
John Kessel’s “Creating the Innocent Killer” is one of the most thorough and in-depth analyses of Ender’s Game I’ve ever read. He begins by quoting OSC as saying “There’s always moral instruction whether the writer inserts it deliberately or not…” and goes on to look at why exactly Ender’s Game is so popular and how exactly OSC sets up the story to create these feelings in us. Excellent read: http://www4.ncsu.edu/~tenshi/Killer_000.htm
February 29th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
I thought they were both wonderful. Ender’s game was a tragedy and scathing commentary on our society, but for me speaker for the dead more than made up for it. The incident with the piggies and what we need to do to learn to understand others, to forgive others, and live in peace was very powerful. Though ripe with tragedy, Ender brought resolution to the conflict, with insight born of his experience. I found the book a powerful affirmation of the power of “knowing”, understanding them rather than casting them off as verelse and condemning ourselves to conflict and destruction. In that sense I thought it was hopeful, in a three dimensional way born of reality and refusal to examine our flaws and weakness.
In an odd way, seeing as how it was fiction, I found it an insightful commentary into what the fall and mortality really mean, the pain of spiritual growth, of knowing the good and the evil. Hopeless optimist that I am, I found it very life affirming.
The way Ender was used in the first book was revolting, the way he taught and led, inspiring. The way he was stretched between his dark side and good side to become a leader was painful, three dimensional, and real.
My expectations were high, but in a way that I expected it to be much different than previous Mormon fare, as EG was award winning and critically acclaimed, and moved beyond the realm of anything a Mormon had written before. It met those expectations for me.
I think you might like his shadow series. It does go on to show Ender’s influence planted seeds that help produce a united Earth way down the road, ironically under his brother, Peter the Hegemon, who matures and grows up and gains dimension. He turns out okay, in a believable way, a miraculous achievement for the kind of sociopathic demon he started out as.
February 29th, 2008 at 9:32 pm
I think Speaker for the Dead is a highly redemptive book. Exactly why is inherent in the title.
March 1st, 2008 at 2:10 am
I went into my first reading of Ender’s Game simply as a kid looking for a good sci fi read. It was recommended by my cousin. I read the introduction–Card’s preface–and caught a glimpse of the fact that it wasn’t likely to be a simple sci fi. Reading it supported that, but mostly it was the general plot that struck me, and not the actual implications. I didn’t fully grasp what was going on for Ender until I read Speaker for the Dead on through Children of the Mind. The series takes an abrupt turn at Speaker and–I’ll definitely agree with William–becomes incredibly redemptive. Whether Card intended it or not, the sum of the series is that even while society is decaying, individuals of integrity can still live out meaningful lives–usually, though, tainted by society’s influence. I think that struggle is what draws me so much to the books. Peter is probably my favorite character, and not only because I share his name. Somehow, he takes all the vicious, Machiavellian qualities that he has and turns them toward the good of humanity.
So he says, anyway, and so says Ender. Can we trust them as narrators? We’d like to. So I’ll agree with the thrust of the original post. Many of the implications are shocking, but maybe like a mosaic of the faces of the dead, while closer inspection shocks and appalls, the bigger picture reveals something absolutely incredible. Just what that is . . . well, it’s something that moves you, deeply, toward something beyond.
March 2nd, 2008 at 10:53 pm
David, I appreciate your sharing the thoughts you wrote down right after you read Ender’s Game. I wish I had done the same, because I honestly can’t remember what my reaction was. I mostly remember that I was disturbed by it and didn’t have much of a desire to read more of the series, perhaps because I too didn’t know how to process the story. Although, as I recall, I was mostly disturbed because the book had such a depressing ending and not so much because I was considering what the larger implications were. This was probably because I was fairly young at the time that I read it.
I do, however, remember reading other books once I got to high school that I also had difficulty processing because they left me with more questions than answers, as you mentioned in your initial reaction to Ender’s Game. My junior year of high school, we started out with Catcher in the Rye, then sailed directly into Native Son, Hamlet, and The Stranger, and then finished the year off with A Handmaid’s Tale. Talk about losing optimism. I was so depressed by the books we read that year that I dropped the academic program I was in and determined that I couldn’t be an English major in college, even though in many ways this would have been a logical choice.
There are a number of novels that don’t seem to have the redemptive endings we’re used to experiencing, especially as member of the Church. But maybe the endings that don’t include the explicit hope and redemption are sometimes the ones that move us most. It’s kind of a funny comparison, but I recently watched What about Thad?, which is a short film the Church produced in 1968 that was used to inspire Church members to work harder at reaching out to ward members in need. In the film, Thad is a little boy who has a difficult home life and has become troubled and isolated because of it. His primary leaders and his home teacher notice that Thad is struggling and remember moments where they could have reached out to him but just never carried through on their good intentions. They make plans to do better in the future, but at the end of the film, we don’t find out what happens. We’re left with this sad image of Thad walking by himself down an alleyway. Redemption seems possible, but we never find out if it actually happens. Interestingly enough, this film was a stronger call to action than were some of the others I’ve been viewing recently that have tidier endings, perhaps because it leaves the outcome up to the viewer.
March 3rd, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Speaker for the Dead, etc., become too redemptive in my opinion.
March 5th, 2008 at 11:34 am
Is life in general hopeful? It seems like most of the time life sucks. That’s not to say I’m not religious or not hopeful–I am. But what is the purpose of this life? To be happy now, or to grow up and progress? There’s a lot of moral ambiguity in living life, which is why I loved reading Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead. I can’t remember the specifics of those books, but I like how we got to see the change in Ender. His experiences made him who he was. He grew up and we got to see it happen.
March 7th, 2008 at 11:19 pm
[…] last week with the attempts at defining a Mormon “genre” as well as my musings on expectation as a reader. I want to now address how this affects what I do as a writer, and why that matters to […]
March 11th, 2008 at 10:11 pm
[…] here’s his recent post on Ender’s Game. http://mormonrenaissance.org/2008/02/29/expectation-games/ […]