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.

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.

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.