Heroism In Ender's Game

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Ender’s Game features Andrew “Ender” Wiggins as a conflicted, young hero thrown into the life of a hero. His morals and true heroism is questioned by his actions, but also had been forced or tricked into such actions, creating conflict within Ender and the reader’s opinion. Ender follows the Hero Cycle, entering new worlds and victories over enemies. Even so, at the same time, he must kill and fight in order to reach those victories, and Ender does not want to become a ruthless killer. Technology ties these heroic or non-heroic deeds together, maintaining a strong yet subtle impact to many significant events and ideas within the story. Ender followed the simple Hero Cycle, flying to his new world, Battle School, through space to begin his long journey as a soon-to-be savior beginning at six years old. …show more content…
Ender went through what he thought were several simulations controlling a fleet, but was instead lied to by his mentor, Mazer Rackham, and had been controlling a real fleet at the same time. As a result of this, Ender obliterated the Buggers, unintentionally killing a whole species, which had no longer wanted to war with humanity ages ago but could not communicate this. This is only found out when Ender discovers an unborn pupa of a Bugger queen on the newly inhabited planet, discussing through the communication the Buggers had used, and told Ender, “We did not mean to murder, and when we understood, we never came again.” (109). While Ender knew he was training to lead humanity, he did not want to fight to the death for victory, he sought for peace and understanding. Yet Ender was a killer to be a hero, reigning victorious through the death of another. “‘I didn’t want to kill them all. I didn’t want to kill anybody! I’m not a killer! You didn’t want me, you bastards, you wanted Peter, but you made me do it, you tricked me into it!’ He was crying.”

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